Data Overage Error - Why did it occur & How to quickly Fix it?

[eddie]

My usage states 30,000 MB / 295 GB, It appears Rogers have recreated their own measuring stick of 100 MB = 1GB instead of 1,000MB = 1GB. Morons, like Rogers make these horrific errors. Ask Rogers to check your usage in MB and in GB. You may find Rogers just moves a decimal point. 

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[User14]

@57 Thanks. 

Basically Share a Concern says to contact the Management Office by Live Chat for fast response. (image below)

So I did do that this morning. I spent 45 minutes (7:08 to 7:53 am) of my time with Live Chat trying to explain the issue but they insisted their system was saying I used 37GB and I was 12GB over.  I had to TELL THEM to escalate it to the Management Office because their calculations were incorrect.  I think it finally twigged when I told them that the system also indicated my Usage Allowance was 250 GB (25600 MB).  So now I have an incident number.  We'll see what they do next.

I think I have tried to communicate this issue all week, but no one seems to listen.  One-way communication is definitely a problem (Re your: IPG Inconsistencies), but also having the least knowledgeable people interfacing with the customer is an issue too. There seems to be either a lack of training or a lack of experience in knowing what is important and what isn't.  If the customer is a priority, then they need to invest in these Help Desk people.  Getting your complaint to the right unit could also be improved as I always seem to be sent to someone else.  

  

[57]

@User14 : I'm not sure if that chat gets you to the same people that would address the "Additional Contact Options" selection, which I have used. Granted, the latter doesn't get you an instant response, but I have found that the people who call back in a day or two are usually up-to-speed and often useful.

[BS]

An update on my three interactions today.

The first thing I learned through 2 phone calls, is that what is creating a dramatic inability for the reps to comprehend what we are talking about (as acknowledged by the 2nd and 3rd call - I just did the billing level).

The problem is the firm believe that since the change back three years ago, that the CSR's see the exact same view of my account that we do.

The first person could not comprehend what I was talking about at all - the person was stuck with all they had to look at was the first usage page with the pie chart and the line graph of usage, remaining, overages, etc.  I started by trying to confirm what page he was looking at.  He kept just repeating the data to me, while in mind I am talking about the day to day table.  Even though I had mentioned the day to day table, we couldn't get past my questions, of "do you see a pie chart with the percentages and data usage and data cap and the line graph of usage per day?"

Unfortunately, he acknowledged that he did not know what a pie chart or line graph was and as I tried to explain what they were by describing them, we both got frustrated and in my frustration, I casually said, "I am having difficulty explaining what I mean to you, because we see pie charts and line graphs all the time in daily life and as a teacher I taught these concepts in grade 5". My bad, I guess he took it the wrong way, and the line went click at the end of that statement.  Could be coincident, but definitely we were going nowhere.

A second call not because of this, but my phone had coincidently just received a text informing me that I had been enrolled in Roam like home and I called to get that unenrolled again as I don't need it. 

So the second person noticed in the notes that I had called in about the discrepency in what I was viewing on my screen and that it had been advised that it was most likely a browser issue.  He had mentioned that and I had said, not at all, had tried 6 browsers and others were reporting it on the community forums as well and that I had also reviewed the code and identified that it most likely came from old HTML code that someone must have made a change to recently.

So in the second call, I happened to get a CSR in billing who had a very strong background in coding.  He uses MyRogers personally in his day to day life just to check his bills and had never been to the full usage pages.

So he quickly confirmed with me the first page, and even looked at the code views and confirmed HTML5 in place.

He then tried to click the links to the four table views of day to day, current use, month to month and warnings, and low and behold, he found that the links did not even function.

He went to the code and noted that the code associated to those links did not run the scripts to produce the pages.

So he acknowledged my total frustration and that he agreed with me that this issue would create nothing but confusion for both the CSR and staff as they are assured they see what we see, and that in general, his experience was that he wasn't aware of many people who go deeper on those links, and as he understood web page coding, middleware and databases and that a change like I was seeing along with the rest of us here could only be because someone was working on changes and took it back to live without confirming the accuracy of the views.

