billing
Latest
NCSoft do the time warp, again
There's no reason stated, but NCSoft are changing their entire billing department's time zone from Eastern Standard Time (EST, -5 hours GMT) to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, = GMT) starting tomorrow, a difference of about five hours. As it's just a time zone swap, nobody will lose or gain any hours they've already paid for, but depending on when you opened your NCSoft account you may be billed a day later in future. It's very important that you don't think about why they'd make this change, how you can go five hours into the future and not gain any extra time, or why the acronym doesn't match the full phrase. Trust me.
Hellgate: London, demons in the system
Just a warning to those of you with an active Hellgate: London subscription, or those considering getting one. The moment you unsubscribe to the service, all subscription benefits are terminated instantly -- regardless of how long your subscription was due to last.The cancellation page warns you this will happen immediately, but it's still annoying those who have encountered it.As one of our tipsters put it: "so in reality you aren't paying for one month of subscription time, you can't cancel and still play out the month you PAID for, they cut you out at the instant you unsubscribe". That means it's entirely possible to start a monthly subscription one day, unsubscribe the next, 27 days deleted from your account. Is this "fair game" to you, and just count the days manually before you cancel? Or more than a little discourteous? To me, if you pay for a month, you should get a month -- no exceptions. On the back of the recent billing problems, this doesn't make HG:L the most user-friendly of launches. Or the smoothest.Has this affected any Massively.com readers?[Thanks, RandomEngine & Anonymous!]
Hellgate: London subscription problems
Hellgate: London subscribers are reporting that they're being double billed for subscriptions to the online game, says Shacknews. Apparently not everyone has been double-billed, but some subscribers report that even after being charged the subscription doesn't show up in their account. It's not clear just how many users have been affected by either issue. The support forum thread has grown - err - massively (so to speak) though you have to log in to see it. Memory leaks, subscription problems, regional management issues and so forth - Is this just all part and parcel of getting rid of the new-car smell on an MMO, or do you personally think developers should be trying harder?
Cingular charges retiree $31,000 for calls he didn't make
While carriers all seem to be hiking up monthly rates every chance they get, it's unlikely that your incessant texting will rack up a $31,000 bill. Unfortunately for Oliver DeSofi, he had to deal with just that, as the 77-year old retiree opened his Cingular bill as he always has and found that his bill was about a brand new vehicle or two above the average. The bills contained phone calls from DeSofi's cellphone number from Nicaragua "at a rate of about 166 calls per day for 35 days, and sometimes four per minute, mostly to New Mexico numbers." The poor sap even got his lawyer to contact Cingular stating that the calls were "impossible" and that the $31,000 bill was bsolutely fraud, but Cingy wouldn't budge. The carrier still insisted that DeSofi set up a payment plan to start hacking away at the ridiculous charges until a newspaper inquiry finally forced the company to "give him the benefit of the doubt" due to how unusual it seemed compared to month's past. Although it doesn't surprise us a bit, Oliver is kicking Cingular/AT&T to the curb, and will probably watch all future bills like a hawk to ensure no similar mishaps start creeping on him.
iRatchet - invoicing and billing
The billing and invoicing shareware space sure is heating up lately, what with iBiz (my personal favorite), Billable and now iRatchet from Pretty Good Software. It has a nice array of features, including the typical Address Book, iCal and Spotlight integration, as well as mileage tracking, "robust" tax support, international formatting and - a pleasant surprise - .Mac and local backup support.A demo of this Universal Binary is of course available, while a license costs $45.[via Iconfactory Links]
iBiz beta 3 available
I just noticed that my favorite freelancing app, iBiz, is now in a v3 beta phase. At first glance the most notable change is that brushed metal has been given the pink slip, but there is a veritable storm of new features under the hood, including: a Document Monitor so iBiz can keep track of project files and how much time you spend on each iCal syncing via Sync Services - goodbye to manual lifting a Billing Section for more better tracking of invoices, estimates, payments and deposits new job events to help track commute mileage, as well as 'non-billable' for the freebies AppleScript and Automator support - if they keep this up, your clients won't even need you anymore Quick Timers and an improved menu bar utility HTML templates with full-blown CSS support and a ton more. iBiz went universal a while ago, and users of previous version can upgrade to 3 for a mere $19.99, though its retail price has increased from $29.99 to $49.99 (in my opinion, from tinkering with this beta: it's still more than worth it). iBiz Server, for multi-employee and computer environments, is $89.99, which includes two client licenses.
