Fri, 20 May 2011

Telus Paperless Billing WTF??

My company has a Blackberry for tech support and we use Telus as our wireless carrier. Telus has recently switched to paperless billing, which is fine. However, I need a PDF of our bill to print out to keep our accountant happy.

Here's how a sensible workflow would look:

1. Telus would send us an email with a link in it.
2. We'd click the link once and be presented with a login page.
3. After logging in, our PDF bill would be available either immediately or by clicking one more link.

Here's the actual work flow:

1. Telus sends us an email with a link in it.
2. I click the link once and am presented with a login page.
3. I log in.
4. The web site asks me which province I'm in. WTF??? I just logged in! Telus has my address information already!
5. I'm sent to a generic account page. I have to click "View your e-bill."
6. Then I have to click "View all monthly bills".
7. Then I have to click the most recent bill by date. Huzzah! PDF!

I asked Telus why the couldn't just attach the PDF bill to the original email or simplify the process. They claimed attaching the bill would be a security/privacy risk and never did explain why their process is so complex. Gah!

Update: But wait! There's more! In my haste to click the most recent monthly bill, I failed to notice that it was for last month. The current bill isn't available yet in PDF form.

There is an option to get a text-formatted bill. I went through the several clicks to enable that and got a notification saying that the formatting of the bill was "in progress" and that it would eventually be available as a .zip file. Wha???? All the billing data is clearly displayed in (printer-unfriendly) HTML. Why a background process to generate a plain-text version??

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