Hi Trudy.....
As with all bills, get clarification on these charges. Determine if
they are part of the original contract, and if not, don't pay them.
Escalate your issues to the President of the company, if you can't get
this resolved.
You will no doubt find Richard at the international conference if you
are going. I'm sure he would be happy to speak with you.
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Maureen Cusack
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 3:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Charges for Invoicing
I find it INFURIATING that Iron Mountain is not capable of accounting
for
many charges on their monthly customer invoices. Today I'll focus on one
particular Iron Mountain charge, the 'trip charge'.
A 'trip charge', which is the same as a 'transportation visit' in Iron
Mountain's definitions, is for an Iron Mountain truck servicing a given
customer location to deliver and/or pick up one or more orders. Iron
Mountain says their regular 'free' invoice doesn't account for 'trip
charges' because their systems simply can't identify this particular
charge.
So they say they must charge customers $90 a month for a special
'detailed'
invoice to identify 'trip charges'. In addition, the regular
non-detailed invoice doesn't match the 'detailed' report in terms of
dates
of service. The billing cycles don't match. Iron Mountain refuses to
correct
this mismatch, while nevertheless referring to the $90 detailed invoice
as a
'custom' report. It took me over a year of haggling to even get Iron
Mountain to the point of offering to provide this detailed report, for
which
they charge me. This was partly due to Iron Mountain's attempts to
ignore their own definitions of 'trip charge' and 'transportation
visit'.
OK, first of all, in what way is Iron Mountain's inability to perform
basic
accounting in order to run their business MY problem that I should pay
to
work around? And what is with these semantic games that Iron Mountain
plays?
Let me add that the 'free' regular monthly invoice isn't free
because there's a $25 monthly admin fee for ....I'm not sure what
exactly....maybe the pleasure of doing business with Iron Mountain? How
can
I justify to my company paying a substantial bill every month for
services
that I cannot identify, that may or may not have been correctly charged
by
the vendor, or that may or may not have even occurred? My job is to
control
costs, that's what 'managing' the vendor account means. How can I do
that if
Iron Mountain won't follow basic rules of business? In what universe
does a
vendor expect the customer to write them a blank check every month?
If Iron Mountain cannot provide transparent invoicing then they should
fire
their accountants. If Iron Mountain cannot use their own systems to run
their business then maybe they need to address that problem first,
before
acquiring more of their competitors and trying to absorb more disparate
competitor systems.
No, none of these invoicing issues is addressed in the contract because
there is no contract in our case (a whole separate issue that predates
me).
Always have a contract and negotiate it carefully. Educate yourself
about
the dirty tricks that vendors pull. This listserv is a good forum to
bring
these problems into the open. Listserv members have seen it all.
Sunlight is
the best disinfectant.
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 5:25 PM, Trudy M Phillips <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Thanks for this response to my comment. I did initially think
immediately
> to the actions being taken by most banks on charges for debit card
use,
> mailed statements vs. online statements, minimum balance charges.
>
> So I guess this is another example of "greed" in our floundering
economy.
> And I am sure better service does not go along with the charges.
>
> You are correct that they are charging to see if they can get away
with it,
> just like the bank. When banks start losing deposits as people return
to a
> cash economy they will be shocked .
>
> Trudy M. Phillips
> Business Consultant
> "Bringing Order Out of Chaos"
> 205-699-8571 Fax 205-699-3278
> _www.trudyphillips.com_ (http://www.trudyphillips.com/)
>
>
> In a message dated 10/4/2011 3:21:14 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> Trudy, you are not identifying the problem correctly because you are
> concentrating your thought on the details of the process, and not
> looking at the big picture.
>
> They are not charging 30 dollars for a summary bill and 75 dollars
for a
> detailed bill because of paper and delivery costs, so addressing that
> issue is not going to get you anywhere.
>
> In the big picture they are charging this to see if they can get away
> with it, plain and simple. Storage is pretty much a commodity now and
> everyone knows what everyone else is charging. Business is down, real
> estate holdings are devalued and yet costs continue to rise. The
easiest
> fastest way to bring in more cash is to squeeze your existing
clients,
> so that is what they are trying. Obviously from responses here some
> people will just pay it, it's not their money, you know the
attitude...
>
> You also know that to the vendor, the difference between producing a
> detailed bill (which will actually telling you if they are
miss-billing
> you, rather than a summary, with which you have no clue) or a summary
> bill is the difference of selecting one report from a list over
another
> - in other words, almost no difference. So the cost differential
should
> not be $45!
>
> If you don't call them to task on this as I've done, well as I said,
> it's part of the job.
>
> William Creamer
> Records & Conflicts
> WF&G LLP
> NY, NY
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Trudy M Phillips
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 3:27 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [RM] Charges for Invoicing
>
> If you do not currently receive that in an email, ask if the fee can
be
>
> waived if it is emailed. Or, ask if they have a customer statement
link
> on
> their website you can go to and get your statement.
>
> Many types of companies are switching to these methods to avoid the
cost
> of
> preparing, and mailing a paper statement.
>
> Trudy M. Phillips
> Business Consultant
> "Bringing Order Out of Chaos"
> 205-699-8571 Fax 205-699-3278
> _www.trudyphillips.com_ (http://www.trudyphillips.com/)
>
>
>
>
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--
Maureen Cusack
San Francisco, CA
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