Someone buggered up somewhere…

So my job isn’t entirely all on the phones all the time; sometimes I get to do orders that come in from our dealer outlets, and sometimes I get to work on reports that are generated daily for various exceptions that the system sees.

Today, I was working a report for TV customers who were missing a certain feature. One account came up on the report as being unable to be completed, because the service was on vacation suspend (turns the service off and drops the cost to zero). Which, fine, okay, whatever. I checked the logs on the account to see if there was supposed to be a reactivation date, and there was nothing noted, but I noticed something unusual; the service had been suspended in January of 2017.

Normally, one of the reports that’s generated is to catch TV services that have been suspended longer than 6 months, as it’s our official policy to only let customers suspend their service for 6 months out of the year (i.e. for snowbirds and such). This dude’s service was suspended for almost 2 years, and I was astonished that it hadn’t come up on the report for whatever reason and been corrected.

However… I saw something amiss. When I looked at the logs, the customer had upgraded from copper to fibre service in March this year, and when the installer was at the premises doing the switchover, they noticed the TV wasn’t working. They called in to Tech Support and TS reactivated the TV service on the backend, but didn’t tell us on the billing side. So this customer has been getting free TV service since March.

Of course, I reactivated the service in billing to start charging them again. I’m anticipating them calling in next month when they notice their bill is some $45 higher than last month’s. I made sure to put a NICE RED-FLAGGED NOTE on the account explaining things. I actually wouldn’t mind being the one taking that call, I can see how it would go:

Cx: WHY IS MY BILL HIGHER YOU PEOPLE ARE CROOKS

Me: Well actually, sir, according to our records, due to an error, you’ve been getting your TV service for free for the last 8 months.

Cx: … oh.

Me, internally: Maybe it is YOU who is the crook, eh? EHHHH??