He was also very surprised to hear that the pages he couldn't see were in HTML4 and that the original creation dates were 2007 and the last revision date recorded was 2014, which is consistent with the period when the work on the new MyRogers would have begun.

For the frustration and confusion, I got some small compensation, which was nice, I never mentioned it all, he just did it.

I forgot to mention the Roam like home issue and called back a third person and she read the notes and said she could understand my confusion and we fixed the unknown enrollment of roam like home - I said, there are ghosts in the machine, with a jocking tone and got a good laugh.

So, basically, the CSR's are completely unaware of this, and if we try to interact with them on what we are seeing, I only tried this with the one rep, it appears that they will not see what we see.  Kind of supports the idea that people are working on those legacy pages, that I guess they are disabled for the CSR and other Roger's staff on their system login screens but ours are still active with that error.

So my suggestion to all three of the people was please communicate this issue to your supervisors or teams and communicate that this is happening and suggest that the programmers either add a note to the effect of the error, or a pop up mentioning it, or disable it for now until it gets fixed.

I did say, that it is best that the day to day view remains because as we know from this discussion, some of us use day to day data extensively to monitor and manage our data and the second person who understood coding was very much in agreement of my view on that one.

I also made it clear that in my view, Rogers needs to become more proactive about investigating these issues as they get reported and not just treat it as "nothing to worry about".  That is for us to determine whether it is nothing to worry about and each of us deals with frustration at varying levels, so in my view and the that of the two people I spoke to was that it would be easier on the customer and them too if there was more communication and acknowledgement of awareness of the problem and that it is being worked with and to be able to understand and explain that it is a calculation error on those pages.

But for now, in my conversations, what I can say is that at least one CSR can't access those screens, so if that is true for others, it will be very challenging for any staff to understand fully what we are dealing with, that it was stated that there is a lack of awareness of how we the users may use the screens available to us.

I am also confident in the contacts I had that the data is correct for billing and usage purposes, that the error is a summary data field with an incorrect multiplication constant on the GB totals on the old screens, but the day to day is correct in that the rows are in MB, but the summary total and any notices of overages and costs that are calculated are in error due to the calculation error in the total to date.  I also phoned the call centre and got the automated report of my usage and it presented correctly, so further assurance that the underlying data is correct it is just those three pages of summary totals of GB used.  The pie chart and line chart on the opening HTML5 page is correct too.

What I hope is that we will see a quick response to communicate this issue to all staff who face the customer and talk about the view of usage on the MyRogers pages, and a message of some form to all customers on MyRogers of this error and what it means.

Since this has now been communicated by a number of us, through various channels, this is and opportunity for Rogers to respond proactively and communicate effectively, even if it is felt that it impacts only a few customers, the error has been made, so acknowledge it and allow us all to understand what it means to us and give some indicator of when it will be dealt with, but at a minimum, make sure that we know.

I am hoping to be surprised with how fast this communication or repair takes.

Bruce

[BS]

Oh, one small addition to my note above - I mentioned that on the tables on the older pages that it shows my Internet limit as unlimited, whereas the front page shows it as 500GB as it should be.

But we couldn't talk too much about that except to confirm that yes, as it shows on the pie chart version, my cap is 500GB, and not unlimited, but as he said, wouldn't that be nice.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry because I am on the SamKnows whitebox monitoring program, where I don't get charged for overages due to the fact that they can't differentiate my use from the whitebox use which runs about 7 GB per day, or in my summary on the tables, that would be 70GB per day

Hopefully this goes away - minor annoyance, now my curiosity is just how long it goes and whether any formal announcement anywhere will be made. I can at least hope, but for now, I move on.  Analysis and recommendations have been made, appears to not impact us directly, just makes those who do use the day to day totals view everyday go through a brief sticker shock experience.  If it does show up on a future bill as an overage, my overages get reversed, but I pay them and then the next month they get reversed, so I would definitely be calling in because the figure could be quite high at 2100GB in a month, although I am very confident, it is just a calculation error present only on the customer view of these pages.

As I said, I have high expectations, but then again, we pay a lot of money for these services, and there is competitions, so why shouldn't we have high expectations and hold Roger's feet to the ground on them.  Only fair.

