Maureen,
I understand your frustration. Plain and simple, the charges for getting an invoice is a way to increase revenue! Same thing with the monthly administration fee, order minimum fee, etc. Never forget, however, that you are the consumer. You have a choice.
You can either:
1. Negotiate your concerns to the point where either they change or you accept what they are offering and live with it.
2. Go somewhere else. There are many records management companies out there. They may have options that you will find more acceptable. Who knows, a smaller company might even work harder to provide the level of customer service that you seem to be missing.
If you do go somewhere else, you will have an opportunity to address all of your areas of concern in your new contract.
Mark
Underground Archives
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--- On Thu, 10/6/11, Maureen Cusack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Maureen Cusack <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Charges for Invoicing
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, October 6, 2011, 3:11 PM
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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