
I Fought Comcast and Almost Won - nattaylor
http://www.nattaylor.com/blog/2014/01/i-fought-comcast-and-almost-won/
======
pudquick
Puget Sound Energy has a similar problem.

They switched to a new (outsourced) billing system recently that was supposed
to "dramatically improve" billing statements.

At our house, we had two accounts for PSE - one for the house power and a
separate account number for a streetlight-like fixture on our property. The
reason for the two account numbers was that they were billed differently:
house power as normal, streetlight at a fixed rate paid once every other
month.

To add to the complexity, we were enrolled in an estimated payments plan. Our
costs stayed they same, month to month, with adjustments twice a year to
update our average payment amount up/down.

Before the new billing system, we received bills once a month - with the
amount fluctuating every other month by the cost of the outdoor light.

Under the new system, we had the "estimated payments" check marked, the reps
could see it in the system, they claimed we were enrolled - but our bills that
arrived acted as though we weren't in that payment plan.

They couldn't explain it. We were told "Oh, well, it's probably due to the
cutover to the new system. Next month's bill should be normal." But it wasn't.

"Oh, it's probably just hiccups - I just changed something here so next month
will work for you." Nope.

"It shows you're enrolled. Maybe it's in your spam email?" We get the emails
fine. It's the wrong damned payment plan.

Our friends and family didn't have these problems. I figured it was because
their idiotic new system couldn't handle monthly estimates plus a bimonthly
secondary meter.

So we said "to heck with this" and dropped the outdoor light (installed our
own floodlights instead).

MAGICALLY estimated payment bills started working for our account.

Funny that.

Kudos on going farther the Hard Way.

~~~
chris_wot
Why didn't you ask to speak to a manager?

~~~
pudquick
Oh we did. Several.

The one who said "Oh, it's probably just hiccups - I just changed something
here so next month will work for you." was one of them. Pretty sure he just
"turned it off and on again", praying the problem would go away or that I'd
give up.

And in a way - I did. At a loss to them. What I pay in additional metered
power for the floodlights is peanuts compared to what we were being charged
every other month.

Honestly I couldn't be happier with the final result.

But that's also why I complimented the author of the original content who
stuck to it long enough to (possibly) get the broken system fixed.

------
x0054
If they are not billing you, stop paying them! Go talk to a federal debt
settlement attorney, this will make a grate class action, and you can get paid
good money for being a class rap. I am not an expert in this area, but I am
pretty sure there is a case here for damages if they try to collect money from
you without presenting you with a bill first.

~~~
sneak
[http://i.imgur.com/nNAyxbA.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/nNAyxbA.jpg)

~~~
MichaelApproved
Hi Sneak. You've been on Hacker News for well over a 1,000 days and seem to be
a value added member of the community. I'm sure you already know this but
image responses are not accepted here like they are on reddit. Not that
there's anything wrong with reddit, I spend a lot of time there too and love
the site but the two communities are different.

Please keep image responses on reddit and off Hacker News.

~~~
sneak
I accept them, and the prominent HNer sitting at the table with me laughed at
it and upvoted it. If pg or our other overlords have any issue with pun-based
humor, they have yet to codify them in the rules.

There _is_ , however, a rule against complaining about HN turning into Reddit.
The official HN guidelines read as follows:

 _" If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments
saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"_

My per-comment average is nearly twice yours. Please pick on someone else.

I'm sorry you don't like my comment. I thought it was grate.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Thanks for the followup. That's a good point about it not being in the
guidelines while referring to reddit actually is. I was referring to something
I thought was in the rules about comments adding to the conversation but I
don't see it there now.

I still don't think links fit the style of this site but in the future I'll
probably just downvote and let the numbers speak for themselves.

------
jser
It's likely much more than two databases. Most MSOs outsource billing and
customer service to companies like Convergent. It's a mess of legacy regions
and products with different vendors involved. Try troubleshooting phone number
porting -- that goes through Accenture.

You can take one of my bills -- I receive two Ecobills and a paper bill!

~~~
skorgu
They have many more than two databases. Different geographical units use
entirely separate billing systems to reduce vendor lock-in.

~~~
nattaylor
This is definitely true. My initial intent was to oversimplify the problem and
explain to friends, not the HackerNews audience.

------
vitd
Verizon appears to have some similar problem. I never even signed up for
electronic billing. They just decided to stop sending paper, and I got bills
via email for 2 or 3 months, then they stopped and I didn't notice until they
called me to ask if I was going to pay my bill! Eventually, I just decided to
have my computer remind me to pay the bill instead of relying on them to
remind me. It's such nonsense.

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legacy2013
I've noticed this issue since I switched to comcast last year. I figured it
was a bug that would get fixed soon. I actually didn't pay my bill the first
month because I never received anything saying I needed to pay until I
received a reminder email about my account balance. I've just set up auto pay
and track the bill through my financial software

------
mgkimsal
"So now you’ve got customer data stored in two places, and you need to sync
them. Syncing can actually be a challenge: Which database is the “master”? How
often should they be synced? "

I've called this problem the "Non-Authoritative Data Source" problem for years
- NADS. Never quite caught on though...

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eyeareque
It baffles me that they would tell you that they aren't going to fix that bug.

The end of the blog post have me a good laugh.

------
epikur
I encountered this as well. The support rep's workaround was to change my
Ecobill address back to my Comcast address. I then enabled forwarding from
that address and it works fine. Such a pain.

