I have a question, wouldn't it be easier to stop by and ask it?
Not really. Although we have no problem with your stopping by to
pay your bill or ask a general question, the people who handle
billing are not always available and due to security concerns
(credit card numbers and such), not all people have access to the
billing machine. What is the best way to ask a question to our billing department?
Should you feel that a matter can not be handled anyway except in person,
please call ahead to make sure someone will be here when you are so you
are not inconvenienced by the trip out.
Where do I send email for the billing department? billing@datacruz.com
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What is the best way to contact Billing?
Via the Internet of course! Our billing staff reads their email on a regular basis, and getting the information via email gives us time to research the correct answer for you. Your telephone calls are always welcome, but billing personnel are not always available to speak at the time of your call. The same would apply for stopping by, we may not have anyone able to answer your questions at the time. Should you decide to call or stop by our billing department, we still urge you to send an email to our billing department so there is a datestamped record of your questions and/or requests.
Either Way, please be sure to include the following information when you have a billing question. Knowing the information will make it easier to come to the right answer for you quicker!
Name
UserID
Account ID (if available)
Date of bill from which there is a question
Specifics of the question
Any specifics that relate to the question (invoice #, date of purchase, etc).
Where do I send email for the billing department? billing@datacruz.com
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What are the specifics of your different billing plans?
Standard Dial Up plan?
The "Standard Dial Up" Internet plan includes 5Mb of web space for personal web pages. It also includes 1 POP Email address. Additional Email addresses can be purchased for household members for $5/startup, $2/month. A 5% discount is available on this plan for those who choose "Credit Card Autopayment". You can also receive a 5% discount for paying quarterly and a 10% discount if you pay annually. Prepayments are due by the 15th of the month for the period for which they are due. If you pay Quarterly or Annually with a credit card, the prepayment discount is taken first, then the credit card discount is taken on that amount.
In order to accomodate emerging technologies such as ISDN or "Multilink Channel Aggregation", we have decided to adopt an "hours used" approach versus a "single channel" to define our account limitations. We chose an hour level which accomodated well over 90% of our accounts usage patterns for the previous year as the limit. The level decided upon works out to a little over 8 hours/day, every day of the month, or 250 hours. Additional time connected will be charged at the rate of $1/hour. We do require that you set up your dual channel connections as "dynamic bandwidth Allocaion" so that idle channels are not being underutilized. During testing we have found that even companies with up to 4 active people on the net don't utilize the second channel 80%+ of the time. Up to two (2) simultaneous sessions from the same household may be active at the same time. Account sharing outside of your household members is strictly forbidden.
20-for-10 plan
The "20-for-10" Internet plan includes 2Mb of web space for personal web pages. It also includes 1 POP Email address. Additional Email addresses can be purchased for household members for $5/startup, $2/month. A 5% discount is available on this plan for those who choose "Credit Card Autopayment". If you wish to be billed via email for this plan, you must pay on either a Quarterly or Annual basis. You will receive a 5% discount for paying quarterly and a 10% discount if you pay annually. Prepayments are due by the 15th of the month for the period for which they are due. If you pay Quarterly or Annually with a credit card, the prepayment discount is taken first, then the credit card discount is taken on that amount. Under this plan you can use up to 20 hours of connect time per month. Additional connect time will be billed at the rate of $1/hour on a monthly basis. This plan is only available for single channel usage.
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I haven't been able to receive any e-mail yet. How do I set up my computer to receive my e-mail bill?
You need to click on this link for a page which will show you how to configure a program to receive e-mail.
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Why is my bill for this strange amount? What is Prorating?
The billing date for all of our customers is the first of the month. As a result, during the first billing period on a new customers bill, we have to "prorate" the
amount they pay in order to catch them up to the first day of the month. This can be a little more complex
with quarterly and/or annual discounts, but the basic concept is fairly simple. For most of our users, when they join up, they will pay the first month ($25) and the startup fee ($20). The next month, they will only pay the amount of the first prorated month.
| For example: |
A user joins up on January 11th and pays the $45 to get started at that time. On their next bill, they will see the following:
|
| 1/11 | Payment - Cash | $45.00 |
| 1/11 | Monthly fee - prorated - 1/11/98 to 1/31/98 | $16.13 |
| 2/1 | Signup | $20.00 |
| 2/1 | Monthly fee - 2/1/98 to 2/28/98 | $25.00 |
| Balance Due: | $16.13 |
The $16.13 is computed by taking the total amount ($25) and dividing it by the days in the month (31). Then you multiply it by the number of days left in the
month (20). The next bill should simply show your payment and a $25 charge for the full month.
