What Inept Billing Software Have You Encountered? 219
Chris asks: "I am a Sprint customer signed up for automatic payments, and over the past week I've found that Sprint has a computer system that does three ridiculously inept things from a programmers standpoint. First, they send a 'Do not send payment...this amount will be charged' bill then a 'Disconnection Imminent' notice for the same amount, within a week of each other. When customer service is called about this, everything appears fine to the customer service rep, and they assure the client that everything is fine. Finally, the computer system shuts down the customer's cell phone for lack of payment, even if the customer has a credit card on file and has given Sprint authorization to use it. What's the worst experience Slashdot users have found with billing systems that don't make any sense?"
No charge.. (Score:4, Funny)
automated "you owe us money" phone calls (Score:2, Interesting)
A week later, I still get phone calls at all hours of the night from some automated system identifying itself with an 800 number only. Some of these calls were between 3 and 4 in the morning. I assume the didn't check
Re:automated "you owe us money" phone calls (Score:4, Funny)
They didn't call at inappropriate times, as far as I know. It's just that the combination of the syntha-voice and the demand sounded more like a TV show kidnapping ransom call than a librarian. I don't think the system lasted very long in practice. Probably alarmed too many people.
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After a few weeks, a conversation with someone about fax machines tripped something in my head. "Dude - of course! Fax machine!" So I started leaving my computer on every night, with the fax software that came bundled with it set to "auto answer".
It was some company trying to sell me a vacation packag
Re:No charge.. (Score:5, Informative)
Which one of these [snopes.com] people are you claiming to be?
Re:No charge.. (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, he got the story wrong - the $0.00 check was supposed to crash the billing system, too.
Way back in the day ... (Score:2)
I signed up with some bank that had free credit cards, both VISA and M/C. Everything was fine for a year or so, when they announced that if I used the credit cards after a certain date, they would charge me a $15 annual fee. So I cut them up and threw them away.
Some time later, they sent me a statement including a $15 charge for the annual fee. This continued for several months until my compl
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Dish Network (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dish Network (Score:4, Informative)
You let them dink your credit? You should have fought it. If it's still on your credit report, you still can get it removed. Sites like creditnet.com are always willing to help people learn how to remove crap like this.
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Re:No charge.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for the fact that I've seen such similar things myself:
A telco company that was a vendor for one of my previous employers had the audacity to send us a bill for 8 cents for an account that was being closed out. Since the cost to cut them a check was a lot more than that (and obviously, the cost for them to print and mail the bill) we ignored it. Several nasty letters later (they must have spent at least $10 for supplies and postage to collect their precious 8 cents), the company controller taped a dime to the latest bill and mailed it back. We figured that would be the end of it, right? No way, a few weeks later, we received a nice computer generated check for 2 cents. The controller pinned it to his bulletin board as a reminder of how stupid a computer billing system could be. He was also quick to point out at the end of the story, that the telco's accountants would have to keep reconciling that 2 cent uncashed check for a very long time, until someone manually entered a transaction to clear it.
That dime was the best money he ever spent, at least in terms of "laughs per cent".
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Frankly - if that guy was my comptroller, and I heard this story, he'd be fired for gross incompetence and igorance.
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Right, but they could have posted $0.02 as tax (since the guy paid cash), and not wasted the $0.30 cutting the check to begin with.
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Ended up walking about 5 miles to a friends house who called my dad and he came to fix the car. About a week later, the phone company sent a letter to my house and inside it was a check for $0.20.
I would have been happy just to h
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We just want to see how much money they'll spend telling him about his 17c that he never actually gave them...
Some places just make it hard to give them money (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at credit card company websites, if you're paying online, both of the ones I've used make you jump through extra hoops to reschedule your payment to transfer now instead of at the last second before the due date (that many more days of interest, plus the chance that something goes wrong at the last second, and bam! Late fees!).
Re:Some places just make it hard to give them mone (Score:2)
I've had a few things like this happen to me, but I've never had service disconnected. I think the worst was software that wouldn't allow me to prepay. I get discount gift cards through work for my termite control service, but they only sell in $50 and $100, and my bill is $75 every thr
Re:Some places just make it hard to give them mone (Score:2)
All my charges on that credit card are for fixed monthly amounts, so I had been just verifying the bill amount each month, knowing that my payment would go on time...
They were kind enough to waive the finance charges, but it took half an hour of my time.
