I Don’t Get it

Lets roll the clock back 20 years. Its 1988. Cell phone has only been in existence a year or so. But plain ole POTS as still rocking and Avante Garde was ISDN. We know how that all worked out. But that is not the question, so relax. The question is do you trust your providers billing?

Let’s take this guy. He got this bill –

Heart attack city if I had received it. Sprint’s error. In fact a whole bunch of error across multiple bills. But back to history. In the POTS days, getting a bad bill was a rarity. Not perfect of course, but usually so rare that when a big mistake came it hit the local paper as an ‘event’. The regional manager of the telco gets in contact with the customer and usually has it resolved post haste. Bad publicity you know, clean it up was the motto. Fact it was a matter of pride that the Telcos could be so accurate.

Now? In many cases there appears to be a running level of about 5% of the bills being error. I really have to wonder why. In many cases the billing should be easier. Give a listen. In the POTS world there are three entities involved — originator, transporter, receiver. All three get their piece of the call. Now lets take a cell call. Very similar settlement process only it can occur internetwork between two different providers in the same LATA by the simple fact that the customer moved cell to cell. Finally lets take Uverse or FIOS. Other than pay per views the entire pricing is known before hand.

I can’t imagine that a all encompassing bill is that difficult to assemble. The POTS component is the same technology. The broadband bill is pretty much fixed pricing. Nor should the wireless side be that hard. Or at least it would appear that way. So what’s the problem? Bad billing is almost so common as to be a non event in the press.

Kudos to Consumerist. Full billing story here.