Telecom Complaints by Business – When CCTS is not in your Corner

This week the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) issued their annual report.  The report showed a 17% drop in the number of telecom complaints by consumers and small businesses.  It also clearly demonstrated that TELUS had markedly fewer complaints than Bell and Rogers brands so congrats to them.  Congrats as well to CCTS and the implementation of the Wireless Code of Conduct which may be one of the reasons for the sizable reduction in complaints.

I have personally issued a complaint through the CCTS process and found it to be very professional, efficient and effective.  Frankly, even the threat of using the CCTS process may result in a successful resolution with your provider.  So as a consumer it certainly is adding value in my view.

The CCTS however is not in the business of helping medium to large sized organizations when they have telecom complaints.  This is not surprising.  Medium to large sized organizations don’t vote and have professional staff that should be able to deal effectively with telecom service providers when they have complaints.  However, my experience suggests that these larger organizations are just as, if not more, frustrated with billing and contracting issues; the two major areas of concern that represented 74% of the complaints identified in the CCTS annual report. The complexity of the billing and contracts makes it nearly impossible for a “One and done” customer issue fix which means a longer cycle to issue resolution.

Why is a dispute so difficult to resolve?

If you have a billing complaint with your provider, first of all, you need to identify it.  You may see that an item has gone up in price or there is a new chargeable item but you don’t know why.  This can be a major problem since you need to understand the billing terminology which is a language all its own, and the person paying the bill may not know what was ordered by another part of the organization or what is in the contract.

Once you understand there is an issue, you need to know the process to have it addressed properly.  You may send the request to the account team and from there it may go to one of a number of groups within the telecom carrier depending upon the service.  It can take weeks or even months to get a response, and that response may be that they need more information or it needs to go to another group or it is above approval levels or their contract interpretation is different.   These issues can lead to further delays measured in months. Even if you are lucky enough to have it approved, you may need to wait for multiple billing cycles to see if come off the bill.  Indeed it is not unusual for a credit due to never actually hit your invoice if you are not diligent in following through to the end.  In the CCTS Annual Report, 4% of complaints related to credits/refund not received!  After many, many months of not seeing a billing credit, the person responsible for issuing the dispute may have forgotten about it. Often in organizations the person who requested the credit may not even be in the same role to see if it is successfully resolved.

So what do you do as an organization to deal with a billing or contract dispute issue?  

You really need to formalize the dispute process so you don’t lose track of billing issues for which you think you deserve a credit.

1. Understand the preferred method of issuing disputes by your account team and the level of detail required to get it successfully reviewed as quickly as possible.  More information is better than less.
2. Set up a tracking mechanism for all disputes.  If you are a large organization, you likely have many items open with your provider so you can make sure these appear on an action log and are discussed in account reviews.  Make sure you know who is responsible as the single point of contact for getting it addressed in the supplier organization.
3. If you are not satisfied with the progress being made on the issue, then make sure you understand your escalation and arbitration rights.
4. Perhaps one of the more effective ways to get the attention of a supplier is to stop paying, or  at a minimum short pay the invoice.  Supplier measurement of overdue receivables can heighten awareness of your issues and may show up on scorecards regarding account  and financial performance.  Account teams don’t like this to happen. Only short pay if you have issued a formal dispute, have notified the account team and you understand your contract.  Make sure they don’t charge you Late Payment Fees or you’ll have another issue to address.
5. If after all of these steps and you are still frustrated you can likely go to arbitration or may consider using a lawyer to deal with the issue.  However these options but can be costly and time consuming.  Many disputes may not be worth the cost and effort.

When to Engage an Expert

If these options have been explored to no avail, a telecom expense consulting firm like TelecomConsult may be able to help.  While telecom expense consulting firms may not typically deal with a single dispute, it may be an opportune time to undertake a broader review of your account to identify other billing and contracting issues.  This may help you identify and recover other retroactive claims and reduce your costs going forward.  In addition, the consultant can advise you as to how to improve your telecom billing oversight to make sure that you can identify and successfully resolve billing issues going forward.

You may have a billing compliance and audit clause in your contract which will permit you to review billing in a formal process.  If so, you could consider a large accounting audit firm.  Having gone this route under the direction of a CFO previously, the costs were exorbitant!  Compliance audit wording usually indicates that the customer is responsible for its own audit fees.  If however you engage a telecom audit consulting firm like TelecomConsult, the engagement can be on a success fee basis or professional services basis by an expert that is already up to speed on current telecom billing and contract issues.