I get cable TV and internet from RCN. When I received last month’s bill, it was for twice the amount it should have been, and that’s because it was saying I never paid the previous bill. It also had two $5 late fees listed, both on 5/30/09. I had signed up for my bill to be automatically deducted from my checking account so not only was I confused why it didn’t go through, I also felt I should not have to pay any late fees and certainly not two of them. In addition, my company covers the cost of the Internet portion of my bill and this was a little embarrassing to submit a bill for reimbursement that has “PAST DUE NOTICE” written across the first page.
When I opened my bill, it was late at night and the customer service department was closed, so I decided to submit an email via their website instead. This is what I wrote:
My account is set to autopay my bills but my bill this month says its past due and the last month was never paid. It also has 2 late fees of $5 each on 5/30/09. Can you please make sure auto pay is working correctly and remove those fees?
Here is the email thread that followed:
From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Friday, June 5, 2009 4:54 PM
Thank you for contacting the RCN email team. My name is Sergio. Wen setting up autopay or updating any information on an active autopay it will reset and take 1-2 billing cycles to start up again. This is explain wen setting the autopay in the terms and conditions. The autopay is not active to charge your account for the full due amount. Unfortunately, are valid and will not be remove or credit. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you,
Sergio
From: me
To: support@rcn.com
Date: Friday, June 5, 2009 5:43 PM
That doesn’t explain why there are two late fees applied to my account on the same date. My bill was not late twice.
From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009 8:59 PM
Thank you for being a valued RCN customer. My name is Gregory. It looks like the automatic payment information had been changed online on 05/05/09, and, unfortunately, because of this, the next scheduled automatic payment had been delayed. After this delay, a 305.11 payment has been scheduled on 06/26/09, and, because a full payment of the amount due had not been submitted before the last due date, the late fees are valid charges. In to avoid this issue in the future, after changing payment information online, please submit the next payment manually. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for contacting us, and please have a wonderful day!
Gregory
From: me
To: support@rcn.com
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009 9:45 PM
I still don’t understand how the previous bill could have no late fees on it, and then the very next bill I receive has two late fees, both applied on the same date. To recap: no late fees on previous bill, two late fees on current bill. If the first bill was late, and the 2nd bill hadn’t even been received yet, where’s the 2nd late fee coming from?
Not to mention the fact that the first late fee is pretty obnoxious because I never received an email warning me that the autopay wasn’t going through. Perhaps that’s your policy in some fine print somewhere, but that’s just horrible customer service that you can’t recognize that this was a one-time understandable issue and give me a pass in order to keep me as a satisfied customer. And then add insult to injury by insisting on applying two late fees.
Kevin
From: support@rcn.com
To: me
Date: Sunday, June 7, 2009 9:24 PM
Thank you for the reply. Due to recent policy changes, late fees are now charged per line of business, and, because of this, multiple late fees were charged. I apologize again for any inconvenience.
Thank you for contacting us, and please have a wonderful day!
Gregory
I was pretty furious at this point. I even looked at one of the flyers I get in the mail all the time from Comcast and thought about whether I should switch just to spite RCN. I can understand if there’s a waiting period for the autopay to go into effect, and most likely there was some warning on the website I missed when setting it up. But having to wait one or two billing cycles? What kind of messed up system do they have? And what was with the two late fees just because I have two services (cable TV and Internet)?
I considered whether it was worth dealing with them any more on this and decided I might as well call and see where I could get over the phone. I was traveling for work the next week, but the week after I finally called. After going through the menus I got to a very nice young woman. I explained the situation and she said she’d refund me the late fees because so many people have had the same problem. She said “you were probably told there’s nothing that can be done about the late fees, but there is”. I asked her why there had been two late fees instead of one, and she said the late fee is actually $10, they just divided it between the two services. OK that’s still stupid but at least makes a little bit of sense. One of their genius email responders should have just said that. I asked if it was possible to send me a new bill so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by submitting it to work, but that wasn’t possible. But other than that, it had a happy ending. That isn’t stopping me from bitching to the world about the experience though.
