Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It’s Off to Overbill We Go

The Last Few Poison Apples of Mobile Telecom Overbilling

Some things should be simple. Like a Disney movie. There’s a damsel in distress, some type of Prince to the rescue, an evildoer, and some inexplicably undersized helpers.

This article, however, is (a) about telecom and (b) the product of my twisted mind and demented sense of humor. So. Clearly it won’t be simple.

Now, I either have to cast myself as Prince Charming, which according to a recent survey has been rejected by 99.74% of respondents, or I am some type of Snow White with five o’clock shadow and a middle-aged man-paunch. Or, better yet, I am Prince Occasionally Charming from the Kingdom of Sarcasm, fighting against the Evil Telecom Queen on behalf of my Snow White customers.

And somewhere along the way, we will meet the Seven *&^$#@%%.

Yes, that was my brain short-circuiting while attempting to be politically correct. For the sake of convenience, and with the readers’ kind understanding about my constitutional inability to be politically correct, let’s call them the Seven Diminutive Asshats, or DAs for short: Faulty, Greedy, Pricey, UnHappy, Sleepy, Grumpy, and Dopey.

Let’s get back to things that should be simple when it comes to mobile telecom: managing features, optimizing non-phone devices, and addressing devices with no usage.

Really, this should be simple. Unfortunately, the Evil Telecom Queen, with the help of Faulty, Pricey, and Greedy, has made it anything but simple.

Let’s dive in!

Features: Mirror Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Most Expensive Feature of Them All?

There is an entire ecosystem of carrier-added features billing quietly on your corporate wireless invoice. How do they get there? Sometimes the Evil Telecom Queen, assisted by Pricey, offers them up like a shiny red apple during a promotional period: free, at no charge, a gift. The catch, of course, is that the apple is only free for the first twelve months. After that, it is just another charge nobody remembers agreeing to. Sometimes an employee requested something that sounded useful and nobody thought to turn it off when it wasn’t. And sometimes a new employee has their personal phone number ported into the corporate plan, and whatever features were active on their personal account just come along for the ride. Roadside assistance. Insurance. Navigator. All billing quietly on the corporate account, month after month, because porting a number is easier than digging into what comes with it.

Each individual charge may be small. Across hundreds or thousands of lines, it adds up to real money every month.

Here is a partial list of features we identified and removed from the invoices of just three current clients, across multiple carriers:

•           Business Messaging

•           Insurance

•           Access My LAN

•           Roadside Assistance

•           Navigator

•           Business Mobile Secure

This is not a comprehensive list. It is a sample from three clients. Three.

We are not naming the carriers involved. What matters is that none of these features were needed. None of the clients knew they were being charged for them. And not one of the carriers had suggested removing them.

The fix is not complicated. Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? They would solve an entirely different problem, though an intriguing one if you actually needed them. But I digress. The fix, of course, is a detailed audit. Are you going to ask your team to do this drudgery and simply whistle while they work? You certainly could, you Evil Queen, you!

Non-Phone Devices: Tablets, Watches, and Wifi Hotspots

Tablets, cellular-enabled watches, and mobile wifi hotspots are increasingly common on corporate accounts. Many of these devices are on suboptimal rate plans. Fixing this is not rocket surgery. You do not need to be a brain scientist to call Sleepy, your vaguely self-aware account rep, and ask for better pricing.

Let’s hypothesize that Sleepy eventually returns your emails and sets up a videoconference to discuss better pricing on these devices. Maybe you use the same negotiating strategy I did as a kid watching a Disney movie and wanting a second bowl of ice cream: I just kept asking Mom until she folded and I got another, albeit smaller, scoop. Easy peasy, all done.

Except. Instead of that skimpy scoop of plain vanilla, you could have had a 2,000-calorie bomb of a sundae with hot fudge, caramel, and whipped cream. Hold the poison apple.

Here’s a real-world example.

Our customer, a civil works contractor, needed a few hundred tablets for their crews. They spent about 45 days negotiating with their carrier rep on both the cost per tablet and the monthly cost to make them cellular enabled. They did a genuinely good job, and earned themselves a very nice, somewhat small, scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Then they asked us to take another bite at the, ummm, apple? We got them an additional $100 off the price of each tablet, an additional $5 per month reduction in recurring cost, and, while we were at it, another 12% reduction in the monthly cost of their phones.

Mirror, mirror, who’s serving up the most delicious sundae of them all?

Zero Usage Devices: When UnHappy, the DA, Becomes Embedded at Your Company

Between 4% and 10% of devices on the mobile invoices we audit show no usage, and this is not the carriers’ fault. This is due to internal processes that have not been fully developed or are difficult to operationalize.

Someone left the company six months ago. HR processed the offboarding. What’s supposed to happen now? Does the ex-employee get to keep the phone and port it out to their own account? Do they turn it in? Does IT get a list of phones to be disconnected? Or a list of phones that were ported out, or supposed to be ported but maybe were not? Is the person whose responsibility this is on maternity leave? Or pulled into an emergency project when the CEO’s laptop fell into a swimming pool?

