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You should change the dates on your billing cycle. I just logged in to your site and expected to have an additional 1000 or so queries because today is “9/19/2011” and the billing cycle was from “8/19/2011” to “9/19/2011”. Usually when the period ends on a day it is midnight of that day so I would still have had 6 hours or so to use up my remaining 1000 queries. I logged in to see exactly how many I had left only to discover that they were already gone. It isn’t that big of a deal but it should be changed to reflect the accepted practice. The date range should have been “8/19/2011 – 9/18/2011” if I lost any queries that weren’t available as of midnight last night. As it is I’m not really sure when it happened but I suspect it was last night. |
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You make an excellent point, one that we have spent time debating around here. There are quite a few different accepted billing methods and we looked at most of them before settling on the one we chose, which favors our customer every time. Here are a few examples of different billing methods: Monthly, rounded to the day - If you sign up for mobile phone service on 15May2011 at 6pm your billing cycle will be on the 15th of each month. That means that at 0001 (midnight +1 minute) on 15Jun2011 you will be billed the full monthly charge. The downside to that is, what happened to those 18 hours that you paid for but didn't get on the first day because you signed up in the evening? Monthly, first of the month - If you sign up for mobile phone service on 15May2011 at 6pm your first bill will be a prorated amount that gets you to the first of them month and thereafter your billing cycle will be on the 1st of each month. This easy to plan for but we have the same issue, what about those extra hours from the first day? How we do it -
If you sign up for our LiveAddress service on 15May2011 at 6pm your billing cycle will be on the 15th day of each month at 6pm. This ensures that you get everything that you pay for. We don't round up or down, just use the actual date and time. Thus, we will show that your billing cycle is from 15May-15Jun. If we were to go from 15May-14Jun we would be shorting our customers so we prefer to be exact instead of rounding. We certainly welcome suggestions and are constantly reviewing our policies to make them better. |
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I think most people would agree with me that the billing period should just end at midnight on the day prior to todays date next month. While I agree that your current system is inherently fair the fact that you don't tell me what time my billing period ends means that I don't know exactly what time on the final day my remaing verifications expire. So for all intents and purposes I have to make sure that I use them up on the previous day to be safe. We are definitely looking at this for you and will ask around to see what the best solution is. It seems as if BOTH methods are accurate but yours is easier to understand.
(20 Sep '11, 17:07)
Jeffrey - SmartyStreets ♦♦
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Asked: 20 Sep '11, 12:50
Seen: 265 times
Last updated: 15 Feb, 12:50