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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

BT OpenZone Mystery

I just got a bill from BT for my UK WiFi account on BT OpenZone. Uh, expensive, yup, and I keep finding extra charges on it from when I use it at some hotel that charges extra without asking me (last example: some Hilton in London). And while I'm in Europe there's never a way to find out how much it's costing (so I take the greatest care to positively disconnect each time). One of these days there will be enough competition to sort this stuff out (maybe from Fon) - there's a great musing in the NYT this week about that.

Anyway, the puzzler is from the bill BT have sent me. Despite it being printed on paper that carries their VAT number, and despite it being very obviously an invoice, it says at the top of it in bold 24 point Ariel "This is not a tax invoice", presumably so I can't go reclaiming the VAT as a business expense. Since I gave them no indication why I was opening the (rather expensive) account when I did so in a hotspot somewhere, I wondered why they would print this. So I called their call-centre to ask.

James was very helpful, and offered to both send me a fresh copy without the offending words and to set my account to make sure it didn't appear next time, but I wondered why exactly the words were there at all. James told me he didn't know, but that lots of people had complained and that the ability to issue invoices that don't pretend they aren't invoices has been recently added in response.

I wondered why anyone would even bother to print those words - exactly who are they helping, and how? James didn't know so he referred me to Emma. Emma didn't know either but promised she would find out for me. So, Emma, over to you!

Labels: travel, WiFi

posted at 3:13 PM (UK) | |