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Verizon Can't Do Math
Blogger George Vaccaro recently had a problem with his Verizon based on an unfortunate miscommunication of currency. The crux of the matter was that he was quoted .002 cents per kilobyte for data during a trip to Canada but was charged .002 dollars. Normally this would have been an easy fix, however several humorous calls later the Verizon reps still were unable to discern between the difference between the two rates. You really have to hear it to believe it. Kudos George, you have the patience of a saint.
they did it on purpose; i used to work on one of their dsl tech support contracts and it was a nightmare to say the least.
lose != loose
Looks like decimal numbers just don't make any cents to their customer service reps.
On a more serious note, it also looks like they can't read or spell, since the rep read "$0.002/KB Sent" as "0.002 cents/KB," as evidenced in the call.
Appearantly Verizon is trying ignorance.
Sad...
Did you listen to the tape? If some one keeps quoting you 0.002 CENTS/KB what more can you do? Its up to verizon to train their staff to understand their own rates. Yes it seems like a mistake. But its on verizon. This guy did the smart thing and had the staff memeber write down that they had quoted him right. Also if you actually listen to the call you'll know that he said he had no comparison to base this off of, because he is on the unlimited plan. So yes he thought it was cheap, but thats no excuse for FIVE (TWO that we heard actually quote the price) quote the wrong price repeatedly. You simply can't defend Verizon and say this guy set out to swindle them.
According to his blog, Verizon has contacted him and said they'd waive half of the data charges. They still don't get it.
My understanding from the audio is that he originally had a rep double check to make sure the rate was .002 cents instead of .002 dollars. He even had the rep make a special note of this on his file. He also says he had an unlimited plan before, so he didn't know what the reates were supposed to be like. Regardless, I don't think it's his fault because Verizon is admitting they quoted him .002 cents, they just don't do the math correctly!
Was the rep made aware that he was being recorded like we are when we call most type of support department, weather it being bill or technical or whatever?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Well ya know if you sign an contract without reading it you are stuck with the terms unless you can invalidate the contract. Its not like Verizon does a hand full of one off contracts a year. I don't have any sympathy for them, they get bit by their screw up, well stop being evil.
On a note for 'dishonesty' Recall that verizon is the same company that lobbied to have a federal fee removed and then as soon as that was done it added its own fee of the same amount back on to pad its wallet. And guess what, none of the customers got a chance to re-negoitate their service contracts with verizon. Hows that for dishonest.
He was suspicious and had the initial customer service rep make a note in his account stating that the rate is .002 cents per KB. You did read his blog and/or listen to the audio, right?
.002 dollars... they correct him that it's .002 cents.
And if you'd listened to the audio you would know that they refuse to accept the price being
The only way he'll get this fixed (his bill adjusted to the price he was quoted) is to get Verizon's attention in the press. Or something.
Can you do math now?
Here before all but 8486 of you.
> It's morally on par with keeping the extra money when a clerk accidently hands you too much change.
No it isn't! When the clerk hands me too much change, the clerk gets screwed because their till comes out wrong and the store thinks they are skimming. This is morally equivilent to buying an item that you think may have been priced too low through a bureaucratic error. If you hesitate to do that, then think back to the last time that you heard of a company refunding money (voluntarily, not through a class-action suit) to customers because they accidently overcharged customers due to a bureaucratic error.
.002 cents times 35893
What I want to know is whether this is intentional on behalf of Verizon. There's speculation on Dude Who Got Screwed's blog that the reps are trained to quote the wrong rate and that now everyone will be checking their Verizon bills, hence their offer to settle for half the amount.
I wouldn't put it past them. They sent the guy an email with the offer that said, "Please respond to this email if you would like to accept this offer."
Now that I think of it, I think I'll be sending out a new round of "Let's go out together!" emails with the aforementioned phrase attached.
Welcome to the new world. Listening to this was downright painful.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The other day I had to help someone in payroll understand that 0.5 ("point five") hours really is equal to 0.50 ("point fifty") hours.
Don't they teach this stuff in 5th grade anymore?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Verizon can do math. When they make a mistake that costs them money because they thought 1 cent > 1 dollar, then I'll believe it's math, and not robbery, that's at work.
--
make install -not war
This is what happens to those who flunked out of.. grade 4 math.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
No it isn't! When the clerk hands me too much change, the clerk gets screwed
It is still ethically wrong to knowingly keep the extra change. If you didn't count a few coins before dropping them in your pocket, that's one thing. But if you get back extra bills and count them and see that it's wrong, you're ethically obligated to inform the clerk and square up before leaving the store.
Since when do two wrongs make a right?
Besides, don't you check to make sure that your change is real currency and at least approximately the correct amount, before you walk away from the register? If the clerk gives you a large counterfeit bill, and you don't notice, you are SOL.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
To make sure the shop doesn't cheat you in the long run, you absolutely need to take the extra money when a mistake is made. (Assuming equal propensity for making mistakes) Second. Most supermarkets and high volume shops have an appalling record on price shown on sales items and what is used when the items are scanned. For supermarkets like Tom Thumb it is like 1 in 5 there is a problem with. They use to have a system so the would double the value of any errors but the stopped this as it became too expensive. Kid you not.
Help fight continental drift.
In your Internet browser (probably an icon with a big blue E in your case) type "www.google.com" (without the quotes) into your address bar (the area near the top of the screen with a funny string starting "http://"). Next type ".002 cents * 35893 in dollars" (without the quotes) press enter and look at the answer.
(In reality, this would not work as you would never be able to get someone this dim to understand what the address bar was, even with patient explanation.)
There is sometimes a legitimate use for lawyers in the US. This is one of them. Verizon must be forced to train their service staff sufficiently that others do not get burnt by this kind of problem.
>> actually any customer could have done so by taking VZ to court.
oh yeah, all in a days, work, maybe one could fit that in between slashdot pots, real work, and all the other important shit we have to do in a day. Yey.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Come on people, we don't need a video on this thing. As a user on limited bandwidth, this is the type of bloat I expect from Microsoft.
And I thought I sucked at math when I couldn't remember how eigenvectors work the other day...
Thank you Verizon for lowering the bar for me.
Does Verizon pull the lowest scoring math results to be hired to deal with the bills?
This makes no sense that it someone can't see the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars.
WHAT THE HELL IS THEIR MALFUNCTION?
..::ALWAYS : watching::..
You know you just agreed with the guy you were arguing with, right? He explained that keeping extra change isn't a valid analogy because it's the clerk that takes the hit, not the store.
It isn't as much math as a play on the way we pronounce money. .002 cents isn't the same as $0.002.
But 20 cents is expressed as $0.20 and it would be correct int saying if you had $0.20 in change being returned to you, the cashier gave you 20 cents change.
So, I don't know what it is called but it is one of those things that gets interchanged around enough that it was finally done wrong. I think were the problem might be is were you get partial number or numbers that aren't equal to a hole cent.
It is very simple, well, seemingly so. I would bring an elementary school math teacher and a professional engineer along with a nice big chart/slideshow that shows the conversion from cents to dollars step by step and that .002 cents = .00002 dollars with the whole to convert cents to dollars rule of moving the decimal point two places to the left from an elementary school math book scanned in on the chart/slideshow. And if there is confusion as to that, then have the elementary school math teacher start teaching the lesson on converting cents to dollars and the lesson on how fractions of a cent can be used to calculate a fraction of a dollar. And finally have the professional engineer who is certified by the state (thus needs to understand fraction and decimal place mathematics) certify the correct conversion of the number (or a finance professor from a local college who might be interested in studying the lack of knowledge and understanding many people have when it comes to money).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
He should have started out the call by asking simply if they charge 0.002 dollars or 0.00002 dollars per kilobyte. Just never use the word "cent" in your side of the conversation.
What, It sounds perfectly logical to me. Take a multi-million if not billion dolar company to court over $10 or so dollars a month, have it drag on for 2 years and still not recoup the amount it cost to file the case in court. Then we all are IANAL, but we could just ask slashdot for legal advice and got it our selves to avoid the hundreds if not thousands of dollars a lawer is going to want just to watch you lose in the long run.
So see, it does tie into slashdot a little so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle.
But here's a way to make it maybe a bit clearer over the phone (or in text): If you are selling apples at 5 dollars/pound, and I buy 10 pounds, then we can look at that like this:
5 dollars/pound * 10 pounds. The "pounds" units cancel out (that's the important part to get across) and you are left with 5 * 10 _dollars_.
With this guy, forget the dollars. Start with cents:
We have 0.002 cents/KB. Then we have a usage of 35893 KB.
0.002 cents/KB * 35893 KB. Just like above, the KB cancel out and we are left with 0.002 * 35893 cents. That's CENTS, not DOLLARS.
And how much is that?
