We resell broadband services in the UK from a number of suppliers. We had one supplier that was bought out by a new company. Let's call them X.
X migrated all the billing from the old supplier onto their systems, (this is more than a year ago). We had lots of problems, sorted them out, it settled down. We migrated a lot of circuits off X to a better supplier Y.
In the last three months we've been sent back-dated billing on circuits going back as far as two years. I've also found they re-started billing on eight lines we moved elsewhere and which they already knew had left. And two lines that had been ceased.
We've tried withholding payment to try to get goodwill credits, but no dice says X, who threatend to disconnect all our services if we don't pay up.
They forwarded this extract from their contract:
Customers' Responsibility to Check
It is acknowledged that discrepancies may occur over time between the end user orders recorded on X's systems and the Customers own records and those of any Third Party service Providers. It is the responsibility of the Customer to regularly reconcile (at least monthly) its records with those on any provisioning system, for all end user orders, end user order variations, ceases, migrations, cancellations and terminations, including for rejections or failures. The Customer shall notify X promptly of any discrepancies, and shall submit or re-submit instructions through the provisioning system as appropriate, including to terminate end user orders where the end user ended its contract with the Customer and the end user service has been migrated or ceased. The Customer takes the risk of any discrepancies, and any continued or over- billing from Customer. However if the Customer notifies X of any incorrect charges applied to invoices, X will credit any incorrectly billed services for up to a maximum period of three (3) months following the invoice date after which time the Customer shall have no right to claim any credits or refunds from X in relation to any discrepancies.
That's right folks - this is a Limitation of Incompetence clause.
Here is my translation:
Our billing is crap. We know this, but if you don't spot how bad it is fast enough, tough shit - we're keeping the money,SUCKER!
Fortunately this was not in the contract we signed.