Billing problems

Just spoke to accounts now. The lady there said that she took the matter up with the financial director, Rajiph Ramlall, who told her that I've been billed for the next months rent. Well sorry for you, if your invoice states that you're going to deduct x-amount, that's the amount you have to deduct. Isn't this fraud? Mr Ramlall's direct line is 011-715 3274, but of course he is not available (in a meeting)...
 
I just left a message for Mr Ramlall telling him that the invoice and the debit order they took off differs, and that this constitutes as fraud. That I don't like being defrauded by a company I hardly know, and would like him to call me back.

Let's wait and see what happens.
 
Billing Problems, avoid iBurst, read here why

This is a mail I sent just now after iBurst invoiced me for a certain amount, then proceeded to take off an unauthorized amount.

Dear Nozipho,

As you can see, I’m forwarding this mail to Mr. Parvin as well. As I find the behaviour of WBS / iBurst unacceptable.

Included is a mail sent to me on the 28th of January 2005 notifying me with your intentions to run a debit order against my account for the amount of R968.53, which includes a Pro Rata for November 2004, which was somewhat unexpected after I expressly asked that question to Mr Ramlall when he phoned me to apologize for the billing not going through and making his intentions clear that the billing will run end of January and would only include December and January fee’s.

That is beside the point.

You not only did not bill me for 3 months (Pro Rata for November, December and January) but within this mail sent to me on the 28th of January, indicated an amount of R968.53…. R454 shy of what you actually debited from my account. (Which was R1422.30 for those unable to grasp the basic concept of math?)

I will report you to my bank as having defrauded me. I will get my bank to do a reverse on the debit order taken off on the 7th of February 2005.

I do not care if the extra R454 was for the month of February. NO indication that the billing run included the month of February exists on the invoice sent to me on the 28th of January.

I expect a return on the messages I left for both Miss Nozipho and Mr. Ramlall.

If I do not hear from any of them within the next couple of hours, I will be going to my bank and explain to them the situation and do what I threatened to do, not only that, but also take steps into making sure my bank won’t do business with WBS and stop any claim for a debit order on their clients from WBS, be rejected immediately.

WBS has unwittingly participated in driving my bank status into the negative, and I will take you to small claims court for any interest and damages caused by this totally unorganized excuse of a company. If this matter is not resolved today, I will also release this information to the public (which I intend to do with this email as well) to further educate the uneducated and point them towards a competent provider.

One who does not lie? One who communicates to its customers? One called, Vodacom 3G (who has a much higher participation rate than any WBS employee ever had on www.myadsl.co.za I might add)
Click to expand...
 
Well I've just checked my bank account, they put through the debit order yesterday - despite an email sent on 2005-02-02 saying:
Dear iBurst Customer

Based on your feedback with regard to our e-mail dated 28 jan 2005 from our Accounts Department,
the debit order instruction to your bank will not be processed until all of your queries, where applicable,
have been resolved.

We thank you for your patience during our start up phase
and assure that our staff is committed to providing you with the best service possible.

Our accounting department may be contacted via
Nozipho Tobo at 011 877 4720.
Please note our accounts department operates from 8:30 to 17:00 Monday to Friday.
Click to expand...
Did anyone else receive the same email on the 2nd?

I still haven't had a callback from Nozipho Tobo, or a reply to my email to tell me what's going on.

This is how much I have forked out for this disconnection:
Code: 
GTECH SOUTHERN AFRIC*-1513.33*
Now that they have deducted money they will be getting a Tax Invoice from me - despite their own inability to issue a proper Tax Invoice.
 
Got the note as well, still need to see if anything was deducted?
 
Maybe they were informing you of the arrears amount only. And have then billed you for February as well.

I received an email, charging me pro-rata for January plus some strange activation fee amount of about R150. This, despite having already paid the first month and the full activation fee. I wrote back for an explanation. Got a reply to say they were having problems (familiar, huh?) . So far, they haven't deducted anything from my account. But I'm keeping my eyes open!
 
They should inform you of ANY amount due to be taken off your account. Not just the arrears. I've asked on numerous occasions if there will be a warning sent out before the billing run, they did in fact send out out stating the billing run would start the 2nd of February and apologized for having problems.

This is not the issue at hand, the issue at hand is that they deducted far more than they claimed you owed them.

Fraud. The new kind of BroadBand
 
Also having problems here. Was debited last night for Jan and Feb plus activation fee of R456 which I had already paid when I collected the modem.

I had queried the bill (specifically them charging me another activation fee) but got no feedback until this morning when Cathy (new person at accounts) called me to find out if I was happy with the debit that had gone thru.

