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1. I suspect even the author couldn't tell you whether it's .04 to .07 cents or dollars per GiB.

2. By my math it's $279/6144=$0.05 to $479/6144=$0.08 per GiB, not $0.04 to $0.07.

3. Why are we using GiB when hard drive capacities are expressed in GB/TB?

http://www.verizonmath.com/
Quote: George Vaccaro wanted to point out to Verizon that they were saying ".002 cents" and meaning to say ".002 dollars" but he found that every single person at Verizon did not understand the difference

Audio and (I believe) transcript available. It is painful.

A systematic error in their billing system - the kind of thing I have no problem believing would slip past a corporate QA department - could easily rack up $90M across the book of business before being noticed.

So why would it take an FCC inquiry (and a large number of consumer complaints, endless websites/news stories about Verizon's bad data-charging habits, "Verizon Math", and even firing employees who offer service blocks to customers)?

In most cases, okay, I can totally grok the 'never attribute to malice' line. But Verizon? Sorry... they're the type where this sort of thing is designed, not accidental. Also, that $90m is likely only a portion of the money they've taken in over the years.

There are slashdotters who still use Verizon? Despite their well-publicized math skills? I'm amazed.

(Best line: "that's a matter of opinion, sir". Referring to the result of a simple arithmetic calculation.)

Not according to Verizon.
http://www.verizonmath.com/

http://www.verizonmath.com/

Not according to Verizon.
http://www.verizonmath.com/

Not according to Verizon.
http://www.verizonmath.com/

No sir, the whoosh is on you: http://www.verizonmath.com/

Yes, but he was referring to Verizon Math

Or they just tell you you're wrong in the face of pure math and logic.

Verizon Math, anyone? Come on, I thought this was well-known.

And regarding AT&T, all you have to do is call and they'll often waive stuff. I recently got them to waive the $18 phone upgrade fee (which is bogus anyway) and the $36 switch-number-from-Verizon fee (which I was told would be free).

This must be the Verizon music store.

Wait - I know - you work for Verizon!

http://www.verizonmath.com/

It's simple economics. Let's assume sending one spam e-mail costs .02 cents to a spammer. A sale of the advertised product brings in $8 while (I'll go with the unlikely case of the spammer actually shipping) costing only $1. Additionally, re-sale of the CC number and personal data bring in another $3.
To make ends meet, the spammer would have to make one sale for every batch of 50,000 messages.
Now using up his airtime/minutes, OTOH, a call may very well cost him $.02, (contrary to what Verizon thinks) a hundredfold difference. Now every 500th person called would need to listen to his babble, be interested in his merchandise and actually go for the sale. Which is rather unlikely, which means he's not going to be calling you. :]

Now is that 1-8 cents or 1-8 dollars?

> $0.0002 is 1/50th of a cent, not 1/5000th.

They outsourced the math to Verizon.

Does this have anything to do with Verizon math?

Seriously? You seriously aren't comparing Britney Spears and the creators of "Dude Where's My Car?" movie fame to Shakespeare and Newton are you? Perhaps that's how we end up with http://www.verizonmath.com/

After a recent Incident in the billing department, verizon is rumored to be moving their entire accounting system to a series of mechanical slide rules that are operated by squirrels.

check out* http://verizonmath.com/

*I have no affiliation with this site, I simply did a search to find the "Verizon Can't Do Math" YouTube video, but it appears to have been removed and this site came up first in my results.

Well at least it's 2 whole cents. Too many people say stuff like "just wanted to add my .02 cents" which IMO deals a severe blow to their credibility.

.02c?

Try it like this:

I like the "Teaching remedial math to call-centre employees" service that Verizon recently offered. I think it's got a great future.[/snark]

>Comcast btw said it's not possible for spyware or that ilk to use this much bandwidth.

Speaking as an ISP support admin, I can assure, that's absolutely not true (well, if you include botnets, which is probably 99% of the bandwidth stealing type of nasties people infect their machines with). Now, if you had a machine on the backbone, well, maybe you'd find it tough to end up on a botnet using 100 Mbits+, but the "paltry" 30 Mbits maximum most cable handles (generally the customers modems are DOCSISed to what, 6 Mbits?) wouldn't take any effort to botnet to death.

You should have taped them saying that so we could laugh at them like Verizon.

You should also run spybot and adaware SE personal on that machine. You could also play around with hijack this, but if you do one wrong move with hijack this, you'll need to re-install windows (well, someone who knows their way around windows won't... but I digress). It's probably got plenty more junk on it if you found 24 viruses. In fact, I'd probably consider getting a shop to nuke it and re-install it; after that sort of abuse windows usually becomes pretty fragile, and the PPPoE stack (needed for your new DSL) is going to be one of the first things to break.

When your F-Prot trial runs out, uninstall it and grab AVG, a free antivirus. You can do a check (and repair) of your computer without installing an anti-virus with Trend Micro's Housecall or BitDefender. Enjoy!

Haha Verizon math. But seriously, what telecom has between 4 and 400 billion customers?