Since most businesses are totally dependent on their phone systems, they sometimes lack enough leverage to get their phone company to correct its mistakes. That's certainly what one reader has discovered in a billing mix-up with XO Communications that has lasted almost two tortuous years. "Phone companies in general all know they have you over a barrel, and I firmly believe that one is just as bad as the next wh Since most businesses are totally dependent on their phone systems, they sometimes lack enough leverage to get their phone company to correct its mistakes. That’s certainly what one reader has discovered in a billing mix-up with XO Communications that has lasted almost two tortuous years.“Phone companies in general all know they have you over a barrel, and I firmly believe that one is just as bad as the next when it comes to service issues,” the reader wrote. “In particular billing issues are very difficult to navigate successfully. I manage IT at a medium-sized services firm. We have about 60 employees and are fairly heavy users of technology. In late 2004 we moved our single location to a new larger one to accommodate expected growth. As part of this move we installed a new PRI circuit phone system and kept some POTS lines for faxing, etc. We chose to keep as our phone company XO Communications, which had acquired our previous provider the year before. Everything seemed to go smoothly until the bills started coming in.”The problem seems to have started about a month after the move when a former office manager at the reader’s company received a renewal contract from XO for the old location. “Without even thinking apparently the office manager changed the old address on the contract to the new address, signed it and sent it off to XO,” the reader wrote. “We then started receiving double billings, receiving one invoice for the old address that we no longer even had physical access to as well as one for our current address. We paid for the first couple of months as we tried to understand what had happened and tried to work through this with XO. Then the fun began.” “After finding out about the erroneously-signed contract we spoke with our XO representative and their accounts receivable department and supposedly got them to agree that we could forgo paying the extra amounts for our old address while we worked on a clearing this up. Surely we thought they would not wish to collect doubly for our business? Surely they wanted to keep us as customers for the long term? Wrong. They started sending nastygrams threatening to disconnect our service. We would call and clear it up and then the next month the same thing again. This has been going on for almost two years now since the renewal contract term was two years.”Although XO Communications kept promising to straighten the problem out, it didn’t happen. “These issues have supposedly been elevated to the VP level at XO and we received about half of the amount of overpayments due back to us several months ago,” the reader wrote. “The remaining overpayments that we made, some $8,000, are still outstanding. Our accounts receivable person is being told that their system simply cannot allow them to cancel that erroneously-signed contract without generating cancellation fees in excess of $20,000. Then, of course, when we don’t pay that erroneously-billed amount, the whole thing would start all over again.”But while the reader’s company waited patiently to get the money they were owed, XO’s billing system continued to see his company as the one that was in arrears. “Their accounts receivable department apparently got tired of holding off each month and they disconnected our POTS lines. Our PRI circuit remained up at first, but it was clear that wasn’t going to be for long. So that evening we ended up paying by credit card the additional $5,000 we supposedly owed. Even so, the next morning they completed the disconnection of our services by pulling the plug on our PRI/T1 circuit, which of course took out all of our phone lines including the front desk. Luckily our accounts payable person and I were both watching for this kind of thing that morning and were able to get them to reconnect before the opening of business at 8 AM. But we now have to attempt to get a refund for that evening’s payment as well as the money we plaid previously that they haven’t returned yet. Will the fun never end?” With both the real and the bogus two-year contract about to come to an end, the reader assumes that XO Communications just doesn’t care that much about keeping his company’s business. (If anyone at XO would like to try to show him otherwise, his company’s XO account number is 2411709.) “I personally find it difficult to swallow that there is no way to override the mistake in their system,” the reader wrote “I don’t believe them to be held hostage by software, and it is clear to me that either the issue hasn’t reached an appropriate level at XO or the level it has reached doesn’t really care if we remain customers. Of course they have our phone numbers held hostage if we try to switch service providers without settling up. Ma Bell didn’t really go away, she just split into many little Bells that still behave the same and wring just as shrilly.”Read and post comments about this story here. Technology Industry