I work for a small company that handles outsourced customer support for a myriad of companies. The project I am assigned to is customer care for a certain telecommunications corporation.
I have known this corporation has been overbilling its customers in a very sneaky way since June. I have brought this billing ‘error’ to the proper department(s) on many occasions since June but this ‘error’ still occurs. The billing software has undergone two version upgrades as well.
Who should I turn to now ? Should I discreetly contact customers being overbilled so that they can persue this or should I just start gathering all the evidence I can and go to the Attorney General myself? I’ve always wanted to stick it to ‘the man’ but I want to do it right and i want it to hurt.
Depends upon which “Big Bad Telecom” you’re working for. Sprint PCS has had some questionable things going on here recently (the board just forced out two top executives because the board was uncomfortable with the “tax shelters” the two had come up with), so if you’re handling things for them, you might want to go ahead and alert the proper authorities.
The ‘‘Big Bad Telecom’’ I’m working for is actually DEFRAUDING the customers. There is no two ways about it. The most clear cut example is as follows:
Let’s say two phones on account are on a shared minute plan. Each phone gets 150 minutes per month. If one phone used 100 minutes and the other used 200 minutes, then there shouldnt be any extra charges according to the conditions of the rate plan. What happens, however, is the phone that uses the 200 minutes gets the overage charge for going 50 minutes over
its 150 minutes. this overage is then credited to the total amount.
Here’s the sneaky part: the customer is charged overage + tax
but is only credited back overage. The tax on cell phones is 11-19% depending on the location of the customer. Using this tricky and confusing billing system, it is not uncommon for this telephone company to get an extra 100-300 dollars PER MONTH on the major business accounts and about 10-75 dollars PER MONTH from the smaller and mid-size accounts.
As I stated before, the billing department has been fully aware of this ‘error’ since June. The reason they’ve been getting away with this is they only ‘fix’ the accounts that are wise to this ‘error.’ Only a handfull of employees even catch on to this.
And even worse, the few that do see this even really give a damn.
Call the Feds, AG and whomever else has jurisdiction over this. Also alert the local consumer advocate reporters. Telling the customers might put your job at risk, so use your own discretion. You might also want to check out how easy it is to hack another employee’s password, since that could be an easy way to commit identity theft and will only add to the Feds, etc., interest in handling the matter. (Used to work for a telecom company and it was really easy to gain another employee’s password! Didn’t rat 'em out, though I should have.)
This company is so shady. I’ve continually gotten calls where the customer has an overage of , say 100 dollars and claims to not have made the calls. In my head I’m thinking ‘sure pal, then why are the calls in the call log?’
Well, last week I had one of those calls. I asked the customer if she saw any calls on the bill that she didn’t make and she quoted me a number off of one of the pages. She said she was at work and the phone was turned off and on her person. I recognized the NPA_NXX (area code_exchange) as one of ours so I pulled up the other person’s bill for shits and giggles. There were some major discrepancies between the two bills that corroborated her story. We are given the impression the call detail is infallible because it is the direct data from the main switches. Those that challenge this are assumed to be wrong and are having to pay in some cases hundreds of dollars.I’ve only seen this one example so far and i’m on vacation right now. When I get back, I’m going in depth and I’m going to record as many examples as possible. It makes me so angry that a corporation could do such a thing. I believe that doing unsavory and unethical things is bad for my soul, especially if it is ‘just part of my job.’ I’d quit but that would mean I’d likely live on the street because cash flow in Oregon isn’t as abundant as it should be.