Well do the math, and we get 71.19 cents.
How many cents in a dollar? 100.
So that's ($0.71). Ugh. I have to hand it to the guy for being so unbelievably patient with the reps.
Here's a link to have google do the calculation (complete with units!): Have Google calculate it for Verizon
coding is life
I just love the continuing bemused, dumbstruck silences from the Verizon guy. Every time George tries to explain math, you can almost hear the rep's brain overload...
I thought I'd had some bad 'phone service experiences, but this just takes the cake.
|>
Here be Dragons
I think it is more of a gimmick to charge extra anyways, but on sunday nights/monday morning, most of the grocery stores change thier items on sale and if you tell them it was cheaper on the thing marking it's place on the shelf, they give it to you at the lower price.
My personal belief is the sale still run into monday morning but they switch the prices in the registers first then let the stock boys change the shelves when stocking them. In essence though, It is the store giving money back because of some "bureaucratic error".
I wanted to write Verizon Wireless directly to thank them for providing us with such excruciating entertainment.
Funny thing...The link now leads to a page to purchase new Verizon products instead.
Does anyone at Verizon begin to understand the nature of this public relations fiasco yet?
Sadly, if you don't get it in writing, you can't really prove anything. Even a recording of the original call might help, but if their rates are posted anywhere in writing (or on his contract) he's basically never going to get the allegedly quoted price.
It is hilarious, though, that the CSRs don't know the difference between dollars and cents.
This is the perfect example of why we need math to be taught in elementary and high schools. Anyone who questions the value of arithmetic in everyday life needs to hear this. [kidding] Oh, and this is also a good argument for outsourcing the call center to India. Indians are good at math ;)
[/kidding]
Serves them right for hiring ex US government accountants. These are the same abaccus toting chimps that used to "balance" the military's budget. Come on it's just two bloody decimal places what's the big deal?
It's nice that he recorded the conversations. What he needs to do next is write a letter (not an email) and mail it to them explaining the problem, specifying a date that he expects it to be resolved by, and state that he requests a confirmation letter be sent to very that the bill has been corrected. Document everything. Write down dates, times, phone numbers called, and names. If that doesn't work, follow up with a second letter stating that you feel they are not acting in good faith, give a second date for them to comply, and add at the bottom that the letter is being CC'd to the Public Utilities Commission. Then forward a copy of the two letters to the local PUC with a a cover letter explaining the problem and asking that they investigate. Phone companies HATE the PUC and they will jump when you mention them.
Every time I've had an issue with the phone company this always resolves it. I've only had to write to the PUC about a company twice. Usually mentioning the PUC to the company will wake them up without you having to write a letter.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
You were transferred to supervisors. You should request to be transferred to someone who got an A in high school math. Odds are good there are one or two underachievers hiding in the call center, but there is no way in hell a person like that would get promoted to (or want to be promoted to) supervisor. On the next call, just say "Please go from cube to cube and ask each employee what their best high school math grade was. When someone says 'A' rather than 'huh?' or 'freshman', or anything else: transfer me to them."
You're right on target. This is exactly where the whole confusion comes from - it's like an Abbott and Costello routine. The verizon rep is (well, half the time at least) saying "sent", as in, 0.002 / kb sent, while George is consistently saying "cent". So the rep gets confused on and off, but he doesn't really understand why - there's logic to what George is saying, he realizes that, but at the same time, his computer screen seems right too ... and neither one of them seems to realize what the misunderstanding is.
Halfway through, I couldn't take it any more.
That's right, you would say that you got "20 cents" in change. You would not say "point 20 cents" or "point 2 cents".
Similarly, given $0.002, you ought to say "point 2 cents" or "point zero zero 2 dollars" - never "point zero zero 2 cents" as Verizon reps did repeatedly.
Whoever modded this up might work at Verizon.
What you said is all valid, but you said it as though it illustrates the problem. It doesn't.
Yes, $0.20 is the same as 20 cents. That's not disputed. The problem is that Verizon quoted (repeatedly) "0.002 cents", but charged "$0.002". "0.002 cents" can be rewritten as "$0.00002".
I would love to find out how this ends.
I am also considering sending a note to Verizon to find out whether they now know the difference. (Online contact form, mailing address varies by state, find yours here.)
Side note: Why doesn't the cent sign (" ") appear on /.? (I pasted one in between the quote marks on this line. But even using the escape code I found here doesn't work...
How would someone know if a price is wrong, anyway? I don't know about you, but I don't go make a whole study of an industry to determine if a low price is indeed feasible, economically sustainable, etc. Plus, there are promotional prices, occasionally predatory pricing, someone dumping a product to clear their stock, etc. Even for telcos, how would I know? Maybe they just installed a fatter cable and they can afford to give the bandwidth away, for all I know. If someone displays a price, I'm going to assume that that's actually the price they want to sell the damn thing or service for.
As for stupid people working for the sales departments, I'd say then it's the company's problem, isn't it? If you hire some guy to sell, say, used cars, and he sells a car for $4000 instead of $40,000, then you'd at least fire him, no? Maybe even start making sure you start hiring smarter people, or at least training them, no?
Year after year of quotting the wrong prices and TOS and then switching on the customers is hardly excusable any more. Because that's what the telcos everywhere seem to have already made a tradition of. I'm sorry, but after all this time I'm no longer buying the crap "teh oops, it was out sales rep that forgot to tell you about the hidden charges / right price / kick in the nuts that's not even in the fine print / etc" excuse.
Honestly, while I won't condone being dishonest as a customer either, I see it as equally dishonest to lure the customer with a low price, then demand that he pays a huge extra. Or at the very least baiting someone with one price and switching to another _looks_ so much like a genuine dishonest tactic (on the part of the provider or of the sales rep or whatever) that you just have to wonder if it's real stupidity. Or, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then maybe it isn't fish. The choice of a provider over another was based on that low price. If you knew the real price from the start, maybe you'd have picked another provider, or maybe used the service differently, or whatever. There's a non-zero probability there, and the incentive too, that it wasn't an error there, but a genuine scam.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
He knows it was meant to be $.002, after the fact, but he was quoted 0.002 cents before making the calls so that's what he should pay. He was trying to explain dollars and cents to the guy.
~CGameProgrammer( );
The thing is, he's tried, repeatedly, to get them to quote what they actually charge. They refuse, and this appears to be a trained response. They quote one rate, then charge 100 times that rate, and refuse to admit there's a difference.
If someone else tried to do that to them, they wouldn't stand for it for a moment, and you know it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
...should teach these people a lesson and pay them their salary in cents!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
That's because "cent" literally means "one-hundred". As in "per cent" (1% of a unit == 1/100th of that unit), or "centimetre" (1/100th of a metre). Thus, "cent" is already a fractional unit -- it's very name connotes that it is a 1/100th fraction of a larger unit (in this case, a dollar).
20 one-hundredths of a dollar (or 20 "cents") is thus correctly $0.20. There is no error is usage here -- the unit itself denotes the fractional part when written as a whole number of "cents".
It's no different than the fact that when we talk about a 2 000 000 000 Hz processor, we usually call it a "2GHz processor". The zeros didn't just disappear -- "G" represents "Giga", which is the prefix representing the large value of 10 to the 9th power.
As such, the error in this case is purely with the fact that the Verizon reps the gentleman spoke to have no idea what they're talking about, and get confused by a decimal point. They probably don't know how to cancel out the units in a multiplication: 0.002 cents/KB * 35893KB causes the KB on both sides to cancel out, leaving us with 0.002 * 35893 cents (== 71.78 cents). There is nothing to be confused with here -- you can't just multiply two numbers and then make up what unit you want it to represent because it's some unit you're comfortable with. I can't say that I'm charging someone 0.002 cents per KB for 35893KB, and then charge them 71.78 rutabegas. Or 71.78 emus. Or 71.78 Libraries of Congress.
Really, there is no excuse for this. Verizon should hire a grade 8 math teacher, and give their customer service staff a "how to use decimals and cancel units" math training day. I'll even volunteer to do it (although I'm over qualified). I'll even offer them a huge deal -- I'll just charge them 0.002 Gigacents an hour for my services.
Yaz.
If I were in George's shoes, here's what my reply would be:
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'd pay the correct 72 cents (well, 71.786 cents if you can manage it) on the invoice and then wait for someone from their accounts to phone you up about it.
The problem with them admitting defeat and actually charging the rate they've been speaking is that it makes them liable to charge the quoted rate to everyone else.
Imagine if they grabbed Johnny B., that guy over in tech support that has a math degree. He'd get on the phone and say, "Yeah, that's right, Verizon is quoting the wrong price, you should pay 72 cents."
Three days later, thousands of Verizon customers who were quoted the same rate demand equal compensation. Then Johnny B. has to find another low-wage job that has nothing to do with his major.
