Hum

This week ICTS implemented an internal telephone call report which I received in my email for the first time. I assume this is to help us track our telephone usage since we are billed for personal calls if we exceed R 200 a month. A good idea.

I noticed on my report that my call to the Telkom service number 10219 was listed as a local call charged at R5.58 for 801 seconds. According to Telkom however, 10219 is a free call (except from cell phones).

I logged a call about it and somebody got back to me today. Indeed, on the UCT call billing system 10219 is tagged as a local call when it should be a free call. The person who called me back said she would get it changed.

I assume that the University has a cost recovery model and bills the calls back to departments and research groups. Admittedly, probably not a lot of people call Telkom, but I wonder many other free call numbers are billed as non-free and how much money has been made with this inaccurate billing?

It's all funny money in this case I guess but its eye opening. So often I just assume (hope?) that the numbers on my bank statement, payslip etc are correct and that the people / systems working all of that stuff out know what they're doing. Some of the formulas to work this stuff out have got so complex and time consuming that nobody bothers to check the stuff anymore. When was the last time you tried / bothered to work out how much money that standby you agreed to the other day will put in your pocket at the end of the month? I certainly never have.

The reality is probably that if you checked some of this stuff you'd probably find you're loosing money.