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newsletter://mv.com
April 2001
Much ado about billing
Most of you will notice that you're receiving this bill only about a
month after your last one. This marks the beginning of some of the billing
changes that we have been talking about in our newsletters for the past 7
months. Effective as of this bill we are completing the transition from
our former policy of "billing in arrears" to the kind of subscription
billing practiced by most ISPs and many other services.
In the past, we've sent out invoices every two months, charging for
services that we've already delivered. This has meant that on the average
we typically get paid for service 3 months or more after the start of the
service period -- no matter how you look at it, quite long after the ser-
vice is delivered. Starting with this bill, we will be charging the base
fee for the upcoming month's service period. If there are additional usage
fees not covered by the base fee that can only be known after the service
period is over, an adjustment will appear on your next bill.
For the current bill: remember that there was no base fee charged last
time for March, so March's charges will will be due at this time, as well
as the base fee for April. Next time around your bill will include any
adjustments to that base fee for April (typical users will see no adjust-
ments; you will only see adjustments if your usage falls outside of the
normal usage already accounted for in the base fee) plus the base fee for
May.
This is part of an ongoing process to tighten up our billing process.
Billing has never been our strongest point (long time customers will
undoubtedly emphatically agree), but we're working to see that it's no
longer a weak point. By making sure we control this process more care-
fully, we can finally add billing services such as accepting credit card
payments and making email invoicing easier for everyone. We're trying to
be gentle with the changes, and so we're not laying them all out at once,
but read on for a reminder of some of the things you can expect.
Bill format
We are working on a redesign of the invoice format, in part to make
email billing clearer. But for this bill we've tried not to deviate too
much from our familiar format, so that you won't be faced with a new
billing period and a totally new format at the same time. We think that
the information on the current invoice is largely self-explanatory, but
here's an overview.
Your account usage summary appears in a box near the top of this bill
as usual. You'll note that you see summaries for the previous month
(March) and the next month (April). The entries for the previous month
contain the usage times as usual, but the entries for the next month don't
contain usage information, representing only the base fee for that period.
Now, it's possible that your actual usage for that month will be different
from the base fee (you may use more time than (say) the 300 hour allotment,
or you may add more services to your account). The difference between the
base fee and the actual bill amount will appear on the next bill.
There's also a help page on home.mv.net, under the Invoices link in
the Customer Info section.
What's next?
We do expect to institute other changes as part of our tightening up
of the billing process. We're not being unduly hard here; on the contrary,
we've been pretty loose about billing and receipts in the past, and we're
just working to fix that. In addition, our expenses (like those of most
other businesses) continue to increase as time goes by, and we'd prefer to
address this for now by taking some of these steps. These changes will
include:
* A statement fee for paper billing. You'll have the options of being
billed by email or simply keeping your account balance current. If we
have to generate a paper bill, either because you choose that method
or because of an unpaid balance, a statement fee will be added;
* Optional credit card billing;
* Service fees for reinstating a suspended account;
* Changes to policy on dormant accounts. We currently have a (largely
undocumented) "dormant" account rate that is applied to dialup
accounts that do not get used during an entire month. This rate was
originally introduced and intended to support email forwarding for
customers who had moved elsewhere. We intend to make this an official
rate that must be selected in advance rather than happening automati-
cally: selection of the dormant rate will make it clearer that it's
merely for email or web forwarding purposes.
Please note that we are NOT announcing those changes right now; we are sim-
ply presenting them here as we have been since last September in order to
avoid surprising you. When we do announce the changes we will have a
billing policy on our web page that you can refer to.
Extra credit
From time to time we have special promotions aimed at new customers,
typically offering discounts or credits for new accounts. This month we
are making a promotional offer to current customers as well.
Return your payment with an extra amount, up to $200, and we will
credit your account with 15% of that extra amount (the 15% credit is non-
refundable). In order to take advantage of this offer, the following must
be met:
* Your bill payment, not counting the extra amount, must completely pay
your account balance (note that this includes next month's base fee).
* You must fill out and return the coupon enclosed with this bill. If
you are receiving an email invoice, you can print the coupon on our
web page (to go www.mv.com and follow the Specials link) and return
it. We must receive this coupon so that we can process the credit.
* We must receive the coupon with the extra payment by April 30, 2001.
* The 15% credit only applies to an amount that you pay when there is no
balance owed on your account. The maximum amount eligible for the 15%
credit is $200 (for which amount you would get a non-refundable credit
of $30).
de-inc.com domain
Earlier this year we made a special offer to customers of Digital
Entropy, an ISP in Atkinson NH that ceased operation at the end of December
2000. As part of this offer we announced our intention to purchase the
domain name de-inc.com from that ISP, so that we could maintain the email
addresses for Digital Entropy customers who took advantage of this offer.
Digital Entropy graciously allowed us to maintain these addresses while the
purchase was being negotiated and completed. As of early March, we com-
pleted the purchase of that domain name. If you were a Digital Entropy
customer and would like your old email address to be mapped to your new MV
address, and haven't done so already, please contact us.
Note that we did not purchase any of of the business or operations of
Digital Entropy itself, we merely acquired the domain name.
Vitts closing
Just a quick note about the closing of Vitts Networks that you've
probably all either read about or been impacted by. MV has been working to
provide new connectivity to some of Vitts customers where we can. In addi-
tion, Verizon has recently agreed to move existing DSL circuits serving
Vitts customers to competitors' equipment in the same central offices where
they can; in some cases we have been able to initiate such a transfer to
our DSL/C service. Our staff has experienced several periods of heavy call
load as Vitts customers have been making inquiries of us (and, presumably,
other ISPs as well); we appreciate your patience during these periods.
MV Communications PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000