Analysis of BMG accounting records

1. Since we notified Chase that we are disputing charges that appeared on our card statements dated 2004-04-21 and 2004-05-21, we will ignore the BMG records with card charge dates before 2004-03-28. However, note the duplicate entries on the group with charge dates of 2004-02-23 for another example of a group that we never ordered.


2. The shipping date was originally supplied by BMG in text format. That has been changed into date format. The dates have been reformatted to ISO standard, with 4 digit years. The use of two digit years is simply to silly to contemplate.


3. A "line" column has been added, so this sheet can be sorted into other orders, and then resorted back into the original order.


4. A "kept" column has been added, to record those items that we actually ordered, received, and kept. All other items were never ordered by us.


5. A "refund" column has been added, with values of "old" for charges before our cutoff of 2004-03-28, "missing" for charges where BMG still owes us a refund, and "ok" for charges for items that we actually ordered, received, and kept.


6. A "delta" column has been added, which is the number of days between the shipping date, and the charge/return date. For normal entries, this number is either 0 or 1, reflecting that BMG charges the card when they ship the product. For returned items, this is the number of days between the original shipment, and the return of the product to BMG.


7. A few minor errors discovered while matching these records to the Chase credit card billing records have also been corrected.
   
   BMG originally showed a single charge of $15.45 on 2004-03-30. That was actually three separate charges of $5.15 on that date.
   
   BMG originally showed a charge of $10.25 on 2004-04-14, but that was actually $10.30, since it is the sum of two $5.15 items.


8. The "status" column on the BMG sheet has two entries shown as "removed" both for $283.36, apparently for Play Station 2 video games. Did some anti-fraud element at BMG kick in and flag those duplicate entries as bogus?


9. Speaking of duplicate entries, consider the product with shipping dates of 2004-04-28. Notice that almost all of those come in pairs of duplicate entries, including the block from line 361 thru 368 which BMG apparently claims has not been returned. We never ordered those, and if they ever arrived here they were returned. This seems to be a case of some internal BMG ordering system malfunction.


10. I notice that the same selection number (eg. D165131) sometimes has two different descriptions, but since there is a reasonable technical explanation for that it will be ignored here.


11. Oops! Look at original line numbers 268, 269, 270, 273, 281, 282, 311 and 313. Why do those have charge dates 15 days after the shipping date, when it is clearly BMG policy to charge the card within one day of shipping?


12. There are a number of huge pricing discrepancies in these BMG records. For example, sort by selection number and look at selections D110094, D115600, D128170, D144984, D151670, D251301 and D251386. The price for the same selection number is as much as 700% higher on some days. Ok, that might be due to some special promotions, or the general decrease in price after some selection becomes less popular, and you need to clear the stock. Try explaining the different prices for the two copies of D251301 that supposedly shipped on the same day. This is yet another case where it seems the BMG ordering system has some internal malfunction. Are BMG using SAP for their ordering systems like HP? The problems seem to be similar.


13. The end result is that BMG still owes us credit card refunds for $2075.89 for mechandise that we never ordered, and if received it was refused with "return to sender".