Bruce

[57]

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@BS wrote:

1. But for now, in my conversations, what I can say is that at least one CSR can't access those screens...

2. I am also confident in the contacts I had that the data is correct for billing and usage purposes, that the error is a summary data field... 

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1. The CSR I spoke to yesterday could see my tabular data showing day-to-day, monthly etc with the correct MB but incorrect GB.  The CSR acknowledged the errors (in the tables) and will have it looked into.  (This was done, however, by logging into my account as though the CSR were me, so they could see exactly what I saw, not some "overview".)

2. @User14 would disagree with you and he has posted the landing page screenshot (the one with the pie chart and line chart) showing incorrect information. He has also stated that his billing is incorrect, despite reassurances from a CSR.  So, even though your bills (@BS) may not be affected, especially since you're on SamKnows, other people may be affected on their bills.  I don't appear to be affected in billing either since my landing page is fine so far, but my tabular data shows "unlimited" instead of my "125 GB" limit, which may mean that the issue is more complex than a simple decimal place somewhere in the code.

3. Several people over on Digital Home have confirmed that their tables have incorrect GB data, however, they were also on unlimited packages and therefore their billing would not be affected.  I believe the errors on the tables is widespread, perhaps even everyone with Rogers Internet, however, as you mentioned, many people may not access those tables, or be on unlimited, or perhaps use less than 10% of their allowance.  (I, and some others, do check the tables so that we can see what's happening day-to-day).

4. This problem is recent (last month was fine), so Rogers should be able to "rewind" the website to last month or easily see what was changed this month.  It's not rocket science and if they don't fix this quickly they will have a huge mess.

5. Lastly many people may not know the relationship between MB and GB in a similar manner to someone not knowing what a pie chart is.  😉

[User14]

Just for the record, I am posting my Usage Information for the Oct-Nov billing cycle so everyone can see the actual factual data being presented to me.  It may be easier to understand why I am questioning the Overage Charges of 12GB for the period based on 37GB of usage. I have no idea how the billing system derived 37GB based on my data which is the main point. 

As for the Current Usage Summary tab, it is now showing the Nov-Dec period but I did post the actual pie chart and graph for Oct-Nov earlier in this thread showing the 30.44GB of usage and 5GB overage. Readers please note that I only have the 25GB plan (Microsoft updates mainly) at $38/mo and I normally go over by 3-5GB @$1.50/GB. I find it a lot cheaper than paying $78/mo for the next level plan of 250GB.   I hope this info helps explain the issue.

BTW, I have sent a note to CommunityHelps and I have asked for status on the ticket so I am on standby to see what happens next. 

[BS]

Thanks @User14 for posting all those views.  For clarification of what I mentioned earlier, one of the challenges in my communication is that when I say views, I am talking in database and front end programming terminology and the view is the one presented to the logged in CSR, or user. The system was redesigned 3 years ago so that the view the CSR sees, is exactly the same as the view we see.  The overview is the pie chart page.

I am glad to here that @57 allowed the CSR to log into his views and so a CSR could actually see what it is we are experiencing.

Your collection of screen clipped views clearly show just how mixed up these views have become for all to the point of being so confusing that for people like yourself who watch their usage like a hawk, it may interfere with your comfort and confidence in your methods to achieve what I cannot even imagine trying to keep our data under the caps, although my wife achieves it on her 500 MB on her phone using tools on her phone, watching it like a hawk, and fortunately, the delay in posted data is typically no more than 1 day.

So this without a doubt is a mess.  I went back and saw you mention that your usage cap was now increased by a factor of 10 too - maybe that is why mine shows unlimited when it is actually 500 GB.

I hope you have success on your ticket, you seem to have a very legitimate concern on your billing question, but these types of questions are not new before this web page view issue.  We have often seen people questioning their usage count.  Only factor that may apply that they may suggest is that our views can be up to 48 hours behind.  Not suggesting that is true for you, I leave that for the internal staff and you to figure out.  Everything else would be just hypothesizing, and I apologize to all that some of my own hypothesizing may have led to confusion on top of already existing confusion and also amazement.