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Re:Some places just make it hard to give them mone (Score:2)
I had a sprint cell phone around 5 or more years ago. They were doing stuff like this all the time. Sometimes I would recive disconect notices in the Mail with postage stamps on hte same day as the bill. Someone at sprint change my plan without notifying me and free long distance turned into 10 cents a minute (something in that range) and nationwide coverage turned into roaming access
Excel (Score:4, Funny)
It was a resourceful effort for a family owned business with a "smart teen", but it goes against my beliefs that Excel should be used only for number analysis, not data management. A billing system is data management.
Excuse me now, while I get back to my VHS tape collection worksheet.
Re:Excel (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is the way it should be, but if something goes awry in the billing process and you have multiple charges and adjustments (like hotels, where your $10/hr front desk agent may have a great smile but the aptitude of the lobby plants), sometimes it's nice to mock up an invoice in Excel so you can make it look nice.
Incidentally, I do work in a hotel that handles a lot of business clients. Billing mistakes often aren't noticed until it's time to submit for reimbursement, and a lot of them have very strict rules about what can and cannot appear on their bills. It's not an everyday occurrence, but it happens enough that it's worth keeping a template around. It's not perfect, but after two years of tweaking, it looks pretty dang close.
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Interesting. I've worked for a number of multinationals. I've also worked for hotels on backend systems. When you talk about businesses and rules about what can appear on bills, picture "Middle Eastern country, adult movies in hotel room".
I have never encountered
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No, they don't. Just today I was called in (on my first day off in two weeks) to unravel a GSA's mess where instead of asking for help when she got over her head, she wound up crediting a guest $9,000.00 on their Visa. This is not charging the guest $9,000, this was paying them that amount. Luckily, our cards are batched and I was able to prevent it from settling.
but why, pray tell, should they waste it doing anything for you?
Because their $10/hour depends on it. If they don't wa
Verizon Wireless sucks too (Score:2)
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Worthless dates (Score:2, Interesting)
AT&T is the devil (Score:5, Funny)
The whole experience made me so mad I quit my programming job and enrolled in law school. After my first semester classes, I sued them in small claims court. Of course, they promptly agreed to remove all the charges and fees in exchange for dismissing the lawsuit.
I guess that means I am stubborn, $60k in tuition just to get out of a $600 phone bill.
Re:AT&T is the devil, Aggreed (Score:2)
Re:AT&T is the devil (Score:2)
Regardless, their online billing stuff happily continues sending "Your bill for $0.00 is ready - log in to view" emails each month until you log in and uncheck the email option.
I mean, seriously, would it have been that hard to put an "if (balance > 0)", or "if (account == active)" test before sending?
Re:AT&T is the devil (Score:2)
And I'm willing to bet you got free or discounted phones with that contract, as well. They should just eat the cost of those phones because you decided to move?
Sure, they probably could have said it nicer, but they're correct. You broke the contract, not them.
Re:AT&T is the devil (Score:2)
I was 8 months into a 1 year contract when I moved 4 miles within a major California city. I setup a move order with Speakeasy to move my DSL, but Covad bailed on it. I tried to see if there was any way to get out of the fee (arguing that at least I tried) but wasn't successful. So I disconnected, paid the fee (it is in the contract, you pay if you cancel within the first year of signing up), chalked it up as a moving expense (
Re:AT&T is the devil (Score:2)
Re:AT&T is the devil (Score:2)
More Sprint Billing (Score:5, Funny)
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Hands Down, TimelyBill. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately, I was fired from the callcenter partially because of the way that the billing software worked. The service that they (Sirius) wanted us to push were the annual plans, which the customer could save a bit of money on in the long haul, but the terms dictated that the annual plans had a $75 cancellation fee. I'm sure if there are any Sirius customers that have been around for a while that read this, you probably know all about it. It worked like this:
1.) Customer calls to activate a satellite receiver of some kind, chooses annual plan to save a few bucks. Cost is about $143 bucks, at the time.
2.) Customer uses the service for a few months, and then something happens to the radio, I.E it breaks, it gets stolen, the customer decides to upgrade to a new radio.
3.) Customer calls in to the callcenter to inform us of the change in receiver, so they can get their plan transferred to the new unit.
4.) Agent stops the service on the new unit. Now, this is where the magic happens. If the agent is seasoned, and knows what they are doing (or, just plain gives a shit) they remember to credit the account for the $75 cancellation fee. The old service is terminated by TimelyBill. If the customer used the service for, let's say 6 months, they end up with a credit on their account for un-used service, about $70 bucks.
5.) TimelyBill waits until the customer's billing cycle date (the day of the month that they activated in) to make any adjustments to the account. On that date, the customer's account would be debited for a NEW annual plan $143 bucks, which collided with the credit for $70. The customer's credit card would be charged again, for the diffrence, about $70 bucks.
6.) Customer calls back. "What the fuck are you charging me for?" Asks for a supervisor.
7.) Senior agent spends, on average 30 minutes attempting to explain to the customer what the system did, with usually around a 30% acceptance rate. The other 70% of the time, the customer becomes infuriated, doesn't understand, and usually screams a few cuss words or an insult, and hangs up. I actually had a customer one time ask where we were located. When I told him we lived in New York, he proceeded to tell me "No wonder the terrorists attack you assholes, you all deserve to die. Im happy they keep choosing you."
8.) Customer (in my case) writes a letter to the corporate office, insisting something be done about the terrible supervisor who handled his call.
So, in my case, terrible software can actually cause you, even though you are not directly responsible for it, to loose your job. Especially with a company like Sirius, who at the time that I worked for their callcenter, was a fairly new company, and hadn't really set their policies in stone, so everything was always changing. We went back and forth several times about the billing system, and wether or not the customers should be refunded anything, and even if they should be given back cancellation fees when they cancelled. When in doubt, I guess, fire a peon.
Anyway, moral of the story: Avoid TimelyBill (OmniOSS).
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Seems pretty straightforward to me: Its simple fraud. Instead of transferring the existing annual plan as directed, you start the clock over on a new annual plan.
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I'm sorry, who tracks "how many people 'buy' this story?". Replace 'acceptance' with 'gullibility' and you have a more accurate name for the metric being tracked.
Cable in the early days (Score:2)
Their billing software was totally automated, it didn't send us a single bill for 2 years long. They must have gotten wind of it and hosed their database or so since I started receiving bills afterwards but they were way off. The first one charged me around $180 (monthly was only $45) extra so I called them and they were going to update it. So I got a bill with $45 + 180 = $225 - $180 = $45. Ne
Bell Canada's OneBill system (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is "OneBill" is actually a separate company, which means that in order to send the bills on time they have to get the billing information so far in advance that bill payments, and credits, don't appear until the NEXT bill.
For example, ExpressVu was charging me for a PPV movie even though I had a credit for $50 of free PPV for signing up with them. Problem is, the credit wasn't being applied correctly, so when I received my bill it said there was a $5 charge for PPV. So I called ExpressVu and they credited my account, except that they aren't scheduled to send an update to OneBill for 30 days, so the credit doesn't reflect in my OneBill balance, and consequently if I don't pay the amount it says I owe I will be penalized and charged interest (and, theoretically, risk disconnection of service).
Not only that, but the system is even dumber when it comes to disconnecting features you don't want. I didn't want to pay for the movie channels that I'd had for free since joining (as a promotion), and I was told to give 30 days notice to terminate them. I called 32 days before my trial was up and explained that I didn't want the channels after the trial ended. So far so good. Well, I receieved my bill for the month after the trial (remember, TV service is paid in advance) and there was a charge for the movie channels. Even though my service was disconnected on time. So I called the OneBill people and they fixed my bill. But on the NEXT bill ExpressVu ALSO fixed my bill, so I got credited twice. Later on when speaking to a rep about the PPV problem, they explained that in their system, the "stop collecting the fee for Services" message isn't sent to OneBill until the service is disconnected, but the service isn't disconnected until the day it's supposed to be, except OneBill sent that bill out already, because they get their updates 30 days in advance. Dumbest thing ever. Needless to say, I never got around to calling them telling them of their second mistake in the billing.
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One of my friends' mother was in the hospital with cancer. He had a DSL line installed for her so she could use her laptop to use email, IM, etc. She unfortunately passed away several months later due to complications. He cancelled the DSL account, and then a month later, noticed that there was still a charge from Bell on his credit card. He called bell, and they told him they had no record of his account anymore, and no record of the charges, and he should take it up with hi
Grad school roomie (Score:2)
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Dell (Score:2)
Dell had a problem with multiple remit lines on a check. For those of you who do not know, remit lines are the break out of a check to pay multiple invoices. This way I could pay 300 invoices with one check. Dell tends to credit the whole amount to one lease structure (we have several hundred due to Dell's efficient billing scheme) and cut us a check for the remainder of the check. Following that, they send us a nasty gram about not paying on the other accounts.
