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Susan Schwartz

Inaccurate phone bills will be less likely with the introduction of a system designed to reduce the chances of being overcharged.

The Consumer Council and Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta) announced yesterday that from January 1, operators will have to comply with the system, which reduces the chances of a wrongly metered bill to one in 10,000.

The scheme requires service providers to become more transparent by testing their billing and metering systems every month and reporting the results to Ofta.

The test must also be overseen by a certified public accountant.

Consumer Council complaints about overcharging for telecom services have increased since 1996 when there were 96 cases in total, relating to telephones or faxes (10), long-distance calls (26), mobile phones (39), Internet (8), or paging (13).

By 2001, the complaints totalled 2,628, comprising telephones or faxes (163), long-distance calls (98), mobile phones (1,618), Internet (673), paging (7), SIM or roaming cards (7), prepaid calling cards (46) and others (16).

In the first six months of this year there were 1,193 cases.

Ofta recorded 348 bill disputes in 2001, with 226 grievances in the first six months of this year.

Council spokesman Matthew Ng said the Billing and Metering Integrity Scheme ensured customers would not have to pay more than $1 for an error in a bill worth $10,000, or one cent in a $100 invoice.

'Increasingly, it is becoming extremely difficult, if not impossible, for consumers to evaluate the bill accuracy in complicated electronic systems in many services they use nowadays,' Dr Ng said.

'These standards will enhance consumer confidence and ensure losses will be minimal, and have been developed in line with the best practices and standards used in other countries.'



New testing scheme rings the changes on phone bill errors