I too hope they can roll back, but in my experience, it is not always that easy to rollback, depending upon where the errors are created.  If it is strictly the calculations on the page views, in my experience, that is easy to deal with if you know the code layout and there are around 2000 lines of visible code on that page, and underlying JAVA modules as well, so the person who made the changes could probably fix it, and it could be rolled back, if they actually kept a backup of the original code set before the changes that led to this.

But I am going to stop there, and express my hope that this gets fixed soon and if not, that Rogers makes a communication to staff and a public facing notice to customers of this issue and what it means.

I really shouldn't be on here now as I was reminded by my wife when she told me, not the first time, that she was going to chop my  fingers off if I didn't get off the forum.  I am recovering from a major surgery, bored and as a result, end up here to kill time.

Time to just rest, and this issue will come to its natural death, and do everyone keep escalating your concerns if directly bill related, or even if you just want to push the issue that you believe it needs to be fixed.

Sincerely, Bruce - time to rest and recover  - always a pleasure interacting on the board. 

[57]

Just as an FYI, I got another call from Rogers today.  I have had several. The first a few days ago was to ask if someone could review exactly what I was seeing and I said OK. The second call asked me for additional information a couple of days ago. The third call I just received and they stated that the issue is not fixed and they are still working on it.  I logged into MyRogers and indeed, it is not fixed. 

The above phone calls were in addition to quite a few PM exchanges with the Mods here....  Glad I'm retired.

[User14]

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@57 wrote:

Just as an FYI, I got another call from Rogers today.  I have had several.

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Well... I just got an "automated" call from Rogers about 5 pm today (23 Nov 2018) too! 

They confirmed that my Trouble Ticket has been addressed. 

I just checked, and NO, it isn't.  It gave me quite a chuckle. 

My bill is due Dec 15, 2018 so they have lots of time to amend it.    

[BS]

@57and @User14 

Now when have any of us had a call back that our ticket has been addressed?

Glad to hear that the communication is flowing.  With time it will get fixed.

Maybe addressed means it is being looked at and assigned to someone to work with. But certainly not fixed.

Hope the conclusion comes soon.

For now, I am going to move on, watch some TV and coincidentally, since I am also not working, and have way too much time on my hands, I will go back to my current programming project - learning how to replicate a client information database I helped implement decades ago, but this time purely in Linux open source on an old desktop as the server and an old laptop as the front end client on a peer to peer network.  I expect to go through lots of bugs before the end is reached. And I will leave the code debugging to the Rogers group, but it was a fun exercise - I am a bit of a Sheldon geek in nature.

Bruce

[User14]

FYI.  Not fixed yet...  (24 Nov 2018) 

[57]

Here's mine.  Daily shows incorrect GB and Allowance, but my landing page is OK:

[User14]

Interesting.....  Your Day-to-Day table says  "unlimited"  for Usage Allowance, but your Landing page says "97.02GB remaining of your 125GB".  I may have to report two problems to @CommunityHelps. One Technical for the errors being displayed and one for the error on my bill from the billing system. I am not really sure if my Ticket C138612306 was for the Billing Error or both. I'll follow up on Monday.  Cheers.

[User14]

To explain the result of my Rogers Billing Error accusation, I have shown the "faulty" table for my Previous Monthly History. The fact that everything is 10X the actual amount was my initial Technical Error complaint which has not yet been addressed.  Still waiting for that, and I was informed that some may receive the 75% or 100% usage notifications in error. 

Anyway, to explain what happened, below is my NOVEMBER Internet Billing data. ( up to Nov 18, 2018 in my case)

Note that my NOVEMBER internet bill is actually for the next Nov 19-Dec 18 billing period, whereas the Additional Usage Data is for the Sep 19 - Oct 18 billing period.  Herein lies MY mistaken assumption.

It should explain why I thought I had 5GB (in Oct-Nov) instead of 12GB (in Sep-Oct).  The 5GB will (I hope) be clearly shown on my DECEMBER bill.   I incorrectly assumed that my November Bill would have had the Ending Nov 18 billing period's Additional Usage data on it, not the Additional Usage Ending on Oct 18.  

[57]

I just got another automated call advising me that the issue is not fixed and that they are still working on it...

