Re: Watch for a fake bill by Neil
Neil
Tue Aug 03 18:38:24 CDT 2004
I agree with Alex on many points. My magazine subscriptions in the UK are
generally followed up by 3 months to go, 1 month to go, renew now to keep
your preferred customer discount and claim a prize, your subscription has
ended would you like to resubscribe type correspondence. Don't know if I'm
just lucky in who I subscribe to in this respect.
The point about AP departments is also very apt. I incur a lot of
monthly/quarterly/annual bills from within the IT department. Examples are
rental on dedicated web servers, SLAs, maintenance contracts, hardware
leasing agreements, MSDN, now MS Software Assurance, many other software
subscriptions/renewals, affiliate web marketing schemes, web directory
listings, comms lines, data management fees, and at the lower end of the
scale magazines and simple web resources like news2news.com (worth every
penny), etc.
It's generally a long drawn out case of reconciling all this with AP every
month. It becomes more difficult when AP are given an invoice for a company
they know they have previously paid regularly. From my perspective, I've
cancelled the arrangement so I shouldn't be billed anymore, and AP shouldn't
receive a bill accordingly. Sometimes we get blatantly fraudulent invoices
from companies or individuals we don't know, so the excercise is worth
doing.
I've heard enough good news about Stonefield to believe you're ethical, and
can understand your exception to some of the terms Alex used, but at least
you could consider rewording your material. Better yet, you could consider
segregating your mailing list into customers, past customers, prospects and
sending them more appropriate material. Less grief, far more reward.
Regards,
Neil
"Doug Hennig" <dhennig@stonefield.com> wrote in message
news:b7f3eb69.0408030719.7b495090@posting.google.com...
> Hi Alex.
>
> > Make sure to watch out for a fake bill from Stonefield ... I guess they
are
> > desperate enough for business that they have resorted to sending a fake
bill
> > to try to get return customers. Very, very unethical business strategy
in
> > my opinion.
>
> I want to clear up a few misconceptions others may have received from
> your posting. As Fred pointed out, we went to a subscription model
> several years ago. Initially, we simply contacted people whose
> subscriptions had lapsed or were about to. However, a lot of people
> asked us to simply send them an invoice. As Fred pointed also out,
> pretty much every magazine in the world does this, so we considered
> that it was a normal business practice and started doing the same
> thing. I subscribe to several software packages and those companies do
> the same thing. In the four years we've done this, you're the first
> person who's mentioned it as a issue.
>
> Second, I think it's extremely unfair for you to call this a "fake
> bill" or "fraudulent invoice". As you pointed out (in a second
> message, rather than the initial inflamatory one), a cover letter
> accompanies the invoice that clearly states the purpose and the fact
> that renewal is optional. We're not trying to trick anyone; we simply
> make it easier for people to re-subscribe than requiring multiple
> communications back and forth to do that. If someone does not wish to
> re-subscribe, they simply don't pay the invoice (again, just like
> renewing or not renewing a magazine subscription).
>
> Third, your comment "The reason I posted this, is that at a decent
> sized business fraudulent invoices from legitimate vendors could
> accidentally be paid. I want to make sure no one's AP department
> accidentally pays for goods/services not ordered" is rather strange.
> I've worked with hundreds of companies in my career, from Mom and Pop
> organizations to some of the biggest and best-known companies in the
> world. In my experience, and I'm sure most consultants would agree
> with me, it's hard enough to get a legitimate invoice paid let alone a
> "fake bill". Only a company with very loose business practices would
> pay an invoice without first inquiring the purpose of the invoice and
> whether the goods or services had in fact been received.
>
> Finally, when I have a problem with a company, I contact them to find
> out whether they did something wrong or if I simply misunderstood
> something. Only if I don't get satisfaction do I pass on to others
> that the company is difficult to deal with. That's the fair way to
> work out problems with others, rather than attacking them in a public
> forum where people who may not be familiar with them can get a wrong
> impression.
>
> Doug