Much can be learned from the story of O2 overcharging customers and misleading their regulator, but the most important is that many people want someone else to be responsible for billing assurance.
Ofcom said Telefónica’s UK operating company had a ‘history’ of withholding information.
O2 was fined USD14.5mn for billing errors from 2011 to 2019, but those errors were evident as early as December 2003.
Telefónica UK presented inaccurate closing bills to 251,700 customers who wanted to end their service.
We interviewed David Smith, an author of Successfully Managing Revenue Assurance, the 2001 publication that defined RA.
Test call vendor Araxxe has shared data about 3,665 charging errors they found on behalf of 61 telcos over the last three years.
Regulators should procure the systems needed to test telcos instead of telling telcos to test themselves.
Ofcom believes it has evidence of overcharging between 2011 and 2015. The onus is now on Plusnet to defend themselves.
EE overcharged 40,000 customers, and were slow to reimburse them. The issues identified show how flawed the UK’s billing accuracy regime is.
Ofcom wants to extend its metering and billing scheme to data services, even though it failed to protect voice customers.