jjohnson@hpljaj.hpl.hp.com (Jeff Johnson) (09/25/90)
Excerpted from the 9/21/90 {San Jose Mercury-News}:
PHONE BILL'S WRONG NUMBER: $8.7 MILLION
Chicago (AP) -- Cori Ward's mother got a little defensive when she
received a phone bill for three weeks' service -- $8.7 million.
"She says, 'I only called my sister,'" said Ward, who handles her
elderly mother's bills.
The bill from Illinois Bell should have read $87.98, not $8,709,800.33.
Ward said she had a hard time explaining the mistake to the phone
company.
The error occurred when someone incorrectly typed a "correction" into
the computer system, said Larry Cose, a Bell spokesman.cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) (09/28/90)
In article <12576@accuvax.nwu.edu>, jjohnson@hpljaj.hpl.hp.com (Jeff Johnson) writes: > Chicago (AP) -- Cori Ward's mother got a little defensive when she > received a phone bill for three weeks' service -- $8.7 million. > "She says, 'I only called my sister,'" said Ward, who handles her > elderly mother's bills. > The bill from Illinois Bell should have read $87.98, not $8,709,800.33. Uh, doesn't the phone company's accounting software have some sanity checks in it? Do they regularly send out residential service bills that require seven digits left of the decimal point? > Ward said she had a hard time explaining the mistake to the phone > company. Whoever Ward talked to in customer service, then, needs replacement with a non-robodroid. If I were in customer service, and someone called up with a $8x10^6 phone bill for three weeks of residential service, this would be immediate evidence of serious billing SNAFUs -- I wouldn't need an explanation at all. Clayton E. Cramer {pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer You must be kidding! No company would hold opinions like mine! [Moderator's Note: Very few customers of Illinois Bell get seven-digit phone bills each month: City of Chicago; University of Chicago; General Services Administration (billing for all federal agencies here); Cook County government; State of Illinois government; University of Illinois at Chicago; Amoco/Standard Oil; and probably the Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, to name a few. Every one of them have a customer service representative for their exclusive use: someone who does nothing but attend to that customer's requirements eight hours per day, five days per week. There are plenty of six-digit monthly billings: Chicago Board of Education, including the City Colleges; Transit Authority; and Commonwealth Edison. PAT]
cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (09/28/90)
I had a case where I was managing a small outside computer account at a university, and received a large bill for supposed usage. It was off by some order of magnitude (I don't recall what), and I called the computing center there, and found out someone had already "flagged" my account because she had figured out I didn't spend that kind of money on that account. (Error got fixed.) In other words, the above case had an internal "sanity" check. Does somebody do something like that at the phone company office, at or before the customer calls?
hrs1@cbnewsi.att.com (09/29/90)
In article <12722@accuvax.nwu.edu>, optilink!cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) writes: > Uh, doesn't the phone company's accounting software have some sanity > checks in it? Do they regularly send out residential service bills > that require seven digits left of the decimal point? Most billing software does not seem to have any sanity checks. For the third time, my mortgage bank send me first and overdue notice, and then a penalty notice, for a $ 0.01 (that's right, one US dollar cent) underpayment. This underpayment sometimes occurs because my softwarer calculates the payment to be be one cent less than the bank's software. I also pay most of my checks by EFT (CheckFree). Thus, unless I remember to manually correct the amount, it goes out wrong. When I call the bank, they fix it, and I send them one extra penny the next time. It costs them 50 cents in postage, plus paper etc. to notify me. Since one notification costs $ 0.25, it would make sense to accept any payment that was not more than 25 cents too small, and just add it to the next month's statement. That kind of sanity is apparently not possessed by the designers of accounting and billing programs. Herman Silbiger
gutierrez@noc.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Michael Gutierrez) (09/29/90)
optilink!cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) writes: |> jjohnson@hpljaj.hpl.hp.com (Jeff Johnson) writes: |> > Chicago (AP) -- Cori Ward's mother got a little defensive when she |> > received a phone bill for three weeks' service -- $8.7 million. [etc] |> Uh, doesn't the phone company's accounting software have some sanity |> checks in it? Do they regularly send out residential service bills |> that require seven digits left of the decimal point? No. Billing centers only have one purpose in life, to bill as fast as they can, and their thinking is that even a simple subroutine to check for excessive zeros will slow then down. The same subroutine would also bring the accuracy statistics down, something they don't like at all. It's better if the mistake was discovered by the customer, then that inaccurate billing is not added to the company's accuracy stats. |> > Ward said she had a hard time explaining the mistake to the phone |> > company. |> Whoever Ward talked to in customer service, then, needs replacement |> with a non-robodroid. If I were in customer service, and someone |> called up with a $8x10^6 phone bill for three weeks of residential |> service, this would be immediate evidence of serious billing SNAFUs -- |> I wouldn't need an explanation at all. This I agree on. MCI had problems with so-called "stuck clocks," or billed calls that were extremely excessive (like 600 - 2000 minutes). These were calls to end offices (CO's) that didn't return supervision, and the MCI switch had to depend on voice patterns on the line to determine when to start supervision. Unfortunately, they sometimes didn't stop supervision when the call stopped, and it would continue to clock the call until billing-dump time on the switch, when it routined the trunk to see it's usage, and discovered that it was not in use, and "end" that call-record. The switch merrily dumped that call onto the mag tape, and the billing center merrily billed it on the customers bill. Well, MCI had a standing policy to take the excessive charge off the bill, *without question*. Since it was impossible to determine how long the customer talked for (unless they volunteered), the call was written off. Everybody in customer service knew this. The only thing that was needed was a copy of the bill which the call appeared on (this being before MCI had on-line call detail). If somebody called me at MCI with an $8.7 mil. bill on a *residental* account, I would *NOT* be arguing with them ... I'd instead give them my direct address at MCI, and save the bill as a souvenier instead after the mess was straightned out. Robert Michael Gutierrez Office of Space Science and Applications, NASA Science Internet - Network Operations Center. Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (09/30/90)
On Sep 29 at 1:44, Robert Michael Gutierrez writes: > This I agree on. MCI had problems with so-called "stuck clocks," or > billed calls that were extremely excessive (like 600 - 2000 minutes). MCI also has a problem with excessively small bills. A couple of years ago, I opened an MCI secondary account. Not once have I placed a call, but the first month the account was opened, one bogus call appeared on the bill with a charge of $0.23. I ignored it. Every month now for two years an MCI bill has appeared with a Past Due amount of $0.23 showing. Apparently is too small to trigger any collection action but also there is no sanity check to drop it. MCI has spent many dollars in postage now reminding me of that 23 cent amount. I do enjoy reading the bill inserts, however. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !