Consumers' monthly statements are riddled with errors, hidden fees, and even fabricated charges, experts say. Companies are increasingly disguising extra costs - tacked on to the bottom of the invoice - in terminology as cryptic as Sanskrit.

. . .

Sometimes, as companies grow, computer-based billing systems that may be 10 years old have trouble keeping up with demand. [Y2K ::::-§]

Northern Light

-- spider (spider@web.com), September 05, 2001

Answers

Minutes that appear late on bills vex cellphone users

As wireless customers buy monthly plans that give them a set number of minutes, some are unknowingly busting through their caps. That's because the calls may not show up on bills until months later -- putting even careful callers over their limits.

Billing glitches and delays are to blame, carriers say.

. . .

Billing glitches. They can apply minutes to the wrong month. Carriers say they are rare, and the Federal Communications Commission lacks recent comprehensive statistics on wireless complaints. But consumer Web sites are filled with customer complaints.

USA Today

-- spider (spider@web.com), September 05, 2001.

Yo gang, I can believe this easily.

I used to write billing software for telco's - and simple bills become easily the most complex calculations you've ever seen, short of nuclear physics or NASA. When creating test cases, we'd argue for hours about what the correct results should be. The FCC is trying to get bills simplified and easy to read - and I say "Good Luck" to them. (http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/nrcc9025 .html) The basic problem is that the customer's total bill will change, depending on the sequence in which the calculations are done. Unfortunately, each group always wants their calculation done in the order most beneficial to them - naturally.

Meanwhile, the source that does the calculations grows older and older, and fewer and fewer developers have any idea how it works, and are terrified of changing it. It is the "Inverted Pyramid" problem - in which a large number of accretions have been added on top of a small, complex base of code. In reality, the only way to actually solve the problem is to create a new, properly engineered application to entirely replace the problem source. Unfortunately, that kind of fix is unlikely to ever happen because 1) It would take more than one fiscal year to do. Hence, it won't be producing a profit in time for most companys' budget cycles - typically they require a return on investment in less than a year. 2) It is against the interests of the people best able to do it, to actually do this project. After all, if the developers who know the problem best, create a new, replacement tool that is easily maintained, then their jobs are at risk.

Sorry gang, this kind of headache will be with us for a while....

Rich

-- Rich Marsh (marshr@airmail.net), September 05, 2001.

I don't think this is all errors, I've been getting over billed for 8 months by my ISP. for double useage. If you catch it they'll fix it on the nexxt month billing thats a 30 day floats they are making big bucks. Just kep checking all your bills, phone companies are doing the same thing.

-- awdragon (awdragon@mindspring.com), September 05, 2001.

That's a good point: when errors occur, ask yourself, are they in YOUR favor or in the BANK'S (PHONE COMPANY, whatever) favor? Sometimes it seems a tossup, but sometimes the pattern is interesting.

As one example, in the past 18 months or so since a new bank took over my house mortgage, I've experienced a range of (mostly irritating but not too major) errors -- and every single one has had the effect of slightly increasing the bank's income. (on the other hand, the previous mortgage holder made no errors that I can recall in 4+ years) Makes you say, hmmm.

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), September 06, 2001.

Makes me say Y2K!

There have been a record number of billing errors
this last year and a half. Many dozens of companies
have been reporting accounting difficulties. SEC is
investigating a record amount of accounting errors.
PG&E has had billing problems ever since they updated
their systems for Y2K. University of Chicago Hospital
is in dire financial straights because of billing
problems after Y2K updates.

Yes, there is corruption and greed involved but the
level of accounting and billing errors suggest another
explanation.

-- spider (spider@web.com), September 06, 2001.

I tend to agree, spider. But it's hard to figure out what's really going on!

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), September 06, 2001.