This happened to me on two personnal DFS acc
Re:Dell-Side Note (Score:2)
BTW, I have no problem with people who have English as a second or third language. I even don't have problem with non-english speakers. I do have a problem when they are not fluent in English at all and are put on Phone Support duty.
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Little more expensive then Dell, but worth it. Responsive Service and sensible sizing. Dell's sizing tools suck. We have a database system with 170 GB of data and 7 GB a quarter growth and the sizing tool said we needed a two-processor system with 2 GB of RAM and 200 GB worth of storage.
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Dumb DBA is why we used that tool. I bought 2 1.5 TB SAN drawers.
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Credit card payment protector (Score:2)
So after a few months of not using the card, I finally charged $169 to it and promptly paid it off. I got a bill in the mail the next month for $1.69, charged to my card. That was entirely 'payment protector premium. I was a bit steamed, but I paid that off anyway...
Virgin Mobil (Score:2)
Simple steps to avoid problems (Score:5, Informative)
Never. Let. Them. Get. At. Your. Money.
Push not pull: If automatic withdrawal or credit card billing is optional, do not opt in. If you don't want to deal with manual payment, you can setup your own transaction to send them a payment automatically.
Minimize the liability: If they insist on 'pull' transactions, opt for credit card billing, using an expendable credit card with a very low credit limit i.e. less than $500.
Paper billing: You can't accidentaly lose paper to a drive failure or virus/malware. Tangible stuff with big yellow highlighter that says "PAY ME" is easy to see on a kitchen fridge.
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It was mainly because I had trouble remembering when things were coming out, but it has the added goal of no automatic withdrawal SNAFUs like this thread is all about.
Sure, I have to sit down and write a bunch of checks a few times a month, but I need to plan my budget anyway.
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Furthermore, it's not my responsibility to make a creditor's processing of my payment easier. Their processes are their business. It's my responsibility
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Mistakes happen. When they happen, and you get into one of those "We show this bill was not paid" "I paid it" "We don't see it" loops, or "We show it was paid late" "I paid it on time" loops, it is a lot more effective to send them the traditional photocopy of both sides of the cancelled check that PROVES that they received it, on such-and-such date, they deposited it to their bank on such-and-such date, and my bank received it through the clearinghouse on such-and-such date.
Business
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No, but you can accidentally lose it to a fire or a coffee spill or letting it sit unopened beneath a stack of catalogs for a month and a half.
Pick whichever medium works best for you. Myself, I keep my email inbox a lot more organized than my physical desktop, so I choose electronic billing.
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Then take your business elsewhere. I have never allowed someone to pull an automated payment, and not been ripped off. Not once.
Re:Simple steps to avoid problems-- ShopSafe (Score:2)
I mention this in connection to bill payments (pull payments, in your terminology) because you can also create something like an "open purchase order"-- that is, a vendor can withdr
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If I want to dispute a bill for any reason, I am in a better position when they don't already have my money in their pocket.
They have to do that to recover costs from: (Score:2)
One Monday, I was brought a problem to work on. Apparently, this one discount program could not handle duplicate records, and they wanted me to handle the program change to do it. Evan gave me a sample data file to use.
Cool, so I made the change, then after testing the sample file, went back to the manager and asked for a larger test file (the one I was given had 3 records in it, two of which were the dups). Didn't
I have two. (Score:2)
What happens next varies. Usually, they promise to get a refund check out. Once, they told me there's some form they have to fill out to get a refund sent, and promised to do so, or send it to me, whichever was the case. I suspect they've s
Cingular (Score:2)
Water Bills (Score:2)
Maybe the relational weenies got it right. (Score:2)
Most of these problems can be attributed to 2 major causes:
1) Multiple databases used by different departments with no gauruntee of proper synchronization. This violates 'once and only once' and probably ACID, since multiple updates may not go as one transaction.
2) A badly no
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If you insist on killing people over it, you should at least make sure you target people in the appropriate pay grade. Otherwise the problem just gets worse. Killing DBAs is particularly bad form.