For most people, the above should show how this is computed. If you have gone with a Quarterly or Annual account, the math is a bit different. An example can be found here.
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Why is my bill for this strange amount? What are Extra Hours or Additional Usage?
Each dialup account with datacruz has a set number of hours. If
you exceed these hours, Datacruz will bill you at the rate of
$1/hour. This amount will not be billed in the month immediately
following the hours incurred, but two months afterward to allow us
time to "validate" the hours. Should you feel that this amount is
in error, please pay the amount that you feel is due by the due
date, and enclose a letter stating why you do not believe that you
owe the additional amount and we will attempt to solve the dispute
as quickly as possible. Credit Card customers will not be billed
automatically for these hours on the first of the month, but will
instead be given until the 15th to either pay, or dispute the hours
shown on their bill. At this time, their card will be debited for
any undisputed hours.
For example
You have the $25/month account which has 250 hours/month of usage
and are billed by Credit Card automatically. Your usage for July
was 325 hours. In September you recieve on your email statement
a notice that there is $75 in additional usage fee's for the month
of July (Extra Hours). You believe that 50 of these hours were a
mistake and inform us of that. If the dispute is not resolved by
the 15th of the month, we will bill your card for the undisputed
$25 in charges, and wait until the disputed 50 hours has been
resolved before billing (or crediting) for the resolved amount.
Dual Channel usage utilizes hours at double the rate. For example:
If you are connected for one hour, of which 15 minutes of the
connection was using Dual Channels. This would actually result in
1:15 minutes of connect time being charged to your account (45
minutes single channel + 2 * 15 minutes of dual channel connect
time (30 minutes).
Currently our $25/month account gets 250 hours of usage and our
$10/month account gets 20 hours per month. Please do not hesitate
to ask any questions related to this or any portion of your bill!
Your feedback is important to us!
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What is this "Setup Fee" that I was billed for?
With most account types, dialup, email or web page, there is some initial setup involved on our end that occurs once. This setup fee is used to cover the costs of creating your account. We occassionally run promotions that waive this startup fee, and if you believe you shouldn't have been charged it, please write us at billing@datacruz.com and include any applicable invoice numbers and such with your explanation of why you shouldn't have been charged this fee.
Common setup fee's are:
| Dialup Account: | $20 |
| Extra E-mail ID: | $5 |
| Small Business Web Page: | $20 |
| Standard/Deluxe/Corporate Web Page: | $50 |
| Virtual Domain: | $150 |
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I was supposed to get X free months with my system purchase. Why did you send me a bill?
Datacruz profusely apologizes when this mistake is made, but unfortunately,
sometimes when a few free months are given, we are not informed. The solution is simple though. Please write billing@datacruz.com with a short explanation of why you received the free months and, if you can, include any pertinent information such as the date in which your purchase was made, invoice number, or anything else that you can think of that might help. So far we have not had a problem solving each of these problems given a little time.
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How do "Automatic Credit Card Payment" (ACCP) discounts get figured?
The 5% discount for paying via credit card is given to everyone that pays for their personal account via Automatic Credit Card Payments (ACCP). The process is very simple. Make sure that your account is set up for ACCP at least two days prior to the start of the month. Assuming that everything is done correctly, and the payment is not declined for any reason, including an expired card, and you will automatically recieve the 5% discount for the billing period.
Should any problems arise during the billing session (usually on the first day, or business day of the month), you may lose your discount for that month. If you feel that you should have recieved the discount, but somehow had lost it, please don't hesitate to contact our billing department about it!
This discount may or may not apply to business plans or with other discounts, if your unsure, please contact your sales representative or the billing department. This discount does apply along with Quarterly and Annual Discounts, but the discount is taken after the Quarterly/Annual discount is taken. For example:
You're monthly bill is $50 for two dialup accounts and you wish to switch to Quarterly payments. Normally you would pay $142.50 (($50 * 3) = $150 - 5% = $142.50), after taking the 5% quarterly discount. But, if automatically paying by credit card, you would take another 5% off that amount, which would make it $135.38.
Other discounts may be taken differently, such as those by employees of companies that have a dedicated connectino to us. The 5% for them is simply added on to the discount they are already recieving. This is mainly due to the way our software figures out the discounts and how they are put in. If you ever have a question on how your discount was figured out, feel free to ask!
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I thought I was all paid up, why does it say I owe ($10.00) on my bill?
Parenthesis around an amount on a statement show a credit or negative amount.
This means that you have a surplus balance and are paid up in advance. Should
you wish a refund on this amount vs. automatically applying it to your next bill(s),
please contact Billing to arrange this.
Please do not hesitate
to ask any questions related to this or any portion of your bill!
Your feedback is important to us!
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