Just when you thought it safe...

Rustum said:
Thanks Shaun.

You got mail.

If I'm not mistaken, you may have been the person I dealt with way back in Dec 2006 or January 2007...
Click to expand...

Probably was ... he helped me out before, so you might just get lucky
 
Hi Rustum

After I have queried accounts I have found that this account was indeed handed over in error.

I apologise for this and the stress you have undergone.

Your account has been cleared and the agency informed.

Please should you wish to communicate your frustrations please call me on my cell.

Apologies again for the mistake.

Thank you for making us aware of this.
 
Shaun

thanks. Can you email me same please. And can you ask the credit collecting company to please do the same and email me, quoting their reference number for me, etc. I don't want to end up on a blacklist because of bureaucratic errors without any evidence in my favour, and thereby have a rerun of the saga.

While I appreciate your efforts and the speedy resolution of my case now, I am still deeply aggravated that the story reared it's ugly head again a year after I thought it had been resolved and thus dragging out my pitiful experiences with iBurst over three years. It's like encountering a past lover, 3 years after a bad break up, and s/he wants you to relive the break up again, the same way s/he made you do it last year. While all you ever wanted to do was forget about the whole sorry mess.

So, with all respect to you for your help, I remain a pissed off (past) customer of iBurst. I will do my utmost to warn people against opening accounts with iBurst.
 
Morning

You shall receive the relevant emails this morning regarding the zero balance and the agency clearance.

Apologies again for the error on our side.

Thanks
 
A remark on the side:

The number of really bad issues (such as being wrongly handed over for bad debt) is most probably an indication that the new boss is true to his word: He will sort out billing.

The number of complaints here and on HelloPeter the past few days on billing problems indicates high activity in the billing department.

Myself had a nasty e-mail telling me I'm in arrears, and have to pay up otherwise they will kill my service... but they forgot to mention how much I was in arrears - turned out to by R79 and it will be added to the net debit run (Thanks Shaun for your forwarding of not so nice mails from me!)

let's hope the bad billing issues are sorted pretty soon. If billing could be as reliable as the technical stuff (iBurst is almost always on for me...tho its is nearing "end of life" in terms of being called "broadband" - needs to be upped to 4MB/s in the next year or 2 to remain "Broadband"
 
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kaspaas said:
A remark on the side:

The number of really bad issues (such as being wrongly handed over for bad debt) is most probably an indication that the new boss is true to his word: He will sort out billing.

The number of complaints here and on HelloPeter the past few days on billing problems indicates high activity in the billing department.

Myself had a nasty e-mail telling me I'm in arrears, and have to pay up otherwise they will kill my service... but they forgot to mention how much I was in arrears - turned out to by R79 and it will be added to the net debit run (Thanks Shaun for your forwarding of not so nice mails from me!)

let's hope the bad billing issues are sorted pretty soon. If billing could be as reliable as the technical stuff (iBurst is almost always on for me...tho its is nearing "end of life" in terms of being called "broadband" - needs to be upped to 4MB/s in the next year or 2 to remain "Broadband"
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Not quite Kaspaas; this billing issue - my particular one - goes back to 2007. Then, in 2008, I was handed to debt collectors; when I complained at HelloPeter, there were then, in 2008, already scores of people complaining about the same issue: unreconcilable claims from iBurst and being handed to debt collectors. I don't think it's a sign of things changing at all.

My sense is more that it is actually endemic and ingrained; increased activity at HelloPeter can also just point to more people becoming aware of both the billing issues and of HelloPeter's usefulness. I mean, how many people in 2007 realised that debit orders hadn't been running and suddenly they were being billed astronomical amounts - the point here is, generally, we put trust and faith in the billing and most people seldom check whether the right amounts are being debited if at all. As word gets around, perhaps more people are now checking up on their debit orders.

Further, the fact that many are incorrectly handed to debt collectors doesn't point to 'something being done' under a new boss. If that was the case, they would first do proper accounting on their own side, before handing over dossiers to debt collectors.
 
iBurst said:
Morning

You shall receive the relevant emails this morning regarding the zero balance and the agency clearance.

Apologies again for the error on our side.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Hi Shaun

should I still expect the respective emails this evening, or Monday?

Thanks
Rustum
 
This is a pretty nightmarish story, and makes me regret deleting all my old iBurst correspondence/invoices, even though I haven't been a client of theirs for many years. Just as you disappeared from their "system", perhaps I could mysteriously re-appear...

You'd think some sort of goodwill gesture on their part would be an obvious consumer relations move - a weekend in the country, perhaps? Or maybe you send them an invoice for your time wasted in dealing with their incompetence, and hand it over to a debt-collector when they don't respond?
 
