wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil (Will Martin) (10/06/89)
This line was in the California PUC article:
>For phone customers, the refund would come as credits in future bills.
This same tactic has been used locally (St. Louis, MO -- SW Bell
territory) to credit previous overcharges. I find it annoying and
offensive. It deliberately discriminates against people whose
telephone service terminates or changes frequently due to moves.
For example, there was one such credit about two years or so ago,
that was spread out over a period of many months (or maybe a year),
with one quarter of the credit applied and then one or two months
went by with no credit, and then the next installment of the credit
was applied.
We lost a portion of this credit because this period extended past the
time when we terminated the phone service at my mother's house after
she died. She had had this phone service at that address for 35 years or
so, and certainly was entitled to the entire amount of credit. But her
account only got a portion of the credit she was due.
PUC's and the equivalent should require that this credit be issued in
a lump sum, not spread out over some long period. Actually, since the
telco required the bills be paid in cash, the return of overcharges
should be a refund check, not just a credit. The telco wouldn't accept
a credit for goods or services from you in lieu of cash as payment of
a phone bill, would it? Yet it expects to pay *you* back that way!
If it REALLY would be a hardship for the telco to pay back cash (their
upper management would have to eat lower-grade caviar in the executive
dining room for a couple weeks... :-), then it should be issued as a
transferable credit voucher, in one single total payment. Thus it
could be used as payment for the recipient's phone bill, or, if they
no longer had phone service, could be given to someone else (or sold)
who could use it on *their* phone bill. In any case, the credit should
be issued to everybody who paid the overcharge, even if they moved out
of the area or terminated their phone service in the meantime.
Will Martin