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Competitive Interests Forum
October 9, 2001
Meeting Summary
The Competitive Interests Forum met on October 9, 2001, from 10:00 AM until 4:00
PM. The meeting was the first to address substantive subjects, and it was well-attended.
Previous meetings were held on August 28, September 11, and September 25 to establish
procedures and develop a list of topics for discussion. At the October 9 meeting,
BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint provided presentations on their billing, billing dispute
and collection processes, with other participants asking questions and describing
problems encountered. At the participants' suggestion BellSouth agreed to include
the Web site location for submitting billing dispute forms on the form itself. The
participants also agreed that another session on billing would be necessary to provide
responses to the action items listed below and to explore resolution of the problems
raised. On procedure, the participants agreed that action items should be recorded
as they were identified during the course of discussions, future Forum sessions
should be scheduled as far in advance as possible, and some topics would probably
require two-day sessions. The staff agreed to post Forum information, including
a contact list, meeting notes, and schedules of future meetings, on the Commission's
Web site as soon as possible.
Action Items from October 9, 2001 Competitive Issues Forum
CLECs - Disputes
- Provide specific examples of "self help" problems.
- Provide examples of Channel Termination billing problems, specifically
double billing problems.
VERIZON - Billing
- Explain process of automated "out collection" process for returning DUF.
BELLSOUTH - Collection
- Aging reports - can access to electronic version be accommodated?
- Terms of collection - 60 day cycle, what if any accommodations can be made?
Billing
- Is billing part of change control process?
- Report to CLECs on "hold file" and other pending bills.
- Flagging of held orders to ensure migrated customers not SNIPed.
- Quality Assurance on LSRs & ASRs, what measures are taken to assure accuracy?
Disputes
- Explain process intervals and/or internal benchmarks - status.
- Pre-screening standards for rejecting/denying disputes.
- E-mail address for filing BAR forms.
- Time frame for updating contract rates in billing system.
- Evaluate communication between Disputes and Collections groups.
- Reports management for disputes; # of rejects.
- Credit or denial - 3rd option - Coordination on collections and disputes.
- Credits for disputes/where are they accounted for on bill?
- Usage w/o ANI - why does it happen?