“a few days ago, my cell phone was suddenly shut down, my call fee was told to be $490, i opened the phone office, i looked at this month's bill, and i suddenly showed up `whole-of-the-art package' at $169, so i called and asked about the customer service, saying it was broadband, and i wondered, because now broadband is not connected.” ms. Zai, who lives in beijing, has recently discovered that she has been unwittingly charged $4056 in broadband charges over the past two years。
The reporter of the economics reference newspaper learned that ms. Zai had arranged a broadband package in beijing in july 2013, which expired in july 2013, and that ms. Zai had moved out of the district. However, the connection automatically converts into a month after the expiration of the year of the package and deducts a monthly fee of $169 from ms. Choi's cell phone calls, for a total of $4056 over two years. Ms. Zai said that she had not received any form of communication prior to that date, that the monthly telephone bill never showed that expenditure and that the “connect customer wor family business agreement” signed at the time of the annual broadband payment included the phrase “broadband: the first month of decommissioning in arrears and the fourth month of withdrawal with the package”。
"why would broadband charge be deducted from cell phone calls? Since the connection knows my cell phone number, why does it automatically turn into a monthly broadband without asking or notifying when it expires? And why was the money withheld and the phone bill not shown?" ms. Choi raised a series of questions and expressed the hope that the two-year broadband bill would be returned to the connecter service。
However, ms. Choi's response was disappointing. Ms. Choi was told by the services that, due to the length of time, data were not available two years ago and that only six months of broadband would be paid. Ms. Choi rejected the compensation programme, and since then the service has indicated that a one-year broadband fee could be paid and that the previous costs could not be compensated for lack of data. However, ms. Choi went to the connect office on the same day and successfully filed two years of documentation for broadband costs。
In this regard, the economics reference reporter also called a connection service and admitted that there was a requirement in the connection company that consumers automatically switch to a monthly package if they did not apply for a stoppage or a change of course。
“the term of the package expires directly in the month of the package in order to keep broadband services uninterrupted. If a customer pre-charters a broadband fee, the monthly fee is deducted from the broadband fee; if it is not, it is withheld from a bound fixed or mobile phone, and will not be shut down as long as the fixed or mobile phone is free. If there is no advance broadband charge or no cell phone binding, it will be shut down directly.” the connecter service also states that “there are currently no services such as text messages, which require consumers to check their own counters”
As to the reasons why ms. Choi's mobile phone bill did not show the withheld broadband bill, the intern service stated that “the number of the car is attached to the broadband set and therefore the number of the car is required”。
Journalists are also aware that, as a result of the binding of identity cards in broadband processing, consumers who do not know that they have a monthly package and are long-term in arrears are also placed on “blacklists” and may even be involved in other business。
In recent years, the three major telecommunications operators have been pushed to the tip of the wind on several occasions because of fee traps such as traffic charges that are not transparent and invisible. With initiatives such as twitter, the development of mobile phone-end offices, etc. By major operators, consumer fee packages have become more transparent and industry fees have improved to some extent, but consumer complaints remain high in telecommunications。
A senior telecommunications practitioner indicated to the economic reference post that the billing system for different operations within the three main operators was now accessible and that users should have easy access to the operator services and fees they were using。
According to the source, it is hard to understand why ms. Zai's situation is so strange that she needs to be deducted from ms. Zai's cell phone charges instead of being able to check on them. “one possibility is that a connected grass-roots service provider had maliciously concealed ms. Choi's services and deducted her fees. Another possibility is that there are gaps in connection with the current billing system.” in his view, if there were gaps in the connection billing system, which meant that hundreds of thousands of users might experience the same kind of treatment as ms. Choi, it would be difficult to estimate the specific figures involved in the unclear withholding of fees for those users。
“as responsible operators, the legitimate interests of users should be effectively safeguarded. After ms. Choi had stopped the broadband, effective communication should be made with ms. Choi on such issues as whether to renew the fee. If there is no effective communication, ms. Zai will be charged a fee and not informed in a timely manner that there are significant gaps in connection management.” according to this person。
Just prior to the release of the reporter, connect contacted ms. Choi again and offered to pay her deduction in full, but in two months, the money was entered into her cell phone account. Ms. Choi accepted the compensation programme。
Lin yui, hu yunlong, intern, huang ko xin
