If you use TRANSACT for you interwebs... listen up!

[starrylizard]

CHECK YOUR BILL for AUGUST!
They have "accidentally" because of a "glitch" charged everyone TRIPLE!


Phone call my mother had today.

Mum: Hi, I'm calling to check on a bill that seems very unusual and I'd like you to check it for me. It's for the month of August and we have been charged for too many downloads in peak period. It's odd since (1) only one person of the three of us, my daughter, was home that month, so you would think our bill would go down not up, (2) we check the stats before downloading in peak time to make sure we have the download time available and (3) we've never gone over our download limit before and this is really over. As I said, it's three times what we usually pay.

Call center guy: Well you are charged 10c per MB over the peak hour limit and you used X amount of downloads, it's all there on your bill. Since you were away, how do you know how much your daughter downloaded. *snide*

M: Yes, but as I said before, it is very strange and I trust my daughter, she's always very careful. Could you please check in case there has been an error?

CCG: *now with attitude* I just did. The bill is correct.

M: Well, my daughter says for each month we can track the downloads on line, but only during the current month. I assume, however, that you have records, so would you please just pull the download details for that month and email them to me? If it is our fault, at least we might be able to see what has happened and avoid it happening again.

CCG: Fine, please hold. *tone of voice = wasting our time*

*Mum sits on hold for a lifetime*

CCG: *Very sheepish* Seems it is our fault. We apologise.

M: Apology accepted. You can credit the credit card the money was taken from and please do explain to me how it was your fault.

CCG: Um, apparently there was a glitch in the system on August the 1st and every customer's usage was tripled. We fixed it in the system though.

M: Didn't fix it in the billing system though, huh?

CCG: No, seems not.

M: Well I'll look forward to that money being credited to my account. Thank you for your help.

*hangs up*

So, yeah. If you're using TRANSACT, check your August bill.

Comments

[lark_ascends]

*shakes head* At least it's sorted now.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Yeah! *eyeroll*

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like he thought you were a teenager.

What's the bet that they're going to rely on the individual customer questioning it, and not just fixing up the billing themselves.

[smuffster.livejournal.com]

And how many people would actually catch that kind of thing anyway? So many of us use Direct Debit nowadays and don't even get paper bills. If you don't scrutinise your bank statements each month you might never pick the mistake up.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Exactly. TRANSACT works on direct debit. So, if you didn't check the bill, you'd never notice. And they seem to be working on that theory too.

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

One more reason why I wouldn't let Bigpond direct debit. I usually pay in person, but since they're now charging for that, I'm going to bpay over the phone. No way in hell are they going to be able to go into my bank account.

[smuffster.livejournal.com]

Totally. Wouldn't trust Telstra at all. We direct debit our internet, but our plan is with iinet and we only get speed limited if we go over, not charged extra. But I'm the same with all my utilities. I want to look at the bill before I pay anything. Our old house we got charged for electricity when we had tenants living there. And the tenants got charged too.

[krazykitkat.livejournal.com]

We're speed limited too. But in the last year they've twice stuffed up when we paid over the counter (entering in the computer that we paid by visa instead of eftpos, so we got charged the credit card processing fee), which is only a matter of 45 cents, but it's the principle of the matter. So they can't get a simple transaction right.

Only one who direct debits is my private health insurance. No problems with them.

My brother has no choice but to have his electricity/gas direct debited because of where he lives. They stuffed up and debited twice.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

It's obvious that's what they're doing. Not only that, but unless mum had pushed the issue they would have fobbed her off saying it was our fault and someone had used too much net time. Grrr!

[meg-tdj.livejournal.com]

That's...quite a glitch.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. We're on one of the cheaper plans too. If you were on a $100 plan or something, triple your bill would sure as heck be noticeable. They're crooks! They're obviously gonna sit back and see who fights them on it and make some extra cash.