These reps could have secretly realized what they were saying, just as they were passing the call to their boss. No one wants to make the million dollar decisions, so playing dumb is better than playing unemployed.
If you're talking about cell phone service then the customer has the right to cancel their plan with no early termination fees when the provider adds fees which aren't in the original contract
Do you have any cites (and/or sites) for this? I'm not disputing it (and, in fact, agree) but for a dispute that's in progress I'm looking for this info...
This is a very patient man, but he needs more experience talking to idiots. He kept talking above them. They kept reciting the seeds of their own defeat, but instead of nailing them on it, he tried to educate them and bring them up to his level. He could have defeated them on their own level. Regardless, Verizon hire idiots supervised by idiots.
The only way this blog campaign is going to be successful is if Verizon realizes they're creating a public relations problem. Therefore I recommend people email Verizon, referencing the customer's blog and name (George Vaccaro), and explain why his bill should be 72 cents instead of 72 dollars. Here's a link to Verizon's email page:
. jsp
.002 cents to .002 bananas. Multiply by 3600 and you get 72 bananas. Now since we switched cents to bananas, replace bananas with cents and you get 72 cents. Which is $0.72. I don't believe explaining the difference without a switch in units has been effective in either the phone calls or the emails.
:)
https://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/contact/email
I really like the bananas explanation: Convert
Good luck everyone!
my blog
This is about 16 minutes in:
.002 dollars and .002 cents? .002 dollars.
George: Do you recognize there is a difference between one dollar and one cent?
Andrea: Definitely.
George: Do you recognize there is a difference between half a dollar and half a cent?
Andrea: Definitely.
George: Do you therefore recognize there is a difference between
Andrea: No... There's no
George: Of course there is.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Pay them the quoted price. Then it would be up to them to try and reclaim the extra. Put the onus on them and take it off yourself.
Here http://www.codepoetry.net/2006/07/07/verizon_reall y_bad_at_math is another case of bad verizon math.
If they were acting, then they were fucking very good at it and are clearly in the wrong job with their skill set.
Jonathanjk.com
Have you listened to the audio? Trust me, listen to it before you make any excuses for them.
You're clearly not a verizon customer (read: contract slave). That's giving them way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too much credit.
There's more to it than that, too. At some point in the audio you can clearly hear the first rep go:
"Its 0.02 per kb....er....SENT"
SENT...CENT....see an issue here? For half of the call with the first rep, whenever the sound "cent" is used, it is actualy meant to be "sent", so it adds to the confusion on top of everything else.
This is the first time in a long time where my first language (french) would have made a situation easier.
> This guy did the smart thing and had the staff memeber write down that they had quoted him right. Actually this might not help very much. Since all their reps (mis)read $0.002 as "point zero zero two cents", when you ask them to put "I quoted him point zero zero two cents per kB" in the notes, they'll probably write "I quoted him $0.002 per kB"...
I have a Verizon EVDO broadband "wireless" (basically a cellphone signal) contract.
.002 cents/KB. Because that's not the TOTAL cost of the data, but a surcharge on top of the money they get off me every month regardless.
I pay a flat rate of $60/month, probably the same as in his case. (He might be on an $80/mo plan but that's rare.)
I doubt VERY much that data transmission costs are any higher in Canada than they are in the US.
So having already paid the flat rate, it would make perfect sense to me that the add-on extra cost for data transmission in Canada would be as low as
What they're trying to do is bill him another $76 - making him pay over double his normal costs when in reality, THEIR costs for that month is only fractionally higher...probably pretty damn close to 76 cents max.
So yeah, I'd buy into that original quote no problem - and it wouldn't seem like a mistake at all!
Which brings us to the next point: if he had known it was that much higher he could have throttled back his usage and probably gotten this bill down near $5/$10 or something...probably by switching to WiFi wherever possible.
That depends very much on the circumstances; in general, companies cannot simply say one thing and then write something else into the contract.
This isn't about a failure in math. This isn't about someone who didn't know the difference between $0.002 and $0.00002. If you think this is a math problem then you are not clearly following the money. This is a larceny problem. This is about a problem regarding a profound lack of honesty. This is about a company with an apparent policy of lying, cheating, and stealing from their customers.
:-)
This is not mysterious. This is not even funnny. Unless Verizon can clearly show me that they've chosen to staff their support teams from tech to top supervisors with the mentally handicapped, then the only sane conclusion is that their customer service (forgive the ephemism), is expressly designed to bludgeon, exhaust, and abuse customers into accepting that they've been lied to and cheated. This is not ignorance. This is not stupidity. This is an utter vacuum of integrity. This is a den of thieves. Let the buyer beware.
By the way, just sharing my own personal experience, yours may vary, but I traded with Verizon a few years back... I received several outrageous charges. I tried to get some service. I called dozens of times, attempted access through all of their phone and online resources. I never achieved a single meaningful interaction with a single employee of Verizon, and to this day would rather french kiss a wall outlet, or spend long hours sitting on a CuisinArt with the frape' button depressed, than do business with them again. Isn't somehow nice to see some things never change
--Genda
This is really hilarious ... but to say the truth my students (the new ones from this latter educations changes) probably would have the same problem.
... it's even better (or worst :) ) ... so, I believe that the operator is not actually ling to the customer, there is the real hypothesis that the operator doesn't understand the difference.
I get mad with many of them because they all think that zero point 15 cents is actually bigger than zero point 6 cents.
And if I get units in the mixture
Actually, I bet those people in India are much better in math than most North Americans. Maybe it's a sign that they SHOULD outsource since these high school drop-outs can't handle the math.
No wonder people from the U.S. can't handle the Metric system!
http://outcampaign.org/
Verizon can't find it's own ass with two hands, a flashlight, a map, GPS, a sherpa, long range scanners and an ass finding radar.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
If it was $0.002 - or 0.2 cents - then downloading this page (which is 176kB not including graphics), then it would cost you 35 cents. That seems excessively steep to me.
"...it would be correct int saying if you had $0.20 in change being returned to you, the cashier gave you 20 cents change."
But how do you say $0.20? It's ".20 dollars" (which is 20 cents).
What's happening here is like the reps are saying ".20 cents" and then charging 20 cents.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Yes, it's simple math. Yes, all of the Verizon people should have known better. But I can comprehend their mindset, as incorrect as it is. I still find the whole ".002 dollars is the same thing as .002 cents" thing amazing though, especially when the customer clearly then has them differentiate 2 dollars from 2 cents, and half a dollar from half a cent.
The only way I can think of to explain it better to them is to tell them to get out a pen and pad. Write down the number for "one dollar". What did you write down? One point zero zero? Good. Make sure you have the little dollar sign at the front. Now write down the number for "half a dollar." Point five zero? Good. Again, make sure you have that dollar symbol. Now write it down with the "cents" symbol. The amount was "fifty cents", so you would write five zero cents-sign, right? Now write down the number for one cent. Point zero one with a dollar sign? Good. Writing it down as cents it would be one and the cents-sign, correct? Do you see how "point zero one dollars" is the same as "one cent"? Now half a cent. Point zero zero five with a dollar sign? Good. Is "half a cent" the same as "point five cents"? Yes? Good. So we can write that down as point five with a cent sign. Do you see how 'point five cents' and 'point zero zero five dollars' are the same? That they are the same value, but when you write it as 'dollars', it has two extra zeroes? Now write down one tenth of a cent. Not one tenth of a DOLLAR, but one tenth of a CENT. This would be one tenth of a penny. Something that you can get ten for a penny. Did you write down point zero zero zero one dollars? Again, if you write it as cents, it would be point zero one cents. Two extra zeroes when you are expressing it as dollars, yet it is the same value. So I was charged point zero zero two CENTS. Which, to convert to dollars, would be point zero zero zero zero two DOLLARS.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
In Other News, Verizon is now getting into the sales of Livestock. The going rate is $0.002 for 71.78 Emus. However, Emus are not Gnus, nor are they sold with a GPL.
Lobbyists in Congress were quite happy to slide funding for 71.78 Congressional Libraries, which is how the William Jefferson Clinton library came about. But then, that was cut short, so it became the 0.78th library.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was going to mod this up (or funny really), but I just have to comment instead. This is the point in the call I about fell off my chair laughing hysterically. It's best if you can listen to it, because you get the unbearably long pause right after George asks the 3rd question. I can almost see the gears in her brain chunking along, desperately attempting to understand how a dollar amount could possibly begin with a decimal point, but just... not... quite... getting... there.
.002 dollars and .002 cents? .002 dollars.
.002 dollars per KB is exactly the rate poor George is being charged by the billing system. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it through the rest of the call, I can't stop listening to that little snippet.
.002 dollars!