AT&T Wireless (Score:2)
$0.04 tax bill (Score:2)
Mortgage... (Score:2)
So, the annual adjustment happened for taxes/ins (escrow), and there was a small increase. And the automatic bill didn't get adjusted, so they debited the old (smaller) amount. $50ish difference. Fine, we called them to fix it, and gave them a payment over the phone. Apparently this happened to a few thousand people who's accounts were charged the day they updated the escrow, or some such. That solved it, right
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Sure, but it would cost him money. The county will probably eventually "regularize" the parcels by merging them. Let them do it on their dime.
30 years ago ... (Score:4, Funny)
Repeated phone calls to the company got him nowhere (which just goes to show we have no need to out-source customer service since we are perfectly capable of providing terrible customer service domestically). Back in those days the billing systems were just getting computerized which was why this mistake was made and also why this man was having a hard time getting his problem solved.
Back in those days the companies actually sent all of their customers a punched card [uiowa.edu] in each monthly statement and the customers were supposed to send this card back with their payment. Well, this man knew all about punched cards since he was in charge of several computers that still used them. So he simply punched in an end-of-file on a blank card and sent that back instead of the card the company sent him.
A couple of weeks later he got a phone call from the company asking him what he did and why he did it. He explained and they said they would correct the problem as long as he promised not to tell anyone else about the trick he had pulled.
I wish they had disconnected me (Score:2)
I have Virgin Mobile now. Their software warns me when it's time to "top up", and I haven't had any problems.
Bank & Cable Stupidity (Score:2, Informative)
Citibank auto-payment (Score:2)
ServerPronto.com (Score:2)
Just a few weeks ago the fraudulent suckers billed another $70 onto my credit card! I haven't done business with them in over 30 months!
I told them it was fraudulent and that I'd fight it, and they replied "We have already notified our merchant bank of these issues" and that they would not refund the money.
Pre-emptive attack, nice.
So far they have my money and I only have the satisfaction of complaining on Slashdot...
I do not r
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Did you try reversing the charges anyhow, despite what they said?
I doubt they can tell the credit card companies in advance that a transaction is legal and just ignore the cardholder's reversal attempt, because theoretically a charge from a company already says that. At least at first glance, this strikes me as part of a fraud attempt to convince not to even try to reverse the charges, which could well end up being completely successful.
Depending on how pissed you are yo
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The burden of proof is on me to prove that I don't owe them the money.
I think it's bad mojo to charge me 2 and a half years later even if I ~did~ owe them the money then. But getting emailed a receipt 2 weeks ago is the first I've heard of it.
There is no way I can prove it, and I don't have the time to anyway.
The most I can or will spend on it is 5 minutes here or 5 minutes there tarnishing their name in cyberspace.
My 5 minutes are up...
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Weirdness from Verizon (Score:2)
These "errors" always seem to make them money... (Score:2)
My co-worker had a bell cellphone with a companion plan. Essentially this means that both he and his wife have phones which share a plan/minutes/etc. As part of the plan, he can call his wife's phone any time and vice-versa.
In theory anyhow
In practice, he would have to call the cellphone company after every bill, wasting at least 1-2 days worth of lunch break, and explain to them how it had decided to bill his phone, or his wife's for a companion-call t
Our old colo (Score:2)
Turns out we were getting billed for 1-2 hours of time for every reboot. When a server di
2 x (1 TV) + 2 books - 1 TV = $0 (Score:2)
Hands down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Suncom (Score:2)
Verizon (Score:2)
About 5 years ago, Verizon had a silly system for handling acount plan changes in the middle of a billing cycle. If you changed your plan in the middle of a billing cycle, the computer would do this:
For example, I once upgraded from a 300 mi
my former ISP... (Score:2)
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On several occasions I've been unable to make purchases because the forms not only made strong, usually US-based, assumptions about the form of an address but also enforced them by validation. I wonder if these companies realize how much money they may be losing.
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And I would just like to take a moment to back up your assertion that it's not simple. Not in the least.
Also, more on the topic at hand (Sprint's crappy billing system), I would like to point out that they buy that system from Amdocs. We've hired several ex-Amdocs people in the la
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Were you a business strategist for Microsoft?
Just because something is difficult, that's no excuse for not getting it right before unleashing it upon the world.
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A decade or so ago, I got an AT&T wireless phone from via my Dad on a special deal that he was qualified for. Then in 2004 I got a Blackberry directly. I signed up for the automatic credit card payment for the blackberry and everything was transferred fine to Cingular when they bought AT&T wireless. So far so good.
I asked Cingular to move my Dad's account to mine. They did. But they didn't debit my credit card. So the bill racked up and they eventually referred that phone to collecti