It all adds up: Cellphone users queue up to pay their bills

Every month, Asim Kumar Mitra, a retired Calcutta University journalism lecturer, has opened his Reliance mobile phone bill, only to find the amount he paid the previous month added to it. Then, in what has become routine, he has been to a Reliance outlet, shown the bill to a customer service executive, and then waited for an hour or so to get it “corrected”.

“It’s been happening to me for the last four months even though I pay my bills regularly,” Mitra says, exasperated. “I am now thinking of taking them to consumer court. If I failed to notice the mistakes in the bills, wouldn’t I have ended up paying them extra money each time?”

Mitra is evidently not the only mobile phone customer asking such questions. According to city-based consumer organisations, complaints about inflated mobile bills issued by different service providers are on the rise.

Says Prabir Basu, working president of the West Bengal Federation of Consumers’ Organisation (WBF CO), “None of the mobile service providers in Calcutta has been able to escape blame.” He cites examples of several cases, in which mobile phone users, billed “exorbitant amounts”, had their bills reduced drastically after they complained to the consumer forum.

Anil Karmakar, secretary of the Council of Consumer Guidance Centre (CCGC), says complaints about inflated bills are pouring in. He points out that mobile phone subscribers do not have access to the meter records of the charges they incur. “Their acceptance of the bill that is handed to them is largely based on trust. And trust, while vital to any kind of business transaction, can hardly be expected to be its sole measure.”

Karmakar says the service providers often “mislead” consumers by not properly explaining the costs they will incur for using the value-added services, such as voice mail and ringtone downloads. “Have the consumers been made aware, for instance, that they have to pay to listen to the voice of a cricket commentator? If not, it amounts to unfair trade practice,” Karmakar says.

The service providers themselves, however, don’t think there is much of a problem of ‘excess billing’. Says a Reliance spokesperson, the company earlier received “some complaints” about excess billing, but the number has now gone down considerably. “Part of the problem was that we were receiving close to one lakh subscriptions per day during our ‘Monsoon Hungama’ offer last year when a handset and connection were going for Rs 501. There were some errors in data entry. For example, some people who opted for lower rate plans were erroneously put on another, perhaps, more costly plan. But whenever these were brought to our notice we immediately settled them to the customer’s advantage.”

He says the company does not deny that at times there are billing problems. “We are in the process of updating our billing system. For instance, we are introducing a Web World Express Service and will allot a representative to deal with the complaints of 500 of our customers individually.”

S.K. Bhaduri, general ma- nager (customer relations and sales) of BSNL, too says the number of complaints they received from their customers have gone down considerably in recent times. According to an Airtel spokes- person, “The truth is that a consumer often speaks longer than he thinks he has.” Moreover, he explains, almost all the companies, except for BSNL, have a 60-second pulse rate. Which means that even if a customer speaks for 30 seconds, he pays for a minute. “But if he calculates charges in terms of the number of seconds he has spoken, the bill that he receives will obviously surpass the figure he expects.”

“It is never the intention of the company to mislead the consumer,” says S. Murali, assistant vice-president (sales and marketing) of Hutch. “The costs and charges of individual plans are revealed to consumers when they subscribe. And post-paid consumers can ask for a detailed, itemised bill.”

But there are additional charges for that and consumer groups want to know why. “Why should the consumer be charged for details of their bills when it is their right to know?” Basu, a lawyer, asks.

Meanwhile, Karmakar says his organisation has launched an inquiry. “The idea is to compare the personal records of some randomly chosen subscribers with the bills they actually receive from the company. The results will be out in a few months’ time,” he says.

Till then, he advises, go through your bill before you pay.

Complaints and cases

Added woes: Raja Chakraborty of Bhowanipore has complained to CCGC on receiving what he suspects is an inflated bill (Airtel). He is further annoyed that he has to pay additional charges for an itemised bill — just to verify his suspicion.

Time check: According to Chandralekha Tulal of Jadavpur she received a bill (Hutch) in which the duration of an STD call was shown to be 15 minutes, but she was charged for 30 minutes. The only reason she came to know of it, is because she subscribes to an itemised bill.

Small mercies: Jagrati Shah of Sarat Bose Road received a bill of Rs 19,384 (Reliance), which, after she complained to WBFCO, was brought down to Rs 2,000.

Over the top: Tapan Kr Majumdar of Baishnabghata Lane filed a case of an inflated bill against BSNL in the consumer court (case no. I/183/2003).