Accurate Billing is a Value-Added Service

Small ISPs can provide one thing the big companies cannot: a reliable and comprehensible billing system.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [November 3, 2003]

When Verizon Wireless neglected to give David Pogue his 100 "bonus" minutes of air time, the company pissed off the wrong customer. The technology columnist of The New York Times penned a personal rant in his free (but subscription only) e-mail newsletter on Thursday, complaining of the error.

Pogue calls it "a new American business model: passive-aggressive robbery." In this new system, you consistently bill customers for services they did not order and fail to provide discounts they deserve. Sound familiar? If it's happening to you, it's also happening to your customers.

And you may be able to benefit from it.

If you've got a stable, reliable billing system, and you carefully explain (up front) the extra fees your users can incur for being bandwidth hogs, you have something the big companies lack. You may be able to gain word of mouth referrals (which, word of mouth says, produce the lowest churn) by not engaging in passive-aggressive robbery.

It's not much to ask, but certain players in the industry are bringing customer expectations to a new low.

Pogue says the practice is common. He writes, "I'd chalk this up as an isolated oddity—but the thing is, this was the third or fourth time it's come up this year. For example, only a month earlier, the same story had played out with our MCI home long-distance service."

He says that every individual household needs to go over its bills like a professional accountant or CFO, and that even when you catch a company, there's no satisfaction, because you've borne the costs. You've had to take the time to correct their error.

In the long term, these companies will pay for the billing errors. They will be sued and fined. For example, Ohio's attorney general is suing AOL for continuing to charge customers after they cancelled their subscription.

The FCC's website has a whole page devoted to slamming and the agency has an enforcement team devoted to preventing telecommunications businesses from charging for services not requested. But the FCC does not levy similar penalties for billing errors.

One of the few activist organizations pursuing the issue is Bruce Kushnick's TeleTruth which says it has inspired two class action lawsuits against Verizon for erroneous bills. As more lawsuits, from private companies and from government entities, hit the companies that are actively billing in error, customers will look for a company they can trust. That company should be you.

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