Hi Rustum,

My sincere apologies for the delay, you will have required communication by 9am Monday morning.
 
OK, this is what happened here.

Over time iBurst (like any other company) build up a 'debtors book' of subscribers who do not pay their accounts. The company will obviously try and recover the money and when all else fails, these accounts get handed over to a debt collection agency. Pretty standard stuff.

Let's be clear though that people end up on this list because they did not pay their account and refused all efforts to get it sorted in an acceptable way. No-one likes to hand anyone over to debt-collectors as it costs money to collect the outstanding debt. Can be a large % of the outstanding amount.

The debt collection companies will manage to recover more fees and these accounts (when fully paid off) are then put in a 'closed' status. Rustum is one of these who first were handed over and later when paid up, the account was closed.

Now for the stuff-up: The collection book was moved from one debt collector to another and in this process the closed accounts got included in their new run and a number of iBurst subscribers received an SMS asking for the money again. Not good.

This was discovered and all those affected should have received a new SMS from the collection company apologising for the mistake. iBurst also sent out a mail to these clients to explain and also apologise again.

I've asked that those affected, if they still have iBurst modems, mail us and I'll have their modems re-activated and give them a data bundle to use.

So, while not a direct iB problem, I take responsibility and do apologise on behalf of iBurst.

(In turn, please pay those outstanding bills and we can all live happily ever after :))
 
jannievanzyl said:
OK, this is what happened here.

Over time iBurst (like any other company) build up a 'debtors book' of subscribers who do not pay their accounts. The company will obviously try and recover the money and when all else fails, these accounts get handed over to a debt collection agency. Pretty standard stuff.

Let's be clear though that people end up on this list because they did not pay their account and refused all efforts to get it sorted in an acceptable way. No-one likes to hand anyone over to debt-collectors as it costs money to collect the outstanding debt. Can be a large % of the outstanding amount.

The debt collection companies will manage to recover more fees and these accounts (when fully paid off) are then put in a 'closed' status. Rustum is one of these who first were handed over and later when paid up, the account was closed.

Now for the stuff-up: The collection book was moved from one debt collector to another and in this process the closed accounts got included in their new run and a number of iBurst subscribers received an SMS asking for the money again. Not good.

This was discovered and all those affected should have received a new SMS from the collection company apologising for the mistake. iBurst also sent out a mail to these clients to explain and also apologise again.

I've asked that those affected, if they still have iBurst modems, mail us and I'll have their modems re-activated and give them a data bundle to use.

So, while not a direct iB problem, I take responsibility and do apologise on behalf of iBurst.

(In turn, please pay those outstanding bills and we can all live happily ever after :))
Click to expand...

Jannie, I'm afraid that is not quite what happened. I've now posted something in detail and you may be aware of it, but I'l reiterate some salient points for your benefit here:

1. I gave notice in November 2006.

2. Following that notice, my bank account was debited for R4000+ (look at my open letter for the exact figures). Forgetting the figure for the moment, the fact is that, since I was giving notice, this would be my final transaction with iBurst. But obviously I didn't expect to pay R4000+. I queried, I was told it was from top ups. You know the problems with debit orders not running and for an unsuspecting, freelancer to suddenly be hit for such an amount, please, be fair.

Be that as it may, the extra money was for top ups. But I protested, and as I have said, a compromise refund was given to me.

3. For all intents and purposes, anyone will agree that that is the end of the story. You claimed R4000+ in my LAST month, I protest, the COMPANY gives me a refund. I was NOT a defaulter - get this straight. I never paid iBurst any money following action from a debt collector. That R4000+ and R2300 refund was the last money exchanged between me and iBurst, directly, with no debt collection intervention.

4, Claim, appeal, half refund. That sounds to me like two parties agreeing to part ways on good terms. I believe strongly that the person I spoke to then was in fact Shaun, and that he was the one who relented and agreed to give me back R2300.

5. When I am then again billed in excess of R7000 in the middle of 2007, after having given notice in Nov 2006, you must understand that in my mind my account has been closed, the corporation would have given me, back then, an accounting of what I owed (i.e. the R4000+), and this new claim seem to be pulled from thin air. Why did iBurst not know when I gave notice in Nov 2006 what I owed?

So irrespective of the figures, the point is a moment of closure ends up being an illusion and the company keeps on claiming I owe them money. So please, my complaint then was against the fact that claims were made after the fact of the accounts closure, so please, don't simplify it and say I was a defaulter who then paid but who unfortunately got passed on. That 'unfortunately passed on' is in itself a problem - it should not have happened. And it appears I'm not the only one.

