Action Line 80102 - Phone Bills

  • Published
  • By Anonymous
  • 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Complaint:

I recently received my residential phone bill in an e-mail on Jan. 8. I was shocked to see such an expensive amount that was charged to my phone.

I am used to paying $26.58 and some odd cents for basic phone service and a 10 dollar charge for world wide access plus toll charges that for the last 11 months ( my toll charges had only been less than $2 per month) equaling a total amount of $36.58.

Now it seems that ever since the 19th of December my toll charges have increased 500 times the usual amount per call.

A toll charge from before the change cost me $.02 cents per call, now the charge is $5.00+. My usual phone bill averaged $36.58, and now my phone bill costs $165.58.

I was not expecting this change, nor did I hear of any advanced warning about this change in price. I fear that other people have been charged for phone usage and have not been made aware of new charges.

I was not made aware of the inflation in these prices and I do not think I should be made to pay for this increase or someone's failure to advise people of the increase.

I called the telephone help-line and talked to a Turkish person who told me that there was an error in the software they used to bill people for the phone-bills and it now reflects the current charges for the phone bills as of Dec. 19.

I asked him it would have been nice to have heard of this change to let people know this before you just go charging people this unexpected amount.

I know of another Airman whose phone bill was $367.00 this month and they were also expecting a $36.00 phone-bill instead of this vastly inflated bill.

I'm hoping there are other people out there that have the same complaint as I do, but don't know what to do about this discrepancy. I would hope that someone can answer for why this has happened. Thank you.

Response:

The change in base personal telephone toll costs was caused by a correction to billing errors which have been occurring since early 2007. The problem was corrected by a contractor in mid-December. Only after your inquiry did we realize the extent of the problem and that everyone had been under-billed for a significant amount of time. There has been no change in the amount charged by Turktelekom. The base system which calculates costs and bills customers is now just applying the correct rates to user calls/bills. We are still researching the issue but at this point you are not being billed for underpayments prior to December 2007, just the calls from that point forward at the correct rate. If there are further questions please contact Capt Michael Barker at 676-6152.