The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC), the residential utility advocate, is alerting SBC Ohio telephone customers of an error that has affected approximately 5,300 Ohio households that have signed up for the company's "National Connections" and "National Connections Plus" long distance calling plans. Earlier this year, SBC mistakenly signed up some customers for these plans who did not qualify. The terms of the plans allow only customers who purchase certain features such as Call Waiting and voicemail from SBC to qualify for the plans, which offer unlimited long-distance calling for an extra $20 per month.

A pair of eBay members have initiated a class-action suit against the online auctioneer over a problem with the company's latest billing system.

Fran Weidman has been meticulous about her EBay account while auctioning vintage dolls for the past seven years. So when EBay claimed her account was 60 days past due and barred her from additional listings, she was very surprised.

EBay's move to a new billing system has some sellers seeing double--double entries of debits and credits on their auction accounts, that is. Company executives say the software snafu hasn't caused any overcharges, but some sellers complain the auction giant is too slow to address the problem, and that the ongoing fix is adding to the confusion.

The company is amid a significant billing and collection transition, which, if not done well, could hurt the company's business. "We are in the process of transferring to a third-party service provider our worldwide billing, collection and credit evaluation functions. The third-party provider will also track, on an automated basis, our growing number of AdSense revenue share agreements. These functions are critical to our operations and involve sensitive interactions between us and our users, advertisers and members of our Google Network."

Amazon.com over the past week charged thousands of its customers for "free" shipping and did not apply discounts they were supposed to receive, the e-commerce giant said Thursday.

Hotwire double-billed hundreds of its customers over the weekend as a result of a system "glitch," the online travel company said Wednesday.

Some eBay sellers got an unwelcome surprise over the holiday weekend as the company double charged their bank accounts for their auction fees.

An undisclosed number of MSN Internet Access subscribers today were charged around $500 on their credit card accounts as the result of a computer glitch, a Microsoft representative confirmed.