Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The foul scourge of partial month charges...

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • The foul scourge of partial month charges...

    I get so many calls on this I can't list them all, but I'll single out this one particular lady who called in yesterday about (what else?) her bill.

    DL (dumb lady): "Why is my bill so high?"

    Me: "well let's see...ah! You went over your minutes quite a bit, you were billed for 200 minutes overage."

    DL: "but I'm supposed to have 500 minutes"

    So I see on the bill she was given credit for 376 plan minutes, which would seem unusual on a 500 minute plan, BUT: She'd changed plans mid cycle, on the 21st of the month, so when that happens, we divide the plan minutes by 30 to get the minutes per day and she would have received 21 days worth of mintues on her ORIGINAL plan and 9 days worth of minutes on her NEW plan, in this case, 176 minutes on the new plan. So I explain all this.

    DL: "The lady told me that on the 21st I'd be on a 500 minute plan!"

    Me: "That's true, the plan did come into effect on that date but you didn't get 500 minutes from then to the end of the month, only 176."

    DL: "But WHY???? You're screwing me out of minutes! I'm supposed to have 500!"


    Me: "Yes ma'am, but the plan is 500 minutes for the whole MONTH, not 8 days."

    Lather, rinse, repeat at least EIGHT times. I offered her a credit for part of the overage charges (not something I usually do, but she was really forcing the call to drag on) but nope that wasn't good enough, she bitched at me again about she's being screwed and hung up.

    You know I might've tried explaining to her that if we were going to give her 500 minutes for 8 days, then her plan should be about 1750 minutes a month by that math, but then she'd just scream that we're screwing her out of MORE minutes, no doubt.

    This is a simple concept, it also comes into play money wise, for example if you are on a $100 plan half of the month and a $50 plan the second half, your total bill for the month is $75 (half of 100 plus half of 50).

    WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY GET IT??? It's the logical way to do it, you pay for the service the way it's set up on any given date. If you change the service, your charges change on the same date the service does.

  • #2
    This is why, I think, T-mobile handled this one of two ways. Either your plan didn't take effect until the NEXT billing cycle, or the plan was backdated to be retroactively effective THIS billing cycle. This was particularly effective if someone went way over their minutes one month. Say they had 500 minutes, but used somewhere around 800. They just had to call up, and switch to a plan with more minutes (Say something with 1000) and we'd backdate it to the start of the month, wiping out the overage charges. It was usually way cheaper, and actually one of the cooler things we could do for customers.

    Of course, you'd always get the twits who would say 'Oh, I can't afford that', refusing to pay an extra $10 per month... while they regularly paid $50 a month in overage charges. I think there's a particular brand of insane that goes along with cell phone sucky customers.
    Check out my webcomic!

    Comment


    • #3
      Quoth Polenicus View Post
      Of course, you'd always get the twits who would say 'Oh, I can't afford that', refusing to pay an extra $10 per month... while they regularly paid $50 a month in overage charges. I think there's a particular brand of insane that goes along with cell phone sucky customers.
      It's the math.

      SCs can only do math that involved them getting money back or paying less than the actual cost of something.

      If it means that they'd save money over the long-term, or save money by buying a different configuration of what they want at the normal price, they can't figure it out.

      ^-.-^
      Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

      Comment


      • #4
        Quoth Andara Bledin View Post
        It's the math.

        SCs can only do math that involved them getting money back or paying less than the actual cost of something.

        If it means that they'd save money over the long-term, or save money by buying a different configuration of what they want at the normal price, they can't figure it out.

        ^-.-^
        Like Hilary Duff says, "If you can't do the math, then get out of the equation."
        Quote from Hilary Duff's "Can't Do the Math" from her Metamorphasis CD.
        "But I don't want to be among mad people."
        You can't help that. We're all mad here. Every fucking one of us.

        Comment


        • #5
          Yep pro-rating is a PITA. I used to do billing for auto insurance, and oh what fun we had trying to explain to people how we came up with the amounts we credited when they cancelled. ESPECIALLY, if they cancelled for non-pay and still owed money even though they didn't have coverage anymore. We didn't even go as low as monthly, it was your total premium divided by 365. Then any changed you made divided by how many days in a year they were in effect. GAHHHH!!
          The only words you said that I understood were "His", "Phone" and "Ya'll". The other 2 paragraphs worth was about as intelligible as a drunken Teletubby barkin' come on's at a Hooter's waitress.

          Comment


          • #6
            SCs throw logic out the window the first chance they get. Makes it easier for them to be sucktacular, I guess.
            Unseen but seeing
            oh dear, now they're masquerading as sane-KiaKat
            There isn't enough interpretive dance in the workplace these days-Irv
            3rd shift needs love, too
            RIP, mo bhrionglóid

            Comment

            Working...
            X