Re: Correct Invoicing (was IBM SupportLine)

>   "Have you ever received a correct invoice from IBM?"  (OK, that one is 
>  not really relevant to SupportLine, but it's a pet peeve...)

IBM is not the only big company that is incapable of doing simple invoicing 
correctly.

We closed one of our remote offices at the end of year 2000 & we notified all 
suppliers & we severed all accounts supplying the office that closed.  AT&T 
is still billing us for phone service that ended almost 6 months ago.

Two decades ago, we moved our HQ to another state.  They hired me right after 
this happened so I got to see that moving HQ to a new state can be a painful 
experience.

Now there are various federal taxes that are collected by the states.  We 
paid our taxes to the right places for where we were located, and we notified 
all customers & vendors of the move.  In fact with every invoice & bill 
payment for a year there was a copy of the information form.

We began to get notices from the old state that we had not filed the 
regularly scheduled taxes.  We told them 
a) We are no longer in your state.
b) We filed those taxes to the correct state.
c) Here is a copy of proof that we did so.
They ignored this ... the only thing they recognized was that here was an 
outfit that had been regularly paying taxes & had quit.
They issued penalties for not paying the taxes on time, based on estimates 
calculated from the years we had been paying taxes in their state, and they 
located our bank accounts in the new state, and removed their taxes & fines & 
penalties.
We appealed this through their structure for appeals.
State auditors visited our facilities & confirmed that in fact the state was 
in error on this situation, and refunded our money without what we thought 
was properr interest for the time we did not have it.
This process was about 1/3 through the cycle when the same thing happened for 
the next quarterly tax due.
The old state did this for approx 2 years worth of quarterly taxes until they 
finally got the message that they should learn from the previous audits.

What do people learn from this?
Apparently nothing.
We have since had a turn over in management & moved HQ back to the state 
whose taxing authorities are not exactly competent.

I had a personal dispute with a cable TV company ... I told them to stop a 
particular channel, they said they would, but kept billing me for it.  After 
many months of identical run around, I quit paying any bills until they 
stopped all service, then I again signed up for what I wanted.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)


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