$16 million cable bill quickly reversed by Time Warner

Mary Rice — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:50:16 +0000

Time Warner Cable attributes the $16 million bill to a "clerical error" the computerized billing system did not catch. Image: Flickr / dragonflyeye / CC-BY-SA

Computerized billing systems are advertised as a way to make life easier. A $16 million cable bill is the latest in a long string of accidental overcharges that call that into question. While Time Warner has already reversed the bill, the incident reveals the danger of putting your finances on autopilot.

The $16 million cable bill

Daniel DeVirgilio is an Ohio resident who subscribes to Time Warner cable service. At the end of last month, DeVirgilio received notification that his credit card had been declined when he tried to pay his cable bill. Time Warner had tried to charge him $16.4 million, more than $1 million for each of the pay-per-view basketball games he had watched during March Madness. Upon being informed of the glitch, Time Warner reversed the charges.

The danger of financial autopilot

Daniel DeVirgilio, like many other people, had his cable bill set to autopay. It’s common now for bill-payers hand over their credit or debit card number and agree to have it charged monthly. For many bill-payers, this means not even looking at their monthly bills, just knowing it is paid. Daniel DeVirgilio only discovered his $16 million cable bill when he got notice that his credit card had been declined for the amount of the bill.

The policy of watchful waiting

As the $16 million cable bill highlights, putting your finances on autopilot can be dangerous. Most people (this writer included), however, have a tough time remembering the due date of every bill. There are several options for watchful waiting that will help you save money without forgetting a due date or three. The first option is to do the simplest thing — pay each bill the day you receive it. Financially, that may not always be possible, so tracking the due dates on a calendar you see every day is another way to make sure you don’t miss anything. Lastly, you can put your bills on auto-payment, but schedule a few hours, once or twice a month, to read over each bill to ensure that there are no surprises. The likelihood you will encounter a $16 million cable bill is small, but an extra few dollars each month can add up very quickly.

Sources

Digital Life Today
Yahoo News

AOL may soon make a Yahoo buyout offer

Mary Rice — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:46:33 +0000

AOL is in preliminary talks to make an offer for Yahoo Inc. Image: Flickr / RobotSkirts / CC-BY-SA

Yahoo Inc., is a company with a huge number of potential suitors. AOL is considering making a purchase offer for Yahoo Inc. AOL is just one of the many entities considering a purchase offer for Yahoo — private-equity firms are also in discussions.

Potential merger with Yahoo and AOL

AOL is an Internet and media company that began life as America Online. Yahoo Inc., is also an Internet and media company. Yahoo makes the majority of its income from search and advertising business. AOL and Yahoo have discussed merging once before, in 2008. The companies would compete mostly in search and advertising, where the two separate companies are not doing well against search behemoth Google. While both companies have a respectable number of visitors, their visitor interaction and time on site has been going down.

How AOL would buy Yahoo

There are multiple options for AOL to possibly buy Yahoo. Yahoo has a long-standing partnership with Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Microsoft tried to buyout Yahoo, but eventually withdrew their bid. AOL is in discussions with several private equity firms in order to fund the purchase of Yahoo. Silver Lake Partners and the storied Blackstone group are both front-runners for possibly funding the AOL-Yahoo partnership. These partners would maintain at least partial control of the partnership, though potential details have yet to be disclosed.

What AOL Yahoo would look like

AOL and Yahoo are both companies that are familiar with mergers and spin-offs. AOL was spun off of Time Warner Cable in 2009, after they originally merged a few years earlier. Just this year, Yahoo has created a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. As talks are in their early stages, there are no details on how the merged company would operate. However, it is a possibility that search will, for the time being, come down to a Google vs. AOL / Yahoo / Bing conglomerate.

Sources:

Wall Street Journal

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