6. From my telephone conversation with Shaun yesterday, it appears you do not have my account history on your system. So I don't know how you can say with any certainty that I was a defaulter, finish en klaar.

7. In the context of scores of people experiencing all manner of billing problems, come now, you have to admit that it is most likely iBurst's accounting system and department. And you can't just spin the torture I have suffered as due to my fault, i.e. being a defaulter. They were debit orders, supposed to run automatically - that's the beauty of the system. But if your company has problems with your debit orders, don't taint your customers as the ones at fault, whether for ease of argument or not.

8. The "pretty standard stuff" - given the overwhelming evidence of massive incompetence on the part of iBurst's accounting department (it's not only me that has experienced this nightmare, and you know that, your customer service people know it), given this, how can you in good conscience resort to the deadpan, dismissive explanation of standard debt recovery procedure? What I have experienced, what hundreds of people have experienced with iBurst billing, is not standard procedure. My experience wasn't a standard procedure gone wrong due to a missing file; no, my experience, and the experience of hundreds - if not thousands - of people was part of a massive, endemic culture of incompetence on iBurst's part.

I sincerely wish you luck in eating that wooly mammoth, but please, don't try and make me believe that my experience was due to minor bureaucratic errors here and there; at least be courageous enough to admit that there is a deep, deep structural problem in that company, and that my and other people's nightmarish experiences should never have happened; that such a deep-seated culture of incompetence cannot be the basis, seriously, for a business, and that the disempowerment that many of your customers have felt and feel (You should spend an hour just reading comments at HelloPeter, not as a company man, but just as a curious Joe), that disempowerment is not a good foundation for sustainable customer relationships. No sustainable customer relationships = non-sustainable business. (Seriously, I know not by what magic iBurst survives). Admit, simply, that for many years now, iBurst has not exactly been the best, not even a good, not, let me say it, even a tolerable company on many fronts. I mean, look at the threads here, look at HelloPeter. I have come across scores of blog posts, from as far back as 2007 - yes, they may have drowned from lack of audience, but many people have been disillusioned with iBurst for a long time.

South Africans may be in the habit of tolerating bad service and moaning at home, but the tide will turn and complacency in the face of incompetence... I tell you, I wouldn't want to be in your seat, not for any many million rand.

Finally, I'm afraid I come away from your 'explanation' of what happened to me not with much faith. That explanation of what happened to me - and remember, it happened also not only to me - is too simplified, too much with a wave of a hand: pretty standard stuff. Despite its dead-pan tone, there's also just that touch of hubris in it. If I can be frank: hubris is where corporations should start there self-examination. All in all though, I'm not a management consultant; so you may want to wave that out of the way as well.
 
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Rustum said:
......

Finally, I'm afraid I come away from your 'explanation' of what happened to me not with much faith. That explanation of what happened to me - and remember, it happened also not only to me - is too simplified, too much with a wave of a hand: pretty standard stuff. Despite its dead-pan tone, there's also just that touch of hubris in it. If I can be frank: hubris is where corporations should start there self-examination. All in all though, I'm not a management consultant; so you may want to wave that out of the way as well.
Click to expand...

Not sure why you don't want to believe me. :confused: What I posted is what happened. You were on an old database that got re-activate in a transfer. It was a mistake. And there were others caught in this.

Did you not receive the follow-up SMS from the collections company explaining this? I was told it went out earlier today.

I've got no reason to lie to you. If this was an iBurst stuff-up, I would've said so. People on this forum know well enough I call a spade a spade.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Not sure why you don't want to believe me. :confused: What I posted is what happened. You were on an old database that got re-activate in a transfer. It was a mistake. And there were others caught in this.

Did you not receive the follow-up SMS from the collections company explaining this? I was told it went out earlier today.

I've got no reason to lie to you. If this was an iBurst stuff-up, I would've said so. People on this forum know well enough I call a spade a spade.
Click to expand...

Jannie, the point is that it all goes back to 2006 and it wasn't about bad debt, as you stated. The trouble started before I was handed to collector1, and by collector1 (2 years later), they should have picked up on the issue so that it did not reach collector 2, which brings us here. That mistake shouldn't have happened, is my point, because complaints against iBurst should have made the accounts dept extra careful.

How much can be explained in an sms: We apologise, it was a mistake.

I can think of a reason why an executive might want to lie about a company's incompetence. I can think of several. Big business is big money, so there's already a large economic interest/motive. Hubris, that's another reason...
 
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