George: Do you therefore recognize there is a difference between
(pregnant pause)
Andrea: No.... There's no
Of course,
There's no
The audio is hilarious, sad, and extremely frustrating all at the same time. George has so much more patience than I would have.
Honestly speaking, everyone around me left VZW dissatisfied. I was lured to VZW by their coverage, but then found out their customer services is worse than shit.
They sold me this phone protection plan, just said the plan would replace my phone in case it is damage. However, when I came back with an accidently dropped and damanaged phone, they said I had to copay... I was never told about the copay part, and the customer service had never provide me with the leaflet (even though they claimed they did, but I kept all the receipt and leaflet into one place).
They have no will to communicate and they are just trying to get more money from your pocket. I say, sue them.
Not at all. They can credit him the full use of data in Canada on his recent trip (generously declining his offer to pay the correct $0.71) purely as a customer retention move. They can also choose to "clarify" how they express the rate in future (I've given them several suggestions in a comment on his blog) to avoid customers "misunderstanding" the rate. Neither of which (IANAL) means they have to refund everyone else who claims they called in and got that rate quoted to them. And indeed, that's my prediction of how this will turn out.
That's a different scenario.
.002 cents/kB and then they charge .001/kB
.002 cents/kB, then why should you assume it's .002 dollars/kB?
It's only a similar thing if they quote
I usually give back the extra if I'm undercharged, but if the clerk insists that he/she is right, then I'm not going to kick up a fuss about it.
But in this case it's about quoted prices. If the representatives of a company insist that the price is
Maybe it's a new price or a one time offer etc.
I think the best way to get them to see the error might be to firstly help them generate the correct $71 from the real $0.002 figure.
.002 dollar rate and multiply it by 35,893KB I get charged 71.786 dollars, just over 71 DOLLARS. That is what your computer system is correctly doing.
.002 CENT rate which you are incorrectly quoting me, and multiply it by 35,893KB, we actually get 71.786 cents... so only just over 71 CENTS for the whole bill - a huge difference.
.002 cents, how much would it cost me for 1KB? .002 cents
.02 cents
.2 cents .2 cents is less than half of a single cent.
.002 CENTS is quoting a tiny fraction of a cent per KB. .002 dollars, which is a pretty big fraction of a cent - a fifth of a cent in fact.
.002 cents, like you have been, you are actually telling them it is dollarsign 0 point 0 0 0 0 2 which is 100 times smaller."
That way they understand where the computer's figure is coming from.
Then show them examples of how it works for cents, starting at a 'multiplied by one' example, focusing on the CENTS unit in the answer.
For example:
"If we take the
But if we take the
I'm going to walk you through some logic to make that clear. Please use your calculator to quote me some prices.
At your quoted price of
A:
how much for 10 KB?
A:
how much for 100 KB?
A:
Ok, so we're almost at a whole cent being charged now.
how much for 1,000 KB?
A: 2 cents
Right, we are now into whole cents, but we are still a long long way from whole dollars.
how much for 10,000 KB?
A: 20 cents
Ok, how much for 100,000 KB?
A: 200 cents
So 200 cents is 2 dollars, so if I used that 100,000 KB, it should cost me 2 dollars - OK?
A: sure
2 dollars - cool.
So when I use less that half that amount of KB you have in fact charged me a whopping 71 dollars!
The reason is that quoting
Your actual charges are
If you see written down in your prices dollarsign 0 point 0 0 2 you need to tell customers it is '.002 dollars'.
If you call it
It's a bit sad that you are explaining this same thing now here on slashdot. The question is: are you prepared to do up to 20 minutes of this?
I ran into this sort of problem just last week, with an otherwise competent employee trying to do some measurements for a recipe. The recipe was given to her over the phone, and the person only specified the numbers. It turned out the numbers were in fluid ounces but her measuring device was labeled in millileters, so she ended up flip-flopping randomly between fl. oz. and ml in her calculations, leading to all sorts of problems.
This audio was definitely good entertainment; just listening to the man's incredible patience trying to unsuccessfully explain to a couple oafs the difference between dollars and cents was both painful and hilarious. He was smart when he called because he was verbally (verbally is key) quoted "point zero zero two cents", and made sure they got that specifically in the contract. It is highly probable the Verizon employee on the other end of the line saw "$0.002" and erroneously read aloud "point zero zero two cents". Now, he did sign the contract, and it probably did say $0.002 in it, but how can you fault him when the Verizon rep said something on the phone and it turns out to be different in the contract? It even says $0.002 (clearly dollars) on Verizon's website: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/businessSolutio ns/global/globalaccesspriceandcoverage.jsp?section =smallMediumBusine
The problem here is these Verizon reps. Because they see a decimal together with a $, they are inclined to read "cents" instead of the proper "dollars". They probably will end up costing their company a lot of bad publicity, and around $70. (That's dollars:)
I recall a similar case although it was minor: McDonald's (or some other joint) had some deal for .99 cents (they actually had the cents symbol and not $), and a guy went in and ordered 10 of them and was charged around $10 when he should have been charged $1. It was settled in his favor, of course, but this Verizon case is different because he was verbally given something different than what he was given in print. Still, I believe this guy has everything going for him.
Just my two cents. :)
that Verizon supervisor could be making more money then you. The world is a harsh, harsh place.
And George, if they say you were quoted 0.002 cents and insist on it, then capitalize on that dammit!. You keep trying to get them to do the math..don't.
Then show them examples of how it works for cents, starting at a 'multiplied by one' example
.01 times 100 using her desk calculator...
.002, she will tap 10 * .002 in the calculator, get .02 and tell you "2 cents", or at best that will happen at the 1000 * .002 where she will say "2 dollars" for sure. .002 cents how can 10KB be 2 cents") to get around that, because every step is calculated and reasoned independently.
Somewhere in the audio the call supervisor calculates
So, I don't think she would find the results you use as examples by inferring from the previous example.
When 1KB is
No amount of reasoning ("when 1KB is
Well, listening to that was simply painful... however, despite their inability to understand so, they were correct. According to this link: http://www.hp.com/sbso/wireless/MNY50079-VZAccessP ricing-V1b.pdf
.002 dollars.
.002 cent/kb, by 30,000 kb (whatever it was), and they come out with 71.## dollars. He should stop there, and say, where did the dollar come from. I know he did it somewhat, but he'd go into complaining about it, saying they forgot the translation. Although they SHOULD have realized that when he complained, since they didn't the first 2 times, he should have just stuck on that part. .002 cents/kb times X kb, gives an answer in cent's. therefore the calculator answer of 71.## is 71.## cents. thus 0.71## dollars.
.5 cents and .5 dollars? (immediately) yes. So you see the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars? (Long pause) No. That's just beyond silly. Same number, different unit, if the units are not equivalent then they MUST be different, irrelevant of whether you understand the number, as long as it is the same.
The going price is INDEED $0.002. So yeah, it was
But still, wow... I don't know how they didn't get it. There was only 1 flaw in his explanations, but that flaw should not have affected their understanding. The only problem I see, is that after they multiplied
Not to say he didn't do that to the point that any college grad would understand, but the only thing I can think of is trapping them in their own reasoning. You multiply cents per kb, by kb, and what do you get? You say dollar, but that means that means that you multiplied by dollars per kb. Math isn't even the problem there, its their inability to keep track of a unit. Now I have trouble with that on my engineering stuff, but that's Coulomb-seconds per amp-meters or something, you get into multiply numerator and denominator terms it gets all screwy. The best plan would be to explain, you multiply cent's per kilobyte by kilobyte, you get the amount of cents that correspond to your kilobyte usage. So even though 71.## may look like a dollar notation, you have just calculated cents.
What made me wince was the how they respond to the examples. You know the difference between 1 cent and 1 dollar? (immediately) yes. You know the difference between half a cent and half a dollar, or
Sorry... just when I see something like this.... I worry about the human race, that somebody who controls part of a powerful company can't even keep EXAMPLES straight, much less currency.
tech support no matter where you do it has its share of problems. i have a feeling if you had an Indian guy with an accent he would have undertood the problem. it his high time that we look at where is our education system going.
anyway very hilarious
Let's assume that the person just hasn't comprehended the numbers, and isn't lying.
Why can't they? because the misunderstanding is based on the known figure of $0.002 is the same as 0.002 cents, they know that figure to be true, so because they don't recognize the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents, you have to build up from what they know is true, you sadly can't do the reverse, i.e. go from what you know to be true and incrementally prove that the final step, which proves them wrong, is true as well, because they know that what they know is the truth, so you can't prove that something they know to be true is false.. But, you can show them that what they've derived from their truth isn't true.
What do they know is true, they know that 0.002 cents is the true number. As we humans are a visual lot, we have to start with writing down the truths.
