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From: stank@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (Stan Krieger)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Billing and Answer Supervision
Message-ID: <5197@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 90 14:34:07 GMT
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Organization: Summit NJ
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 175, Message 5 of 9

> > the monthly phone bill listed *only* the number of message units consumed
> > that month, and the corresponding total amount to pay; there was no
> > itemization of calls. 

> 	And how is that any different from the typical electric,
> water, or natural gas bill?  In a typical house, each of these items
> is metered and once a month you get a bill saying "according to our
> meter, you used XXX kWH of electricity, and you own us $YYY".
 
> 	Why is it that people are perfectly happy to get non-itemized
> bills from other utilities but not from the phone company?

There are simple answers to this question.  The first is that, unlike
the gas or electric utilties, there are cases where the phone company
will refund the charges after usage (i.e., wrong numbers) or not
charge at all for usage (i.e., no answer or busy).  Thus, the only way
to determine if, in fact, these charges were not posted is to have a
fully itemized list.  The water company doesn't refund charges due to
a non-seating of the toilet valve, nor does the electric company when
you leave the refrigerator door open.

The second is that immediate access to billing information for water,
electricity, and gas is available.  If you, for example, want to see
how many KWH the electric company is billing you for your
airconditioner, just take meter readings two hours before, one hour
before, when you turn the A/C on, and one and two hours after.  The
difference in averages is mostly the A/C usage.  The bottom line is
that we are not taking the water, electric, etc. company's word for it
when we get their bill, as we can independently audit all the
information that they're basing their bill on, but we are taking the
phone company's word for it.

As an aside, about 22 years ago, NY Telephone got a tariff to provide
detailed billing for message unit calls (there is no unlimited local
service in New York City; message unit calls, from 1 to 6 for the
initial period with 1 message unit calls being untimed, cover Nassau
County (Long Island), all of New York City, and the southern part of
Westchester County, including Yonkers, Rye, and White Plains).  Where
NY Tel really socked it to anyone who wanted the service was that the
minimum for a call would be 2 message units.  Now, that might have
been okay, but all calls billed as 2 message units, including those to
one message unit areas, would be timed (1 message unit every 3 minutes
after the first 5 minutes).  Needless to say, this service was not
very popular.


Stan Krieger Summit, NJ
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