Australia's major telephone & internet provider, Telstra (its 3rd name during Mine Host's dealings with it) a few years ago spent really really big on advertising the fact that they now offered "Single Billing":
All your telephone & internet services could be put onto the one bill. For your convenience.
With something like thirty-five telephone lines & at least ten adsl internet connections, and just about all of them on their own individual monthly bill, the office at the Wayside Tavern was in a constant state of "pending" bills to Telstra.
Single Billing certainly appealed to Mine Host. Get it all onto the one bill. Get rid of all the confusion, and make it easy to see if Telstra is slipping in any extra services.
Single Billing hasn't happened yet. There have been several false starts over the past few years. Anyone who has had the experience of being a Telstra customer will know what I mean. They start a project, in this case consolidating your phone lines onto a single bill, then several months later when you enquire how it is coming along, they have "no record" of the matter, and the account executive you asked for "left the company months ago sir".
The current attempt has been underway for almost six months. It is the most successful so far, having actually gotten most services put onto the one bill.
Some services continue to be billed individually (it seems Telstra is unable to swap everything at once!) and some services have (inexplicably) been put onto the bill of the next pub up the street.
2 comments:
35 phone connections?
When it was Telecom, those who used Bulletin Boards, prior to the internet being released from universities, used to refer to it, its charging policies and its service record collectively as "Telescum". Much will have to change before I return to them.
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