This is what I'd have asked the representative to do:
1) Write down on a piece of paper: 1KB * 0.002 cents/KB = 0.002 cents
2) Write down under it: 5KB * 0.002 cents/KB = 0.01 cents
3) Write down under that: 50KB * 0.002 cents = 0.1 cents
4) Write down under that: 500KB * 0.002 cents = 1 cent
5) Write down under that: 5,000KB * 0.002 cents = 10 cents
6) Write down under that 50,000 * 0.002 cents = 100 cents. And 100 cents = 1 dollar
Then step 7 would be to see if you can explain that 35,000 KB is less than 50,000 KB, thus your bill should be less than a dollar.
Of course, you have to verify each step to be true, and see if they would disagree at any stage. I would be very interested to know if they would actually disagree at any step, maybe step 2 would be a hard one, as you have to perhaps explain that 5*2 = 10 (and thus 5*0.002 is 0.01), but he could use a calculator to verify that, and after that it should be easy..
K.
People DO actually need to know how to do math in their everyday jobs!
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
Well, if reading $0.002 as "0.002 cents" is such a common mistake, then using prices less then 1 cent should be avoided. "$2 per Mb" would not have caused any misunderstanding. But probably Verizon marketeers need some misunderstanding...
Did anybody else notice, late in the call while talking to the female rep, he was extremely close to getting her to understand, but he missed the chance. When he was doing his 1 cent, 100 kilobytes example and she was using a calculator, he said "use the calculator to multiply 1 cent by 100 kilobytes". She then said "OK, so I enter .01 into the calculator". At that point there he should have stopped her and said, "why did you enter .01 when the rate is 1 cent?" He did get her to admit that half a cent is .005, but then he dropped it there. I think she might have figured it out if he'd continued on this line ... ultimately getting her to enter .00002 on the calculator instead of .002 (just like she entered .01 instead of 1, etc). -Sigh- It was painful to listen to, but not terribly surprising. In my mind the root problem is that most people blindly accept whatever the computer is telling them.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I wanted to see how far this story has spread, so I googled "verizon bad math." The first hit was this. It looks like Verizon goes out of their way to hire the cheapest programmers they can. Which brings up a question: Which of you slashdotters work for Verizon? : p
This guy's the limit!
First of all, why is Johnny B working customer service if he has a degree in mathematics?
.002 cents and .002 dollars ....we should all just give up right now.
Second of all, if people need a degree in mathematics to know the difference between
That would apply only had he initially believed that the 0.002 cent/KB rate was wrong. I gather that had he been told later that he was misquoted, and the actual rate was 0.002 dollar/KB, and was thus being charged correctly, he might have dropped it there. Notice, though, that he was repeatedly quoted the 0.002 cent/KB rate.
On the other side, however, anyone who has ever worked any kind of retail job should know that if something is marked a certain price on the shelf, and the register rings the item up as a higher price, the customer is only expected to pay the price listed on the shelf. I don't know if there is any law behind this, but I have seen it many of times both when working retail in my younger years and as a consumer in later life. What's posted is what the customer pays (barring sticker swapping which, i believe is a form of shoplifting under the law). The same should apply in this case, and Verison should honor their quoted rate. I think, however, it's pretty obvious that this is just a case of mathematical ignorance on the part of the verison reps, and not some attempt at some kind of a scam.
That's nothing. I'm currently in collections with Telus Mobility (ironically it's majority owned by Verizon) for $9500+. Why you may ask, because I bought two evdo PCMCIA cards on an unlimited data plan for $20 for the first three months, then $100/month afterwards on three year contracts. Sounded like a good deal, I could RAdmin clients in my car (pull over first of course) so I bought two. One for me and one for my other tech. Then I find out a few months later that 1. The data plan the rep signed me up for applied to blackberries, not pcmcia cards and that unlimited actually means 250mb with a $.20/kb charge. What I actually got for my $20/month was included 1mb. Not knowing any better, I did 2 gigs of transfer one month (don't know the exact details of all months, I'd have to look them up) After three months of trying to get it sorted out and paying their ransom, they cut me off. Been fighting it since. Apparently there are two issues: 1. the rep signing me up under the wrong plan, 2. the definition of unlimited. I contend unlimited means without limits, they assert the fine prints say 250mb. Seeing as my contract has no fine print, nor reference to any tariff's or other contract, I don't know where they get this idea. It's really screwed me up, seeing as they filed against my credit bureau, we now have to wait until this is cleared up to buy the house we were planning to this winter. I can't get credit for a pack of gum at the moment. Now, comparatively, I have a Rogers Portable modem which is external, and for $50/month I get a 30gb cap. Yet somehow, it's all my fault. Oh, they did credit my bill $400, and another $800 for the misunderstanding (which brought it to $9500.) They did however fail to credit me for the $128.40 I did pay, you know, for what I agreed to.
- The Google Toolbar has a spell checker button AND it works, consider that before hitting submit next time k?
I would have much more sympathy for Verizon and accept this argument if the rate $0.02 per kilobyte. But it isn't. This isn't a real number we're dealing with. This is a fictional number. Just as half a cent is a fictional number. They understand the difference between half a cent and half a dollar. But you get them down to 0.002 and they suddenly become brain dead.
He owes Verizon about $0.72, and should pay them $0.72 and no more. If they already hit his credit card for $72, he should call his credit card company and play them the recording he made. Credit card companies sure as hell understand money.
Absolutely not. If you call the company and they have multiple people quote you the exact same price, that's the price you should be charged. Hell, even after he's pointed out the mistake they're STILL quoting the same price. This has moved beyond a mistake and at this point is pushing the boundaries of fraud. They're quoting one price and charging another. If they insist on under-educating their entire staff to the point that NOBODY knows the difference between dollars and cents, they should be forced to accept the consequences of consist misquotes.
Notice they didn't misquote in a way that gave the customer extra money. I'm pretty sure they would be trained properly if that were occurring. They're consistently making a mistake that's screwing the customer and they don't care enough to fix it... EVEN WHEN IT'S POINTED OUT DIRECTLY.
They need to be dragged over the coals for this sort of thing.
--
RumorsDaily
I am writing in regards to the incident recorded at http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ for the charges of George Vaccaro. He was originally quoted at a rate of .002cents/kb, and this was confirmed multiple times by customer service reps as the rate he was expected to pay. In doing the proper math, his bill should result in a charge of 72cents, not the $72 he has been billed.
What concerns me is not that he may have been misquoted, but that the quote was confirmed to be correct multiple times, and yet, the billing charge remains the same, stated multiple times, due to a simple math error. I fear this lack of proper math skills in both quoting and billing will be applied to my account. I will not continue to have an account with a company that cannot rectify its own math, as I fear this incorrect math will be applied to my account, and it too will result in a bill that is *100 times* larger than it should be.
Verizon needs to correct this math error, charge him the rate he was quoted, and repeatedly confirmed, which results in a charge 72cents, or $0.72, and also publicly apologize not only for the frustration and time loss it has caused to Mr. Vaccaro, but also to assure other customers that they will not be treated the in the same fashion.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
This is a particularly blatant and well-documented example, but it's not surprising. Verizon regularly lies to consumers, actively or by omission.
When I signed up, I had no credit history, so they charged me a large deposit which was to be returned after a year. When I called after over a year asking where my check was, they told me that I had to request the deposit to be returned. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Why didn't they mention this when I started the account? They were simply hoping I would forget that I'd paid the deposit or wouldn't be willing to fight them for it. How many deposits have they just kept in this way? Or put another way, how much of other people's money became Verizon's because of deception? How much money did they steal?
But what can you do about it? There's no accountability. "George" and "Andrea" are either absolutely incompetent or dishonest, but they don't even tell you their full names. You can't link the voices on the phone to actual people. Even if you could, there's no channel to complain about them. And there's certainly no way to link the absence of an action to a specific person, so there's certainly no way to hold them accountable for not sending my check. And unfortunately, you can't just switch to a more honest phone company, because I don't believe such a creature exists.
I think the most that can be done is to take them to small claims court each time. If you go through all the work to do so, you'll almost certainly win. But they're betting most people don't have the time to fight them, and...well, they're right.
Mmm, yes. Cingular is nice. They're often willing to forgive half or all of an overage charge if it's your first month with a new service and you underestimated your usage.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Bub if you are gonna take on a major machine like this dont screw up your own math when you reply.
BTW. Good luck. Your gonna need it.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
Now if you wish to use arithmetic starting starting from 525 AD to calculate the beginning of centuries and millenniums, I'll be happy to concede you the point.
7 or so years ago I heard a great quote about this problem. "Technically, the nerds arguing that the new millennium doesn't start for another year are correct, but the rest of the world will party anyway."
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
My money says they were bullshitting him. The chick at the end got the concept. When he forced her to play along and write down "half a cent in dollar notation" she got "$0.005" just fine.
