It’s likely because you’ve been charged partial charges, also known as prorated charges or proration.
To help explain partial charges, we’ll need to start with an explanation of how billing cycles work.
A billing cycle is a 1-month period for which you are charged for your services. You typically pay for your month of service at the start of the billing cycle.
Example
:
Let’s use your favourite video streaming service as an example. They have a billing cycle that starts on the very day you signed up, and that ends exactly 1 month later. For that month of video streaming, you pay the monthly fee at the start of the billing cycle for the month of service you’re about to use. You then pay it again when the cycle renews, at the start of the next 1 month cycle.
TELUS and other telecoms also use 1-month billing cycles, but we operate a little bit differently. TELUS does not start your billing cycle on the day you signed up for your additional service, or on the day the technician installed the service. Instead, we have a few select days in a month when a billing cycle can start.
Given that you're an existing TELUS customer, you already have a billing cycle date assigned to you that you’re likely familiar with. It shows up on all of your bills. For example, you may notice that your billing cycle starts on the 15th of every month like clockwork.
Now when you change your service, you’ll likely do so on a day that doesn’t line up with your billing cycle date. For example, let’s say you changed your Mobility service on June 11 but your billing cycle starts on June 15. You may ask, what happens between the 11th and the 14th?
You’ll be charged a partial amount those 4 days (the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th) at your new rate, along with the new monthly amount starting June 15. You’ll also be given a credit (essentially a refund) for the same 4 days at your old rate.
How it’s calculated
Continuing with this example, let’s say that the new monthly amount for your mobility plan is $90 a month. If we divide that by 30 days, the daily amount is $3 a day. For the 4 days before your billing cycle starts, you’ll pay $12 in partial charges to cover those days, plus the $90 you would have paid anyway for the billing cycle that starts on June 15.
Now for the credit, let’s say that your old monthly amount is $80. Similarly, if we divide that by 30 days, the daily amount is $2.67 a day. For those 4 days, you’ve already paid for them and a credit is in order for the daily amount multiplied by 4 days, $10.68.
In the end, you would pay $102 for your first bill after your service plan change plus the partial charges, and then subtract $10.68 for the credit. This brings the total to $91.32 for that bill and then $90 per month after that.