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Downloaded call history shows wrong duration values. Please correct the problem
Hello,
I downloaded my call history records to check how my bill for my international calls was computed. The first thing I noticed was that the duration column had values like 26:02:00, 56:30:00, etc. If these are hours, it does not make sense that a single call would have a duration time of over 2 days!
I called billing department, and the lady said she has no access to my call history, and directed me to the Fraud department. After about 3 hours total of being put on hold, I finally got smart and clicked on the first option, and Greg from Fraud answered. Where my value was 26:02:00, greg had 87; where I had 58:01:00, Greg had 87. So now I have 2 different values for the same call!
I went back to the web site to look at the values. I then discovered the download program incorrectly translates durations that are more then on1 hour:
Web site has 1:26:01, download has 26:02:00 Correct value should be 87 seconds
web site has 1:56:30, download has 56:30:00. Correct value should be 117 seconds
Thie big error causes confusion and hours and hours of support calls, not to count frustration for clients like me.
Who should we contact about the technical issues with your download program, and request an enhancement to also include the cost of the call?
Thank you
Maria
S101
Visitor
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1 Message
9 years ago
Same problem still exists. Did you come up with a workaround?
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ComputerJoe
New Member
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2 Messages
8 years ago
I downloaded the CallHistory.xls call history file and opened it with Microsoft Office Excel.
1) The duration cell formatting changes row by row depending on the amount.
2) The duration time is loaded 60x higher than actual time. (Actual minutes are hours in the spreadsheet.)
3) The duration time is often inaccurate, not reflecting the actual length of the call.
Explanation of 1):
All calls under 23 minutes long display duration as h:mm where minutes are displayed as hours and seconds are displayed as minutes. All calls that run over 23 minutes display duration in format h:mm:ss .
Example:
Duration
(mm:ss)
15:23 call 1 was 15 minutes, 23 seconds long.
26:18:00 call 2 was 26 minutes, 18 seconds long.
6:34 call 3 was 6 minutes, 34 seconds.
Workaround Solution to 1):
Select the entire column (click on top of Column D) and then change the format to h:mm:ss.
Now the above example becomes:
Duration
(mm:ss)
15:23:00 call 1 15 minutes, 23 seconds
26:18:00 call 2 26 minutes, 18 seconds
6:34:00 call 3 6 minutes, 34 seconds.
Workaround solution to 2):
Change Column D heading from "Duration (mm:ss)" to "Duration * 60".
Create a new duration column. Use, say, column F. Label it Duration (mm:ss).
Set the entire column F format to custom format [h]:mm:ss.
Click on Cell F2. Type =D2/60 and press Enter.
Click again on Cell F2 and drag the bottom-right corner of the selection rectangle down to the bottom of the F column to populate the column with corrected duration values (where minutes are really minutes instead of hours and seconds are really seconds instead of minutes).
D E F
Duration Call Status Duration
(*60) (mm:ss)
15:23:00 DIALED 0:15:23
26:18:00 DIALED 0:26:18
6:34:00 DIALED 0:06:34
I have no fix for 3). For instance if a call actually went on for 72 minutes, 31 seconds the duration reported will be 3 seconds. (Well, the duration on the .xls file will be 3:00 and when you divide by 60 to get the true time it will be 0:03 (mm:ss) .) And 0:03 is what is displayed on the web page and in the .pdf file. Which isn't the 1:12:31 or 72:31 you would expect. Comcast will have to fix 3).
ADDENDUM:
You might be asking why I didn't just change the format for all of column D to h:mm? It would be a much simpler fix!
But there lies the downfall of a programmer. You would be merely propagating the error and hiding it. If anyone should try to perform an operation (calculation, formula, addition, etc.) on that duration column they would be operating on hours and minutes that were labeled as minutes and seconds. Surprise! 12 min + 12 min now = 1 day!
Have a great day,
- Computer Joe
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