Check your mobile phone bills! Do you know you may be overpaying?

In the 17 June 2000 meeting of the Telecom Users and Consumers Advisory Committee, the accuracy of metering and billing mobile phone calls were discussed.

There is a general concern in the Hong Kong community over the accuracy of such. In particular, they do not have confidence that the monthly totals of call minutes they think they have sent or received phone calls, match with the figures shown in their bills i.e. they suspect that they are overpaying. For your information, all mobile operators in Hong Kong count the number of minutes, not seconds; i.e. a call of ten seconds is counted as a call having a one-minute duration.

Another general concern is that if consumers ask for details of calls they have received or sent , they need to pay HK$35 to $50 for seeing the breakdowns! And the process also takes time. Consumer advocates may comment immediately that this is totally against the 'right to know' criteria.

Ways have to be found to get back consumers' confidence and trust in the technical and administrative systems involved. The Office of the Telecom Authority (OFTA) here is currently searching for a simple and inexpensive way to achieve such. The critical questions are--can a cheap way be of good quality? If all the measurements and verifications are done by the service providers (in order to minimise Government's intervention and costs), would consumers trust them? One thing I still do not understand is, despite all the community concerns, the Government have not issued any penalty ruling to service providers so far.

There are already some suggestions:

consumers should have the right to see call details at no cost to them; a way could be viewing through service providers' websites and user passwords, which has been commonly used in Internet services
paper-based monthly summary should not be charged under normal situations (charges may be needed for explanations in more detail); international service providers also give summaries on long distance calls free-of-charge
service operators can send details about call minutes and charges electronically to the mobile phones periodically (but do all handsets have such function?)
users can do their own counting through the use of pen and paper (but would it be a low-tech. and user-unfriendly way to manage high-tech.?)

In the discussion it was apparent that there is another source of the confusion--the public generally do not know how call durations should be counted, for example:

there should be no charge for recorded messages sent from the service operators e.g. annoucing calls cannot be switched through
when should the counting be started (only when the receiving party answers a call?) and when should it be ended (as soon as the calling party terminates the call?)

Obviously for things so close to the general public's everyday lives, more community education is needed. Unfortunately the mass media do not seem to be interested in doing this important job. As the chairman of the Telecom Consumer Education Working Group, (a voluntary job within OFTA), what can I do?

Friends all over the world, what similar experiences have you gone through, in Hong Kong or other countries? What suggestions would you give? I believe that Hong Kong people are not alone in bearing such pains.

If interested, you can also give your views on the above issues to OFTA. Currently, a public consultancy is taking place. Visit website: http://www.ofta.gov.hk

Dr Charles Lam
clam@kamching.com

27 June 2000