Bit of an arse about face way of doing things.............
 
ant5 said:
Bit of an arse about face way of doing things.............
Click to expand...

Yea, like letting your customers know 10 minutes after the Sandton base station went down, that it will go down.

I think at this stage it is more profitable running a helpdesk than the service itself it seems, because they're really only creating consumer agitation by doing this, and those dumb enough to actually call into call centre gets ripped off with the 0861 number.

Had a phonecall from Sasan Parvin (whoever the dude is, ic once told me about him) which I constantly CC on with my emails.

He sounded sincere in helping me sort out the problems.

Then again, if you are threatend with legal action / damages / press, I guess you'd sound sincere too.

Don't f@ck with noone :D
 
Hi noone

I had the exact same thing as you - Money taken off in advance for February without any prior notifcation.
I did phone and complain, but was notified that I should mail the mail address [email protected] with my complaint and information.
I won't bother doing this. Obviously they will not act on it anyway. They will probably say that they will just not charge you at the end of Feb and proceed to do it anyway.

If you read the small-print on the statement they sent you, you will see the following:

"In addition, dependant on the billing date you have selected, your bank account
may be billed more than once in February 2005"

That is basically what they have done, just on one day.

All I know is that if they try billing me in arrears and advance next month, there is going to be hell to pay.
 
Just to let you know what is happening my side. Due to current financial restrictions (I.E I am broke and on a budget), I could not afford a freeken R1200 deduction. So, after phoning and moaning a real lot, and threatning legal action (in small claims court), I have been informed by a woman in accounts called Mary-Anne, that she will phone me at 9AM tomorrow about a refund, and then we will be able to work out a way to pay the account problems
 
Anyone else had the 'cold shoulder' from WBS since the billing issue? eg. voice mail, phone just rings, not available, in a meeting, will phone you back......BUT NOTHING?!
 
That is typical.
In the week where they were having major issues on the network, they also never bothered to answer the helpdesk. Seems they take a few calls and then everyone ducks off when the going gets tough.
Once again - this could have all been solved with a little communication

Mail from WBS a couple of days ago would have been nice stating the following:
Hi everyone, please note that we will be taking off the amount for February in advance so please don't be shocked.

Even a mail this morning stating the following:
Hi everyone, please note that the discrepency between the invoice sent to you and the amount taken off of your account sometime yesterday is because of the following: We apologise for the late notification. Please bare with us.

How about a message on the IVR:
The reason for account discrepencies is as follows: blah blah blah

They seem to be such simple solutions to me, but maybe it is easier for them to make the mistake and then proceed to just not answer the helpdesk and aggrevate their users even more.
I dunno............
 
I received the e-mail ic, plus they also deducted an extra R454 which I assume was for Feb 05. They seem to deduct in advance. I am definately gonna phone to find out what is going on. My invoice didn't state the amount that was deducted - a nasty surprise. Come on accounts dept whats going on?? Again a lack of communication to the customer.
 
Okay, I have been shafted by iburst, they refuse to refund them. So now, I fight back.

All people screwed over by WBS this month, post a comment on the hellopeter.com website. Here is my thread: http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=31716

The more people that complain, the more alert this consumer watch dog becomes, and the more they react.

Also, if there are 5 or more posts in regards to a certain company, it gets officialy listed with hellopeter.

So write about your experiences there.
 
Okay, I have been shafted by iburst, they refuse to refund them. So now, I fight back.

All people screwed over by WBS this month, post a comment on the hellopeter.com website. Here is my thread: http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=31716

The more people that complain, the more alert this consumer watch dog becomes, and the more they react.

Also, if there are 5 or more posts in regards to a certain company, it gets officialy listed with hellopeter.
 
Crumbs, iBurst is sounding more and more like Sentech every day. And thats very scary. I can fully understand if they have technical difficulties with their service, but there is no excuse for bad customer service - and that includes the accounts department.
 
"All people screwed over by WBS this month, post a comment on the hellopeter.com website. Here is my thread: http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=31716"

DONE
 
It is quite sad - I hope they sort it out soon, otherwise all the disgruntled old Scumtech users will end up being right about the "once burned, twice shy" stuff.

The thing is, this is exactly (more or less) what happened to me with Sucktech.

They neglected to bill me for 3 months then sent a whopper of a bill through that sent my poor old bank account for a loop.

I managed to negotiate, after TONS of ranting and raving to pay it off over 3 months.

iBurst, very very stupid of you - the LAST thing you do is to mess with people's accounts, you make enemies fast and word of mouth news like that spreads like wildfire.

I'll tell ya now, if anyone asks me about iBurst and whether it's worth it, that's one of the things I'll tell them - apparently they can't get thier billing right, just like Sucktech couldn't.
 
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