[BS]

Thanks @User14  In all the years of being able to see usage and overages, I have never actually clued into the reality that overages are charged on the following bill.  That kind of makes a bit of sense since the data is delayed by up to 48 hours they say, although I usually don't get my bill until 4 days later, but they are pulling batch data in from many discrete systems (phone usage of all types, plans types and billing rates, Internet, TV, home phone), and all of the basic use of our systems is billed a month in advance and they prorate when we change in the middle of a month or adjust in various ways by rebating the change and setting up a partial charge, but these are all fixed, the others have to be pulled together into the billing system, not the monitoring system.

I have only had 4 overages in all my years on phone and Internet, and the Internet was a result of SamKnows testing data.  I knew at that time, that the overage didn't show up on the bill until the next month, but the SamKnows team credited me back within a day or two, so my bill was lowered and I had to remember to keep that overage aside for the next bill.

To say the least, the billing and monitoring system is not overly intuitive on this one area.  They did great things to deal with the confusion from changes to the plans mid billing period with the graphs, and credit and new charges system of reporting, but like I said, never did clue into the fact that the actual billing of overages was actually a month delayed.  Go figure.

A good thing out of this strange thing they are having a challenge themselves first understanding along with us is that you and I and others just learned something I never realized about my bill, even though it has been sitting there saying that each time I had an overage, I just never clued in.

Thanks for all the details visuals which are so much easier to understand.

Now we seem to know that we are being billed properly, although definitely confusing until you figure it out (wonder how many staff are aware of this method on the bill), but as always, I still trust that I will find unexpected errors, or things I can't understand anytime there is a change, or something out of the ordinary.  This is the challenge and waste of time for all that I find is that other than as mentioned before the clarification on prorating, and changes, (although I still have been burned on the bill on prorating, but have always had it corrected because it wasn't explained), there remains areas of changes of the bill that remain confusing.

The world of technology and automated systems - sometimes they are very logical to the programmer and the designer, but create nothing but confusion once the user sees the result.  Not new in computer technology, getting an automated view of information that all users can understand easily and prevent errors in data entry and changes, has always been the greateast challenge, solved usually through beta testing and constant communication with users, but I won't comment on that one.  Rogers is improving gradually with each challenge that we the user and staff are confronted by, reactive, not proactively, but at least they do try.  Guess that is the crutch of why I stay, in spite of the headaches of never expecting anything to go right.  Reality is that I have made a lot of changes in the last 5 years, due to changing financial situations and service needs. 

Bruce

[57]

It's been 3 weeks since this issue was reported.  I got another automated call on the weekend saying that there has been a delay in getting this fixed.  I'm guessing that it's not affecting billing and they're taking their time...

[57]

I just logged into my Internet Usage and my tables appear to be correct.  No more factor of 10 errors.  Thanks Rogers.  I hope other people see the same on their MyRogers Internet.

[User14]

Yes, It looks like it is fixed  181205

[BS]

I see it is fixed too - thanks for staying on top of that @57

Bruce

[User14]

Since I have now learned more detail on how you are charged for INTERNET services I would like to summarize the confusion I had last month (November). Basically you are charged IN ADVANCE for your next billing cycle.   

I just finished my Nov 19 – Dec 18 Cycle so my current December Bill MONTHLY CHARGE will be for  Dec 19  - Jan 18 – the next cycle and any internet overage charges will be for the previous cycle of Oct 19 – Nov 18.  You won’t see charges on your December Bill for the Nov 19 – Dec 18 cycle.

You will have to wait for your January Bill to see the Nov - Dec overage charges on your bill.

I hope that is now all crystal clear.  😊

 

Regarding the 50 GB additional usage charge for $75.50 on my November Bill,  I was told not to worry about it, as it was just another ROGERS glitch.  I was told to RELAX as the overage on my November Bill was 12GB. This was actually my overage for Sep – Oct.  I was telling them about my overage for November which was only 5 GB not 50GB during the Oct – Nov cycle, hence my confusion on what was being charged.  So make sure that you and your Customer Service Representative (CSR) are looking at the same data period if you have an overage complaint.