Opening and Resolving Disputes

About Disputes and Settlements

A CSR creates a dispute when customers disagree with the amount they are asked to pay and the problem requires investigation before it can be resolved. Disputes and settlements credit or debit the currency or noncurrency balances of a customer's account but do not return money to the customer directly.

The dispute process involves two distinct activities: opening a dispute and settling that dispute. A dispute is a transaction that records a customer's objection to a currency amount billed to an account. A settlement is a transaction that resolves a dispute by crediting or debiting all, part, or none of the dispute amount to the account.

As with payments and adjustments, the BRM system creates a dispute item when the CSR enters a dispute. The disputed amount typically reduces the Due of a bill and the current balances of the customer's account. BRM does not request payment for the disputed amount. If an item is under dispute (that is, the disputed field is nonzero) the bill item remains open even if the Due becomes zero.

In settling a dispute, the CSR can grant the entire disputed amount to the customer, grant only part of the disputed amount, or deny the dispute and again request payment for the entire disputed amount. The BRM system creates a settlement item for the amount that is not granted and transfers amounts between the settlement item and the disputed bill item. After the dispute resolution, the Due and the current balance in the customer's account balance group reflect what the customer owes.

When the dispute item is created, its Total and Due are initially equal, but the BRM system immediately transfers the credit in the Due field of the dispute item to the disputed bill item, makes the Due of the dispute item zero, and closes the dispute item.

After a settlement, the amount of the dispute that is granted to the customer appears in the Adjusted field of the disputed bill item and in the histories of the disputed item and the settlement item.

For currency balances, credit disputes decrease the Due of a bill or bill item. If the customer is disputing the currency balance of an event for credit, the dispute removes the balance impact of the disputed event from the account. Debit disputes have the opposite effect.

Note:

For noncurrency balances, event disputes are recorded but do not directly affect the balance until the dispute is settled. At that point, the disputed balance is increased by the amount of the settlement.

Disputes and settlements are made at various levels, as appropriate to the situation. The way that BRM processes disputes and settlements varies slightly from level to level, as follows:

Bill level: CSRs can dispute or settle an entire bill or a selection of bill items. In either case, BRM creates a single dispute or settlement item and alters the Due of each bill item covered by the dispute or settlement. Bill disputes and settlements can be thought of as a set of item disputes or settlements covered under the umbrella of a single dispute or settlement item.

Bill disputes and settlements can act against A/R bills only. CSRs cannot dispute or settle a bill from a nonpaying bill unit by filing a bill dispute or settlement directly against that bill. Instead, they file the bill dispute or settlement against the parent A/R bill. The dispute amount cannot exceed the total amount of the bill against which the dispute is applied, and the settlement amount cannot exceed the total dispute amount for the bill.
Item level: Disputes and settlements at this level operate as either a CSR-initiated action against a single bill item or as a unilateral action against a set of bill items initiated by a bill dispute or settlement. Depending on how the dispute or settlement was initiated, BRM creates dispute and settlement items as follows:
- If the CSR initiated the dispute or settlement at the item level, one dispute or settlement item is created for the item he or she chooses.
- If the dispute or settlement was initiated at the bill level, a single dispute or settlement item will cover all the individual item disputes that make up the bill dispute.
To customize item level disputes, use these opcodes:
- PCM_OP_BILL_POL_VALID_DISPUTE. See "Customizing Item Disputes" in BRM Opcode Guide.
- PCM_OP_BILL_POL_VALID_SETTLEMENT. See "Settling Disputed Items" in BRM Opcode Guide.
Event level: CSRs can dispute and settle any event and they can dispute or settle multiple events from an account in one operation.

When an event dispute is opened, BRM creates one dispute event for each disputed event, establishing a one-to-one correspondence between the dispute event and the original event. The dispute event updates the original item's Dispute field. BRM bundles all the individual dispute events into one dispute item.

Similarly, when you settle an event dispute, BRM creates a settlement event for each dispute event. In this case, BRM transfers the settlement amount to the Adjusted field of the original item and the denied amount to the Due field. As with disputes, BRM bundles all individual settlement events into one settlement item.

Table 3-1 summarizes the dispute and settlement types.

Table 3-1 Dispute and Settlement Types

Dispute or Settlement Type	Currency	Noncurrency
Bill dispute or settlement	Yes	No
Item dispute or settlement	Yes	No
Event dispute or settlement	Yes	Yes

CSRs open and resolve disputes by using Billing Care or Customer Center.

Reserving and Freeing Balances for Disputes and Settlements

To ensure that balances are not misused when a dispute is open, BRM reserves balances disputed at the event level. The reservation process protects the account balance from being credited for the dispute amount until settlement occurs.

For example, if the customer disputed a 10-minute charge on his bill, this amount would be credited to the account balance and, for prepaid accounts, would increase the prepaid amount. However, placing a reservation on those 10 minutes lowers the credit limit for the account and prevents the disputed time from being freely used as it would be in a normal credit situation.

Configuring Event Notification for Disputes and Settlements

When an event dispute is opened or settled, BRM uses event notification to call opcodes that perform the appropriate follow-up operations. Disputes and settlements use the following events for event notification:

/event/billing/dispute/notify
/event/billing/settlement/notify

Before you can use the event dispute and settlement feature, you must configure the event notification feature as follows:

If your system has multiple configuration files for event notification, merge them.

See "Merging Event Notification Lists" in BRM Developer's Guide.

Ensure that the merged file includes the following information from the BRM_home/sys/data/config/pin_notify file:

# Settlements and disputes related event notifications 
2354    0    /event/billing/settlement/notify
2355    0    /event/billing/dispute/notify

(Optional) If necessary to accommodate your business needs, add, modify, or delete entries in your final event notification list.

See "Editing the Event Notification List" in BRM Developer's Guide.
(Optional) If necessary to accommodate your business needs, create custom code for the event notification to trigger.

See "Triggering Custom Operations" in BRM Developer's Guide.
Load your final event notification list into the BRM database.

See "Loading the Event Notification List" in BRM Developer's Guide.

For more information, see "Using Event Notification" in BRM Developer's Guide.