Cleaning this up can be complicated. Here’s why.

There are legitimate categories of devices that generate no usage. Watches. Spare phones for the “expressive” CEO who showed us when UnHappy was present by introducing his phone to the closest wall at high velocity (yes, this happened). Wifi devices used only at certain trade shows or events. Phones for employees on leave. I could keep going, but you get the concept. Cleaning this up is possible, just difficult.

One of our customers has about 2,000 devices, a sophisticated IT department, and even a mobile device management company to provision new devices and disconnect old ones. These folks are no joke. They eat Sleepy and Grumpy account reps for breakfast. And yet, somewhere, somehow, the process to disconnect devices had broken down.

We know this because over 21 separate projects we have disconnected more than 1,000 devices, saving them approximately $50,000 per month, which makes us the most charming of princes to ever audit a telecom invoice. Okay, and the only ones.

Device Costs and the Secondary Market Nobody Told You About

The hardware side of your account deserves its own scrutiny. Carriers compete aggressively on device promotions: free phones with new activations, trade-in credits, upgrade offers tied to renewals. If you are a telecom professional, you know this. Even if you’re not a telecom professional, say, you are a Rocket Surgeon or Brain Scientist, you still know this. We are simply back in the discussion about the small scoop of vanilla ice cream versus the massive sundae. There are 22 ways (or not) to reduce the costs of new devices, sometimes to $0. There are ways to get waivers on “termination fees” for devices still under contract that you may wish to upgrade. But no, the Evil Telecom Queen will not volunteer this information, nor will she give you her best deal unless convinced.

Sometimes, these low-cost options require you to trade-in the old device. Sometimes not. What then if you are left holding an old iPhone or 90? It turns out that There Are 50 Ways to Sell Your iPhone. You can Slip Out the Back, Jack. Make a New Plan, Stan. Don’t Need to Be Coy, Roy. OK, sorry, I digressed into old song lyrics that are now stuck in your head too. But really, there are 3rd parties that will take these items off of your hands, sending you cash even for an iPhone 6. You just need the right partner in this area.

Implementation: Where Faulty, the DA, Does His Best Work

Let’s say you’ve done everything. Rate plans optimized, zero-usage lines disconnected, obsolete features removed, new rates in place. You hand the carrier a complete, well-documented set of changes.

They will get about 80% to 90% of it right.

I am not being cynical for effect. That is the actual batting average. These are complex operational events across hundreds of lines, and Faulty is always on duty. The wrong plan code gets applied. A disconnection doesn’t process on the right date. A new rate hits 147 of 150 lines and nobody notices the three that got missed.

The trouble is that the invoice keeps reflecting the old, incorrect billing until someone catches it, documents it, escalates it, requests the correction, and then requests the credit for the period it was wrong, which the carrier never volunteers.

So the audit doesn’t end when the changes are implemented. Someone has to compare the expected invoice to the actual invoice, line by line, find every discrepancy, and chase each one until the credit lands and the next invoice confirms it held.

It is the least glamorous part of this work. It is also where Faulty is defeated.

Incompetent or Evil?

So where does that leave us, here at the end of our twisted little fairy tale?

We met the Evil Telecom Queen, who adds features you never asked for and never volunteers a rate that helps you. We met Faulty, who implements your changes badly. Greedy and Pricey, who keep your devices on the wrong plans. Sleepy, your vaguely self-aware account rep who takes three weeks to return an email. UnHappy, who quietly embeds himself in your zero-usage devices. And Grumpy and Dopey, who answer the phone when you finally call.

Are they evil? Honestly, no. Most of them are not plotting against you. The Queen’s billing system is a genuine mess. The DAs are mostly just doing what understaffed, overcomplicated, incentive-misaligned systems do. This is carrier incompetence far more than malice.

But here is where fairy tales diverge from real life. Fairy tales tend to end happily, with Prince Charming kissing the girl. In real life, nobody can magically remove telecom overbilling with a single kiss, no matter how good a kisser they may claim to be. It requires the drudgery of a detailed audit to prevent the Seven DAs from singing their favorite song: Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It’s Off to Overbill We Go.

Should We Work Together?

Hi, I’m Rick Friedman, CEO of Anilix. This blog is my attempt to pull back the curtain on an industry that has made a science out of overcharging the companies that can least afford the distraction.

When I’m not writing, I run Anilix, a telecom cost reduction firm I co-founded in 1998. We work with companies large and small across every category of telecom spend: mobile, voice, data, and everything in between. We work on a contingency fee basis. That means no upfront cost, no retainer, and no invoice from us unless we save you money first.

If any of this sounds familiar, the invoices that never quite make sense, the rates you suspect aren’t optimal, the team that’s too busy keeping the lights on to audit invoices, let’s talk. A 30-minute call costs you nothing and usually tells us both everything we need to know.