Knowing about Billing Issues

No billing system in the world is infallible. A billing system isn’t just the computer that rates your calls and prints up your invoice. If you want to account for every variable, you have to include every switch in your carrier’s network that logs in calls and send them to be billed, as well as all the switches of the companies your carrier contracts with around the world that do the same thing. That’s not so easy. With that said, here are some specific annoyances you should prepare for that won’t be very visible in the summary section of your invoices.

Keeping an eye out for long-duration calls

Once in every ten million calls or so, a call doesn’t hang up just right. You called a client and spoke to her for ten minutes, but the switch that recorded the duration of your call never realized that you hung up. The industry refers to calls that don’t complete properly as hung calls. They are generally very easy to identify because they last, not hundreds, but actually thousands of minutes.

 Remember  Some legitimate calls can last 400 or 500 minutes, but any long-duration call needs to be investigated internally before you dispute it with your carrier. Here are some legitimately long calls:

• The line may be used to transmit data for days on end with a dialup modem.

• You may have a problem with your automated phone system or calling card platform that actually keeps calls open for thousands of minutes. Unfortunately, that’s not a hung call — it’s your responsibility to both pay for the call and fix the problem with your phone system.

 Tip  The easiest way to tell a real, carrier hung call from a call that was legitimately open for 1,000 minute or more is to check how many suspiciously long calls you’re billed for in a six-month period. If you have two hung calls in the same month, the problem is probably with your phone system, or the phone system of whomever you are calling. It is statistically improbable that the one-in-ten-million event will occur to you twice in the same month. You need have your hardware vendor investigate your long-call phenomenon.

 Warning!  If you notice long-duration calls on your phone bill to people you don’t know, this is a red flag that you may have fraud on your phone line. If you have a very basic phone system, or none at all, someone may be tapping into your line directly. If you have a dedicated circuit and a phone system with every feature known to man, your whole system may be compromised. If this is a concern for you, please check out the fraud section in Chapter 2.

Making note of duplicate calls

Duplicate calls are exactly what they sound like they are. The exact same call is billed to your business twice. It takes a bit of skill to find out whether a duplicate call is a legitimate charge or not, because most carriers have a checking system to route out duplicate calls before they make it onto your invoice. In order to have legitimate duplicate calls you must have two or more calls that share exact matches on all the following:

• Date of call

• Start time of call

• Phone number originating the call

• Phone number called

• Duration of call

 Remember  Just because you have two calls to the same number with the same start time does not guarantee that you have duplicate calls, especially if both calls are less than a minute in duration. Start times on calls rarely show the seconds, so it’s technically possible to make two calls of eight seconds in length to the same phone number within the same minute.

The calls look like duplicates, but really, your employee got the voicemail of the person he intended to call, hung up, and absently pressed the redial button when he meant to press another button on his phone. Realizing his mistake, he hung up again when he received the voicemail a second time. Presto! You have two legitimate calls in the same minute.

 Tip  Genuine duplicates usually appear in bulk. You generally won’t see only one call affected, but an entire section of calls. Duplicates usually occur within a date range or even within a few hours of the day, and you may see as many as 50 percent of the calls duplicated. You can easily identify duplicates because calls of all lengths are affected. The moment you look at your bill and see two calls that started at the same time, and each lasted an unusual length of time (35.4 minutes, for instance), you know you have probably found a legitimate problem. You should issue a dispute with your carrier.

Handling overlapping calls

Overlapping calls are like duplicate calls in the fact that they can be legitimate. If you notice that one of your phone numbers has a call that started at 12:10 p.m. and lasted five minutes, and the same phone number made another call at 12:11 p.m. that lasted three minutes, you could have a problem.

 Remember  Your carrier will probably assert that you have three-way calling and that the person who made both calls simply made a conference call. If that is true, please pay your invoice and chalk up another important learning experience. If your employees generally don’t use conference calling, you need to issue a dispute and have the carrier look into the calls a little deeper.

