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From: hrs1@cbnewsi.att.com
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Overbilled by Six Orders of Magnitude
Message-ID: <12755@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 90 01:10:35 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 691, Message 8 of 12


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