bills and customer service, are we being robbed?

[footfootfoot]

I have taken over the billpaying chores this month since SWMBO has fallen behind. Five of our bills had bogus charges on them which required phone calls by me to straighten out.

All the errors were on the parts of the various companies, and were along the lines of improperly credited accounts, or small $15-20 over charges.

I'm wondering, since I see this frequently from many different companies, if this is a new strategy on the part of the bean counters. Add $20 worth of charges to a million or so accounts, and bet that a percentage of people won't question it.

Subtract the cost of customer service to handle the complaints and voila! instant profit for doing nothing.

I remember when Kodak lost the suit brought against them by Polaroid for patent infringement.

Kodak intentionally infringed knowing that by the time the case was settled and reparations were made they'd still clear an enormous profit. This was in the mid 80's as I recall.

I read about it in a trade magazine; after the dust settled Kodak still made several hundred million dollars.

I wish I had a larger customer base, if I overcharge one of my customers, they're likely to know. If I overcharged several million customers...

Has anyone else seen weird accounting practices on their bills?