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 .