As they say, hindsight is 20/20. However he should not be forced to hand over more then he was originally quoted. As he was given a quote over the phone (and not only did he clarify the quote but he had it written down which COULD be written down as "0.002 cents" rather then "$0.002") he couldn't realize Verizon employees were trained to be so fucking stupid. As such he should be allowed to pay what he was quoted.
But as we all know 0.002 is a universal number that cannot be changed by adding a unit to it. So therefore 0.002 is an infinite amount of time (or at least a really long amount of time as there is no difference between 0.002 millennium and 0.002 days), so it shouldn't be full yet. At least in Verizon's world.
Someone has already mentioned this, but it seems to have gotten lost in the mathematics misunderstanding frey.
.002 cents per Kb?" "Uhh, yes, sir, per Kb sent."
What the 1st supervisor actually said was ".002 per Kb Sent". He didn't say if the ".002" was in dollars or cents, nor did he denote if it was a "$" attached to the front of that number, or if there was a "c" on the back of it. He may have assumed that the called knew that there was a $ on the front.
So, assuming there was a $ in front of the per Kb rate, the company was correct. Perhaps the caller heard "cents" rather then "sent". I could understand that happening, even under further questioning; "That's
Even thought this may have been the case, the phone reps were still a bit silly in their calculations.
Where's the '-1, Let Me Get My Supervisor' mod when you need it?
props to george for first of all recording this to show the simple stupidity of some people to do a math conversion. dollars != cents, yet this "supervisor" can't even realize that cents is 1/100 of a dollar when he's converting. and props to george for his patience. i'd have been yelling at these people after two minutes of their pure stupidity, but that's just b/c i'm not really that patient. i love how the manager is like "what do you mean .002 cents and .002 dollars". he explains it clearly but they still don't get that a partial cent is "possible" but you know that you aren't just going to use ONLY 1kb. it takes several hundred or thousand kb to even connect to a mobile network [at least on my phone]. these people need to go to take a math class every once in a while.
"High School diploma required" is probably all this job requires. I know plenty of people who barely passed h.s. math that could probably figure this out. how stupid.
It took me some time, but I understood what was the cause of the confusion. They have in their mind only dollars, so when they write 0.1, they mean dollars, BUT if the 0.1 dollars gets to be some cents and not a full dollar they think they should write it as 0.1 cents. For example, 0.002 cent/KB actually means to them 0.002 dollars/KB which of course is less than a dollar (it is even less than a cent), so they write it as 0.002 cents. They mean 0.002 dollars/KB cents...
I don't know if I made myself clear, this is really some wacky logic verizon has...
"Are you calling to complain about a mathematical error in your billing? If yes, press 1 now to speak to a representative in a country with a more effective educational system than yours, if no, press 2."
I was wondering if school kids here understood the difference, I tried this with two 6th grade students and both of them knew the difference.. I am amazed that more than a couple of adults at Verizon could not figure it out.. not exactly a scientific study but I seriously feel that the US needs to work on its education system, particular schools and high schools. The US universities are of excellent quality but I figure only a very small proportion of your population would be eligible to study there given their understanding of basic school education. Vasanth
I have had this very same problem over in the UK. Orange mobile quoted me in pence/kb for their Orange World internet (free for evening and weekends, charged at fixed rate in the day). I got my first months bill in at nearly £300. They made exactly the same 100 fold conversion error in the quote. Unfortunately for me they wouldn't recognise the error, and had to pay.
Forgoing the fact that they misrepresented the Orange World internet completely by saying it was entirely free, it's still a poor show on Orange's part.
I guess I am just lucky it's free in the evenings and weekends, I would hate to see my bill otherwise.
This is a lesson to UK Orange customers, buy an unlimited Vodafone PCMCIA card. It's much cheaper.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
Verizon has stated for all to hear that .002 dollars=.002 cents. We should all use Verizon's math and pay all of our Verizon bills in cents.
-FlashFan
Here's the information for Andrea. At the time of posting this, her voicemail box is already full.
Andrea: 1-888-581-1070 (Ext. 2234)
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
Yes, it's funny. Yes, it's scary.
No, it's not at all surprising.
This is the result of a whole generation of schoolkids who don't know how to do arithmetic. All they know how to do is work a calculator. These are not the same thing.
And it must be said that the customer here is really not very good at explaining the arithmetic. I understand that he is impatient, angry, resigned, but what he mostly does is repeat himself. He does not explain himself well at all.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
Here's my 0.0002 cents, not dollars!!
/. readers probably know. They don't exactly have the best working conditions. There are really a few problems with this call:
While studying at university, I've had the experience of working in call-centers in different positions - all but supervisor (because they were afraid I would actually do a good job!). A lot of tech support is outsourced as many
1) data charges in Canada aren't any higher than the US - though with cross-border use the data rate generally skyrockets, for some reason I don't understand.
2) Employees in sales, support, and supervisor positions in call centers are a mixed-bag. I've seen some only HS, some post-secondary students, some with degrees/diplomas..... and some you never really know if they've been educated. You'll find among these (like the general population) some really smart and some not so smart. And don't forget math is a different type of IQ from language. Though this is really basic math for most of us here, a smart person might not be math smart.
3) I agree the math of the caller is right. Verizon's is clearly in the wrong. If the agent on the phone though credited $70 I'm sure Verizon management or the supervisor in the call center would question the employee. Since some wouldn't understand the math, I'm sure employee would be disciplined or fired. Esp. if an outsourced company is doing the disciplining, I'm sure it would work more to Verizon and not the employee's favor. Don't forget they probably have to handle a lot of credit complaints. Is suddenly every customer right? Not debating the ethics, but I'm sure Verizon would question them.
4) Ever had a bad day at work? Didn't perform as you should? Working in call-centers, most employees get de-motived and don't care about the work. Caller was a nice guy. But in many cases, as I have been, you're not motivated to actually helping people. You don't get extra money. Less time and less credits on call means more job security. Had it been me, I would have credited the guy, but probably passed it onto a supervisor for further 'investigation'. Just to CMA (cover my ass!).
And, like many other jobs, working in call centers is a tireless loop. It was impossible for me after long time trying and with a honours degree in university to find work. My current employer gave me a chance and I'm greatful. Think of those, similar to me, that might be stuck in the same loop. They're not under achieving, they're just not getting other job offers no matter how hard they try. At least think of those people when calling in. Not everyone picking up the phone should be labelled 'stupid'.
that he didn't flip out on the Verizon rep(s). His patience in explaining the same thing over and over again is just incredible. I still doubt he'll get his money back, though.
You need to remove the fractions of a cent first and get the unit of measure in cents (or pennies).
.002 cents per KB. Then 1000 KB would be 2 cents. Make sure person agrees this is correct.
.002 cents/KB, there is a reasonable chance that a judge in small claims court would agree. It would be fun to watch Judge Milian listen to the tape and try and teach the Verizon folks math. That would make for some good TV.
If the rate is
If I used 36 * 1000 KB, that would be 36 * 2 cents = 72 cents.
Sadly, people are easily confused by decimals and fractions (part of our no fractions in a child left behind program -- which 5 out of 3 children fail),.
The solution is to get the unit of measure to FULL CENT values first, and then calculate the result in full cent increments.
You may need to provide a written proof to show how it works, step by step. Sigh.
On the legal front, if they quoted and verified numerous times (which they did) the rate of
I wouldn't involve a lawyer unless your goal is to actually try and prove fraud (a tough fight since clearly they have stupidity as their main defense).
http://www.codepoetry.net/2006/07/07/verizon_reall y_bad_at_math
If you listen to the recording, it suggests that Verizon's reps quote wireless data rates in terms of cents instead of dollars as a matter of routine. I wouldn't be surprised, then, if a large slice of Verizon's wireless-data customers were given bogus, cents-for-dollars quotes. If so, a ton of people -- perhaps even all of Verizon's wireless-data customers -- have been charged 100 times more than they were quoted for data usage.
If cents-for-dollars quoting turns out to be widespread, prepare to see class-action suits.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
The caller should have resorted to fractional reasoning, which is easier and more intuitive than decimals for people without math training, and more easily avoids the cognitive interference from the unit conversion:
.2 means one fifth? .002 means one five hundredth? Divide 1 by 500 on the calculator to check, please. ...Profit! (Obligatory)
1. Can we agree that
2. Can we agree that
3. Can we agree that you've quoted me one five hundredth of a penny for each kB?
4. Can we agree that every 500 kB should therefore cost a penny?
5. Therefore, let's find out how many pennies I owe by dividing 35893 by 500.
6.
I believe this approach would have been more successful.
