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War Stories

Straight From The Trenches of the Never-ending Battle With Communications Service Providers

A sparsely funded rural, community college serving a primarily Native American student population scraped together the resources to replace their 14 year old PBX, which had literally died of old age, and was fork-lifted off their site, replaced by another of the same manufacture as before by the same vendor. Their shiny new PBX had been working beautifully for almost 3 years when our cost analysis determined that their vendor had continued the $1140 monthly maintenance charge on the old switch, on top of which was added the $1300 maintenance for their new switch. When asked for a $40,000 refund, the vendor first claimed the old switch was "being maintained on site as a standby". Later, when this was proven false, they claimed that since the college had not detected the over charge in 35 months, the vendor was entitled to keep it. Through negotiation, Scott Associates was successful in obtaining the reimbursement within ten business days, and interest at prime was added to the base amount. In addition, by identifying this error, $13,680 in annual savings was achieved.
A library district serving a very large county in the Western U.S. tied all its branches back to the central library hub by means of a complex network of digital circuits provided by the three different regulated carriers covering the large expanse of county. Given the very dynamic population growth throughout the area, and the accommodation of the growth by building additional library facilities, the library network had expanded and changed quickly and often over a relatively short period. This dynamic growth, coupled with the complexity of calculating the correct monthly charges for the circuits, which are based in part on airline miles, resulted in documented billing errors totaling reimbursements of $112,000.
A city government built a detention facility, and demolished their old facility in preparation to build multi-storey parking. Their telecom manager placed a written order to disconnect "all phone lines" at the soon to be demolished building. When Scott Associates performed our cost reduction project five years later, the city was still paying monthly bills for the dedicated payroll data circuit from the old jail site across town to the finance office, the data circuit from the jail computer to the state department of law enforcement data base system, the point to point circuit to the county sheriff’s office, the point to point circuit to the county hospital emergency room, and six point to point circuits from prisoner pods on the jail upper floors to visitor rooms on the jail ground floor. None of these circuits were defined as telephone lines, according to the Local Exchange Carrier, and therefore had never been ordered disconnected. They therefore claimed to be justified in continuing the billing, at a cost of $4257 per month for 62 months. The carrier did not prevail in this argument. The state regulatory entity supported Scott Associates in our suggestion that $264,000 was due our client.

The stories above are NOT what we find on average. These are the jaw droppers, we admit. Here’s what we do find, usually.

In a small county with about 300 single lines, 24 are proven to be abandoned but never ordered disconnected, yielding a monthly savings of $556.08.
Same county was overpaying very substantially on their wireless service; the telecom manager did not understand either the plans available or the way to group users to force the vendor to make the best deal with those plans.
Same county, paying for "calling features" and "line treatment" that are not applicable to their lines. In other words, there are innumerable charges added to their bills, described in words no one can question because no one can understand, so they continue to pay the mysterious charges, month after month, and year after year. It’s easier to pay than to argue.
At a very small public library, billing less than $2000 per month for local service, we found a monthly bill for a nonexistent data circuit charged to the library at $1300 monthly. We also found that one of their five single flat rate business lines for which they were being billed was nonexistent. We also found that on their less than 100 minutes per month in long distance calling, they were paying a per minute rate of $.30 per minute which we cut to $.03 per minute.