Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: gutierrez@noc.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Michael Gutierrez) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Overbilled by Six Orders of Magnitude Message-ID: <12756@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 29 Sep 90 02:00:24 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Robert Michael Gutierrez Organization: NASA Science Internet - Network Operations Center Lines: 59 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 691, Message 9 of 12 optilink!cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) writes: |> jjohnson@hpljaj.hpl.hp.com (Jeff Johnson) writes: |> > Chicago (AP) -- Cori Ward's mother got a little defensive when she |> > received a phone bill for three weeks' service -- $8.7 million. [etc] |> 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? No. Billing centers only have one purpose in life, to bill as fast as they can, and their thinking is that even a simple subroutine to check for excessive zeros will slow then down. The same subroutine would also bring the accuracy statistics down, something they don't like at all. It's better if the mistake was discovered by the customer, then that inaccurate billing is not added to the company's accuracy stats. |> > Ward said she had a hard time explaining the mistake to the phone |> > company. |> Whoever Ward talked to in customer service, then, needs replacement |> with a non-robodroid. If I were in customer service, and someone |> called up with a $8x10^6 phone bill for three weeks of residential |> service, this would be immediate evidence of serious billing SNAFUs -- |> I wouldn't need an explanation at all. This I agree on. MCI had problems with so-called "stuck clocks," or billed calls that were extremely excessive (like 600 - 2000 minutes). These were calls to end offices (CO's) that didn't return supervision, and the MCI switch had to depend on voice patterns on the line to determine when to start supervision. Unfortunately, they sometimes didn't stop supervision when the call stopped, and it would continue to clock the call until billing-dump time on the switch, when it routined the trunk to see it's usage, and discovered that it was not in use, and "end" that call-record. The switch merrily dumped that call onto the mag tape, and the billing center merrily billed it on the customers bill. Well, MCI had a standing policy to take the excessive charge off the bill, *without question*. Since it was impossible to determine how long the customer talked for (unless they volunteered), the call was written off. Everybody in customer service knew this. The only thing that was needed was a copy of the bill which the call appeared on (this being before MCI had on-line call detail). If somebody called me at MCI with an $8.7 mil. bill on a *residental* account, I would *NOT* be arguing with them ... I'd instead give them my direct address at MCI, and save the bill as a souvenier instead after the mess was straightned out. Robert Michael Gutierrez Office of Space Science and Applications, NASA Science Internet - Network Operations Center. Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.