Sep 15 2010
Telecom companies earn profits from “accidental” billing errors.
A study by The Gartner Group shows that 80% of U.S. businesses have errors on their phone bills that are never found or reported. The problem comes from the long-standing system phone companies use to track their services and billing. According to Frank Stoczko, a professional telephone consultant, “a customer may get a feature (such as caller ID) and then cancel it, but the phone company may only cancel it from the service section of the billing system.” In this way, customers are being charged for a service they no longer have. Without actually stating that phone companies make these erroneous charges on purpose, Stoczko does point out that it is in the phone companies’ interest to allow these mistakes to be made and that “[Telecoms] will just let mistakes go and wait for clients to come back and ask for a refund for that money,”…”They will pay them that money, while the other customers’ [overcharges] will just be pocketed.”
The bottom line is, businesses are interested in making money, and although there’s nothing wrong with that, it is the manner in which some businesses conduct themselves that brings up the question of ethical behavior. Many people do not take the time to check their bill, and few realize just how much money they are giving away. I think that phone companies should not go so far as to develop an ignorant attitude towards the accuracy of its customers’ phone bills. From my past experience with inaccurate phone bills, you can go for weeks and months just trying to get to the right person you they need to talk to, because one person sends you to another person, who sends you to another person. Despite the fact that everyone makes mistakes from time to time, these phone companies should really take the time to make sure that the individual charges on a customer’s bills are correct and that there are no reckless overcharges.
http://www.naturalnews.com/015625_phone_bill_telecommunications.html