Y'all know if you get two friends to quit V, and they get two friends to quit V, and so on and so on... well, the problem won't be a problem for long.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
But what if the first rep put down $0.002 in the notes. All they seem to do is pronounce $0.002 as 0.002 cents. They are consistent in their mistakes and those mistakes are canceling each other out everytime any of the rep 'speaks' 0.002 cents for $0.002 written. Those assholes have no idea that its different.
I, too, was surprised not to hear him using this method, though I would stick to multiples of tens so as not to confuse her. How much for 1kB, 10kB, 100kB and then 10000kB. By continually forcing this method, you should be able to get her to say that 10000kB should cost 20 cents.... repeatedly.
He tried roughly that.
The rep switched from cents to dollars immediately after making the calculation, and wouldn't realize that he'd have to multiply by 100 to reach that number.
Evidently, to both reps, 71.85 (or whatever it was) is 71 dollars, regardless of whether you were starting with a number in cents or not. If they were asked to calculate in cents they likely would have multiplied that number by 100...
Most CSR's were employee family members working to avoid being leaches. No enthusiasm.
The probation/parolees were the best workers. They did not want to get in trouble and tried to be the most reliable!
Telemarketers were another story!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Fractions are difficult for some people. I worked in a deli in high school and people would come in and request 'three fourths' or 'half' a pound of meat or cheese, but the scale read in decimal numbers. We had the following sign hanging behind the scale for one of my coworkers:
one and a half = 1.50
1 pound = 1.00
three quarters = 0.75
two thirds = 0.66
one half = 0.50
one third = 0.33
one quarter = 0.25
What amazed me the most was after working there for a year he still needed to use the sign. And if someone was around he'd typically ask to save time from looking it up. He would frequently ask "What is one pound, point zero one?" Amazing.
Looks like their web designers have had similar issues.
Thanks to everyone for the words of support. So you know, at this point the $72, if I decide to pay it, would be well spent for all the laughs this has provided.
.002 cents?" That just seemed to be the root of the issue so I figured with the management level people I should cut to the chase.
.002 cents/KB, confirmed the rate, the one who wrote the first note in the account. .002 cents/KB on my notes, but then left me a voicemail saying the charges were correct and there would be no credit. Conveniently she never mentioned units in her voicemail, just "point zero zero two." .002 cents/KB but didn't realize I was being billed 100x that rate so I escalated - after asking twice for a supervisor, the third time was a charm.
Thanks also for correcting the people who accuse me of being less than sincere. I'd have to have Jerky Boys skills to have pulled that off not being sincere. After re-listening to it, I wished I had realized how funny it was, and thrown in "oh god, god and baby Jesus help us!"
To clear one thing up that people don't seem to understand, I have the unlimited data plan in the states, and no concept of per KB cost. I was heading to Canada so I called verizon to find the voice and data rates. The rep told me the rate, and I actually worked out roughly in my head and out loud the per megabyte cost - I didn't nail it down to $.02 cents per meg, I just roughly estimated it at $1 per meg - thats the degree of accuracy I cared about. I would spend a few bucks, but I wouldn't spend closer to a hundred. I did think the rate was low enough to think something might be wrong, so I reconfirmed the rate with her - ".002 cents / KB?" - "Yes, thats correct." Then I had her note the quote in my account to be sure.
Also, in the states, since the plan is unlimited, and as many posters have pointed out, you could easily use gigs/month, if you were streaming video or audio ala SlingBox. So the thought that I could pay less than a dollar per meg, even $.02 (if I had computed it exactly) didn't seem impossible, or crazy, just slightly suspicious.
I make a great hourly rate, and this clearly hasn't been worth the hours I've spent for the $71 thats in dispute. It's been about false advertising and the principle that if you quote something at a certain price, you should really charge that price - certainly not 100 x that price, and certainly if the mistake is on your side. And its been pretty hysterical following this thing.
Also, to those who think I could have done better or planned this - I was blindsided by 3 levels of customer service rep thinking that 2/1000s of a $ is the same as 2/1000ths of a cent. I did the best I could while in disbelief, and even confused myself at times. I had talked to 2 other reps, one on a different call, and one before the first supervisor (the handoff is in the beginning of the audio), and they all seemed incapable of understanding basic math, so I thought to myself of the AOL cancellation guy Vincent Ferrari, and said to myself "you better record this."
Also, I had tried other approaches - I didn't always just jump into "do you know the difference between $.002 and
I am really surprised that I haven't gotten any resolution at this point from Verizon, it seems like it could be a huge can of worms for them, but hey, I guess I should't expect much.
Anyway, thanks again for the support, kind words, funny comments etc. I'll keep the blog updated so anyone interested can see the resolution.
Finally, here is the wrap up:
1. Rep who quoted me initially
2. Brie: rep I called first, went through the same stuff, she seemed to get it, even noted
3. Trent: First rep on 1st call, same nonsense, quoted
4. Mike: Supervisor - first guy I battle on the mp3 - as you all heard ".002 cents/KB"
5. Andrea: Floor Manager - ".002 cents/KB... its a matter of opinion"
All 5 confirmed the rate as ".002 cents/KB", the last 4 "thought" this was the same as "$.002/KB" and claimed my bill reflected the quoted rate.
Thanks for playing.
It is for reasons such as this that you should always ask for things in writing. At least this way they can't claim that it you misunderstood what was being offered, since it is written in black and white.
You should talk to a small claims court and find out whether there is any action you can take, in this case. You should also find out whether the recording is suitable evidence, given you didn't tell the operator that the call may be recorded.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
A friend of mine worked for a Verizon call center here in Canada briefly. He hated it and ended up quitting. Anyway, basically what he said was that Verizon felt it was not economically beneficial for a Customer Service Agent to be on the phone helping a customer for more then 12 or 13 minutes. So when a call was reaching that limit they were basically instructed to do whatever it took to end the call and move on.
He said that many of the phone calls he had to deal with were customers who had previously called in and been lied to by the Customer Service Rep so that they could get off the phone with them within the time limit. The customers were understandably confused and/or angry, and I'm certain it would be hard to fix the lie and fix the problem within his own 12 or 13 minutes.
Interestingly enough, having listened to Georges recording I noticed that he wasn't on the phone with 1 single Rep. for any decent length of time, but rather, just kept getting transfered on.
Additionally, my friend said that Verizon would basically do whatever it took to make a sale and that often he would have people phoning in who had been sold a High Speed Internet package at a really great price, but nobody had mentioned to them that they needed a computer to use it.
I myself will never, ever, ever, do business with Verizon. I think they are the shadiest, dirtiest company around. They even out rank MDG.
-hps
Well I finally got to talk to them. They didn't want to tell me how much it would cost
because I was not the authorized person on the account.
So I went and got my girlfriend on the phone so she could ask them how much the
cancellation penalties would be. The answer is $175 per line.
They way we feel right now, we just might pay it. Maybe I can go to small claims to
get the $160 for the phone they gave to somebody else.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
I just got finished fighting with Rogers. Their math is okay, but they seem incapable of delivering a bill to me. The letter from their president bragging about what great service they offer, no problem, but an actual bill, no way.
So when accounts receivable called I told them I would gladly pay them when they honored their end of the contract and provided me with a monthly bill. The rep thought that was quite reasonable but her boss disagreed.
Sorry to spoil some of the Verizon-bashing, but I think people are forgetting a core issue:
The problem here is that $0.002/KB is the *correct* rate. It's what Verizon actually charges as a data rate. So the bill is correct. Having a blind faith in their billing department, especially when it comes to math and calculations, I see where the reps are coming from: we know the billing is right, this guy is trying to blind us with science, so let's stick to our guns.
What is incorrect is that this person was *quoted* 0.002 cents/KB. His whole argument should've been focused on saying that he was told it would be 100 times cheaper than it actually was.
Math stupidity: yes. Intentional "larceny": I don't think so.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
'' 7 or so years ago I heard a great quote about this problem. "Technically, the nerds arguing that the new millennium doesn't start for another year are correct, but the rest of the world will party anyway." '' One of the stupid new Labour bitches said the celebration was for Jesus Christ's 2000th birthday. That was wrong on so many levels, it was unbelievable.
I think Verizon should use a little bit of that grant money on their own employees!
Verizon grant helps teens learn math, science at CEET
Boss Hogg to work there. He really understood his percentage.
Rosco: "OK Boss, I want 50 percent of the cut from this plan."
Boss: "I'll do you even better, I'll give you 50 percent of 50 percent"
Rosco: "Oh goody!"
of Verizon putting his "BistroMathematics" into real world use. (Yes I posted this on the other blog, but thought it was funny enough to share here)
Do you work for Verizon, or are you just "not a mathematician?" 0.02 is very much a real number both in the mathematical and practical senses of the word real. So is "half" -- whatever the units you put on these numbers (cent, dollars, math-impaired people) they're quite real numbers.
everything in moderation
He says the difference is 1:100 Bravo!