 Warning!  Almost every phone in America has the ability to make a three-way conference call. If you ever hang up one call and immediately dial out again, you may hear a special dial tone that is broken at the beginning called a stutter dial tone. This is your local carrier alerting you to the fact that the next call you make can be linked up to the last call you just finished. If you see over-lapping calls on your invoice and they are legitimate, remember the sound of the stutter dial tone. If you hear it, hang up and wait three seconds before you dial again. After a few seconds, you hear the normal dial tone and you have no chance for overlapping calls.

Watching for connect signal issues (especially on international calls)

A connect signal is a message sent through your carrier’s network when your call is answered. A live person doesn’t have to pick up the phone for the call to be answered; any answering machine or voicemail system will do. The moment the receiving phone accepts the call, the connect signal is sent, and when the signal is received by the network, your carrier begins tracking the duration of your call so that you can be charged for it. Some carriers don’t begin billing when the connect signal is sent through the network, but instead begin the clock as soon as you dial into the network. On a dedicated call, you can begin to incur per-minute charges even if no one answers the call. If your carrier seems to be charging your business for calls the instant you enter into its network, you need to speak to your carrier and see whether you can change your platform or move to a part of the network that bills your business only at time of connection.

Incorrectly starting the duration clock on a call is more common on international calls where your carrier has little leverage to correct or regulate when the clock begins billing. Unfortunately, if your carrier cannot force the case with whatever carrier it uses to make international calls, you have two chances of receiving a credit for the 30 seconds extra: slim and none. This situation is only visible when you receive your phone bill a month after frantically trying to reach someone overseas whose phone system is down (maybe there was a big storm or some other natural disaster that affected phone systems). If you’re billed for the 15 calls you made for 3 days when the phone lines were down in that country, you know that the phone company has been skimming a little off the top.

Facing facts about old calls

Finding calls on your phone bill from a few days prior to your billing period is pretty common. In fact, this is a normal occurrence, and usually you’re just charged for the calls once. You can check your previous invoice and look for the specific calls to be sure, however. If the exact calls also appear on your previous invoice, dispute the charges.

Understanding why cross talk causes strange billing

Cross talk is the industry term for that weird moment when you’re on a phone call and suddenly hear another conversation on the line. Frequently, the other people cannot hear you, even though you can hear them. This is the only way you can legitimately have someone else’s phone calls on your invoice without fraud being the cause. Cross talk from your carrier is a result of the insulation around the wires on your phone line becoming thin, or missing completely, and touching the bare copper wires of another phone line. Along with hearing the conversations of others, your phone may also ring even though no one is calling you.

What is essentially happening is you are (or the other person is) receiving the dial tone transmitted for the other person’s phone line when you make an outbound call. The dial tone you hear is attributed to a specific phone number within your local carrier, so by accessing someone else’s dial tone, the local carrier bills the call to the other phone number. If the cross talk gives someone else access to your phone line, your long-distance carrier won’t be able to prove it. Your carrier sees this call as a normal, legitimate call from your phone. Take care of this problem immediately with your carrier because it skews everything in the billing world. Cross talk is very rare and your carrier will not give you a credit for the calls unless you can reference a trouble ticket you opened with their repair department for the problem.

 Technical Stuff  Every evening at a predetermined time, every routing computer in every carrier network sends data for completed calls in the past 24 hours to a billing computer. Domestically, this happens with monotonous regularity. If you have calls that go to the Caribbean, Guam, or to another international destination, another day or two may pass before the record of your call is finally sent to the billing center. This delay in relaying the call detail is what causes old calls from up to seven days before your billing cycle to appear on your invoice.

 Remember  According to U.S. federal law, your carrier can’t legally invoice you for calls older than 90 days. If your carrier forgets to invoice you for calls on a new circuit or toll-free number that you have owned for 6 months, the carrier can only legally back-bill you for 90 days. Even if you receive an invoice with six months of old calls on it that you have never seen before, you only have to pay for the last three months. This three-month shelf life is known in the industry, but because the carrier has nothing to lose by asking you to pay for all the back traffic, the billing department will do what it can to get as much money from you as it can.