New Telecom Bill format file size increase

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › New Telecom Bill format file size increase

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plambrechtsen

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#908313 5-Oct-2013 09:11

freitasm: Or Telecom could just send an email saying "You owe us $8.50" or "We owe you $8.50", followed with "If you want an invoice reply to this email."

The second is my case. I have to call their helpdesk sometime to get them to mail me a cheque seeing I don't have Telecom services anymore. Or they could use Paypal to make it completely automated...

Strangely enough that's exactly what we do, plus a link to download the PDF if you want to (as it's not attached to the email).

That works pretty well for us as I don't even bother to open up the bill personally and just copy and paste the value from the email into online banking and I am done.

I do however agree with the OP that the bill size is quite large, and have raised it with the PM and Marketing folks about if an opt-out exists, or at least having two formats of the bill, the print format and the online format with much lower-res versions of the marketing pages as I personally agree keeping the PDF for archiving / tax purposes is a valid reason which would mean it is very unlikely to get printed and thus lower res images saving on file size is a reasonable request. I don't expect an answer straight away but a number of folks have been directed to this thread so they are aware of it.

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freitasm

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#908344 5-Oct-2013 10:10

There you go. Only two months out of Telecom and I already forgot how it was. I must be getting old.

freitasm on Keybase | My technology disclosure

jonb

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#919556 22-Oct-2013 10:01

plambrechtsen:
freitasm: Or Telecom could just send an email saying "You owe us $8.50" or "We owe you $8.50", followed with "If you want an invoice reply to this email."

The second is my case. I have to call their helpdesk sometime to get them to mail me a cheque seeing I don't have Telecom services anymore. Or they could use Paypal to make it completely automated...

Strangely enough that's exactly what we do, plus a link to download the PDF if you want to (as it's not attached to the email).

There a bit of a problem on firefox, when the pdf doesn't display when you click 'View My Bill', either from webmail or the telecom account pages. The pdf is downloaded as 'GetBillImage' without a .pdf file name extension.

old3eyes

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#919653 22-Oct-2013 12:59

I'm using FireFox Aurora and it downloads and displays the PDF fine.

Regards,

Old3eyes

mattwnz

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#919672 22-Oct-2013 13:30

scuwp: Sigh...first world problems. Surely we should be focusing on something more important like those poor Aucklanders who have to mow their own berms! Poor souls.

I agree the size is too large for a few pieces of paper, but I think I can handle the pain of a few hundred kb.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Can't believe it reached 3 pages.

boby55

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#919690 22-Oct-2013 13:53

I have a box of 100 Floppy disks somewhere, You can have these if you want, That will at least give you a few years of storage for your bills if that's an issue :L

silverlake

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#926980 4-Nov-2013 13:31

RockCartel: In Sept Telecom change their billing format.
Unfortunately they now include promotional photos on the bill.
In June, July, Aug the bills were always 35Kb, this month it's up to 1.3Mb
Does someone know if I can swap back to the old 'lite' bill format?

Past bill file sizes in Kb
04.pdf 49
05.pdf 48
06.pdf 35
07.pdf 35
08.pdf 35
09.pdf 650
10.pdf 1324

You should find that your November bill is a bit smaller than the September bill (in terms of kb's - can't comment on the $'s).
You shouldn't get another bill on the scale of the October bill.

(Like Peter - I work for Telecom, but my views are my own).

RockCartel

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#927001 4-Nov-2013 13:55

Thanks for the effort. By bill date is 18th so will check it out and report back

stevenz

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#927166 4-Nov-2013 19:09

FWIW my 3 page bill from last week is 375KB. Exporting it from OS X preview made it 388KB.

Most of the file is made up of the 163KB advertising banner which is 2126x768 resolution, which is a tad overkill.

The "Easy ways to pay your bill" section is an embedded 84KB, 2126x614 image rather than plain text.

There are also 2 Telecom logo's at 7KB and 4KB respectively. So static images make up 258KB of the 388KB file.

Basically, the embedded JPEGs are far higher quality than they need to be unless they're intended to be for printed invoices.

(Wow, I must be really bored...)

Doesn't effect me given what a tiny proportion of my data allocation that equates to. Unnecessary bloatyness is never a good thing though.

@KnightNZ

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#927195 4-Nov-2013 19:42

Wow

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

NonprayingMantis

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#927202 4-Nov-2013 19:47

stevenz: FWIW my 3 page bill from last week is 375KB. Exporting it from OS X preview made it 388KB.

Most of the file is made up of the 163KB advertising banner which is 2126x768 resolution, which is a tad overkill.

The "Easy ways to pay your bill" section is an embedded 84KB, 2126x614 image rather than plain text.

There are also 2 Telecom logo's at 7KB and 4KB respectively. So static images make up 258KB of the 388KB file.

Basically, the embedded JPEGs are far higher quality than they need to be unless they're intended to be for printed invoices.

(Wow, I must be really bored...)

Doesn't effect me given what a tiny proportion of my data allocation that equates to. Unnecessary bloatyness is never a good thing though.

'Intended for printed invoices'

That would be my guess. It's probably easier to just create the same invoice for everyone, rather than create a special low res version for those who want online bills.
The cost of creating special seperate invoices only for those who only want online billing would probably make it not worth it, given the benefit would be practically nil. As you say, the amount of data is so minimal compared to the even the smallest data cap so there really is virtually no benefit to creating that special case invoice.

surfisup1000

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#927226 4-Nov-2013 20:05

plambrechtsen: I'm not sure you can change back, it's a new bill format and I don't think a 1.3mb file size was considered excessive.

I'll ask around and see if anything can be done.

I reckon it is excessive. eg, my snap bill is around 100kb.

Why on earth must telecom send out a bill that is ten times larger?

old3eyes

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#927388 5-Nov-2013 08:36

surfisup1000:
plambrechtsen: I'm not sure you can change back, it's a new bill format and I don't think a 1.3mb file size was considered excessive.

I'll ask around and see if anything can be done.

I reckon it is excessive. eg, my snap bill is around 100kb.

Why on earth must telecom send out a bill that is ten times larger?

I'm amazed that you guys are still bitching about the size of a PDF. Hell I bet you use way more of your precious data just reading this post..

Regards,

Old3eyes

timmmay

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#931822 13-Nov-2013 08:20

Telecom decided to put in a big picture advertising their 1GB of data free per data WiFi offer. If you're going to make electronic bills mandatory that everyone has to archive please cut the rubbish out, advertising can come separately. If they stay this large I'll specifically ask for a paper copy.

RockCartel

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#931880 13-Nov-2013 09:33

My November bill has a free data WiFi ad. Can’t blame them for this, if I was marketing manager I’d do it.

Size is 523Kb, using Acrobat 9 to reduce file size it’s down to 293Kb without noticeable quality change. It only has 1 billing item so as small as it can.

I like that I can download my bill as PDF, would never go back to paper bills.
I prefer the new bill format over the old format (even if it has bloated ads!)

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