>
IF you go to a Target store check out the tuna fish. The pack of 4 cans is more expensive than the separate cans.
If you want to see a "what, who me? response", point it out to a "sales associate".
Usually the same is true of the catsup, also. (big bottle more expensive/oz than small bottle)
Yea, IT illustrates the point. But i guess you didn't get it so i should explain it to you a little better. Don't worry, it still has verison making the mistake.
.00 meaning cents and then read it as a whole number and say 120 cents.
You see, $0.20 being equal to 20 cents gets people in the habit of seeing $0.00 and saying cents to represent anything after the decimal. So, when it is applied literally, $0.201 looks like 201 cents which is actually $2.01 or 2 dollars and one cent instead of the actual value of 20.1 cents. You don't have this problem when you only have 2 numerical values after the decimal because 0.20 will always be 20 cents but $0.120 is read as 120 thousandths of a dollar but the natural instinct is to revert to both the
You can refer to it as an optical illusion of sorts. It is were the familiarity of certain things confuses the mind into automatically connecting it with something else. This is what is happening with the verison agents and why it has followed so far into the complaint history. It is also probably why verison displays it that way- to trick people into spending money and then feel guilty enough to pay it because they were dumb enough to think of it otherwise. The problem this time is that it went completley backwards on them. But verison isn't the only company to do this. Nextel/sprint offers a wireless broad band package that offer so much bandwidth per month and the overages are $o.oo2 per k after that. I have a customer who just recently said he wasn't worried about overages because it was a fraction of pennies per k over. He thinks he would never go over the plans bandwidth by more them 5 or 10 dollars.
sadly, He had me set up a vpn so he could do work while on vacation this week and the nextel site was down last i checked. I cannot get a hold of him to suggest he look again at the pricing but i'm guessing it is the same as verison and he is going to have a 30-40 dollar bill on top of the normal bill.
35897kb *.002$=$71.794 but morons that they be it should have been 35897kb*.00002$=$0.71794
0.002 and 0.00002 - Calling Prof. John Allen Paulos: the Verizon morons are Innumerate!
This use of Youtube is great!!!! Just give us the idiots' telephone numbers so that we can call them and tell them to please let us have $0.002 of every paycheck, please.
I have no doubt such conversion problems occur from time-to-time, and my general experience with customer service across virtually all telecom compaines has been awful. Nevertheless, I honestly have to wonder if the recorded "Verizon conversation" linked to YouTube for this article is just a staged/scripted performed by pranksters. It has all the classic pacing of a well-done Chris Guest mocumentary and sounds nothing like an actual customer service call (in my experience). Or perhaps my satire threshold has been lowered to the point where real life and staged comedy start looking the same...
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I can hear the Verizon rep's pre-pubescent voice echoing through the years from primary school math class.
"Ms. Smith? Are we ever going to use decimals in real life?"
No, but that's irrelevant because he has permission -- twice. Once at the beginning of the call when the recording says "this call may be monitored or recorded for quality control or training purposes" and again at the end of the call when Andrea tells him it's OK to post the recording on his blog.
everything in moderation
The cellular customer service reps are trained to state that it is a "one time only courtesy" any time they credit an account. I know this from very recent dealings with both T-Mobile and Cingular. Nobody else can insist upon receiving the same refund because their circumstances are not exactly the same, and because a "courtesy" refund is not an admission that the billing was incorrect.
Also I have a recommendation to anyone who has been unable to settle a grievance with a cellular service company. Send them a letter. An honest to God paper, snail-mail letter. Explain your problem as objectively as possible, mention your failed phone or e-mail based attempts to get it settled, and offer to file complaints with the BBB and the FCC if you don't receive proper assistance. This worked wonders for me with T-mobile. The 20 minutes it took to write that letter were far better spent than the hours I wasted on hold, being transferred between reps (each requiring a brand new explanation), and performing pointless troubleshooting steps with my phone. E-mail is worthless for this sort of problem with companies this large. You will receive an auto response every time. A real human will read your paper letter and will almost certainly respond.
I know working for verizon landline that verizon lets the reps go up to a certain amount of credit given per customer until they need supervisor approval, I know that with landlines it's up to 150$ before you have to ask a supervisor. I'm going to guess they have a similiar environment there; they wouldn't lose their jobs or even get a talking to for ~72$ worth of credit. The people he got on the line were just complete bumbling idiots, as the recording shows repetatively...
A perfect example of how efficient the American educational system is.
Calculation and interpretation are being done independently of each other.
They do the math, and come up with a number that is two digits, decimal, three digits. When dealing with money in the U.S., basically the ONLY time we use numbers that look like this is when referring to dollars. So the brain immediately says dollars. But when referring to amounts that are zero decimal a few digits, our brain knows that we are referring to cents. The brain is making this leap, and because the people see that the bill confirms what their instinct tells them should be right (the total charge,) they don't bother TRYING to make the (correct) logical leap. They see a very small number, so it must be cents. But because it is, indeed, smaller than one whole cent, they again know that it is measured as "point something cents". So they know "point something cents," and they see "point zero zero two,", so they make the (faulty) logical leap of "point zero zero two cents." Then they do the math, and get "seventy one point seventy nine," and see that as dollars, since, silly caller, only DOLLARS are phrased as "something something point something something!"
It's horrible. I see the faulty logic, yet I see no way of getting them to understand. (The caller most certainly tried a lot harder than I would have. I would have gotten frustrated to the point of hanging up well before he did.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Talk about stupidity. How the hell can these reps not know the difference between dollars and cents, especially with the caller providing so many different examples. But, when he was talking to the last supposedly qualified supervisor he had an opportunity to drive his point home, but he missed it. At about the 18:19 time mark in the call recording, she starts talking about using the calculator, but fails to recognize the difference between dollars and cents (again). However, at about the 18:58 time mark in the recording he asks her a 'what if' question using 1 cent, at which point she says something like "so 1 cent, that would be .001 on the calculator". Here's where he should have said something like "Why did you just change 1 into .001 ?" to point out the fact that a conversion is required to change cents into dollars. But, unfortunately, he missed the opportunity.
- James
At least that didn't affect your pay. I used to work at Sonic where the timeclock printed out your hours in hours.minutes format per day. This was to my detriment as the proprietor would just add up the hours per day on his calculator, making 59 minutes worth .59 hours.
So if I worked 3 hours and 59 minutes every day for five days (it was a part time minimum wage job) the proprietor would stiff me for nearly two hours of unpaid work.
3.59+
3.59+
3.59+
3.59=
17.95 (hours? I don't think so
3 hours and 59 minutes per day times 5 days = 19.92 hours
I have often seen signs advertising something on special for ".99 cents" and the like. One of these days, when I'm feeling cocky, I'm going to ask for one, lay a penny on the counter, and insist that I get my 1/100 of a cent change back.....
Innumeracy is rampant, and I don't even mean advanced algebra or calculus -- I mean simple, basic arithmetic. I guarantee you that if the machines go down, most retail clerks couldn't make correct change to save their lives.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Everyone let them know how great they are :)
. jsp
https://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/contact/email
--
Nic
1) Instead of spending a half hour, an hour or whatever wading through automated support and going through various levels of customer service trying to resolve an issue simply fill out a complaint form on the FCC's website. The form is available here. Within a few days a representative from the phone company will call you and politely ask what they can do to take care of this problem. I have used this succesfully several times in the past. I think once you get the FCC involved the phone companies are generally much more interested in resolving the issue quickly and to your satisfaction. Of course this probably won't do much if your problem arose in Canada.
2) If you can't get your problem resolved and want to switch providers there is a way to weasel out of your contract with no obligation. This is absolutely the last thing the phone company will ever tell you and most people aren't even aware it's available. Tell them you moved to an area where you no longer have service and they are required, by law, to terminate your contract for you. I myself have never used this but I have several friends that have done it succesfully. Some providers may require you to provide some proof of relocation, like an apartment lease or something. Not that I'm advocating this [ahem], but many apartment companies post their leasing agreements on their websites where you can simply print it out, fill it in and fax it to the phone company.
Their EVDO network speed tops out at around 2.5 Mbps. You can burn through 10 MB ($20.48 at $0.002/kB) in about 40 seconds. So with that in mind, which sounds more reasonable rate for less than a minute's worth of data: 20 cents or $20?
Sure there is.
Back when the dollar was worth more than 30 seconds of skilled labor, people reckoned prices in dollars, cents, and mills. If I recall right, the early United States even had mill coins. Gasoline is still reckoned in dollars, cents, and mills per gallon, rounded to cents at the end of the transaction. That's why every fueling station gives you the prices as "$1.549/gal" or some such -- those nine mills per gallon add up after a while...
Eventually, the CEO will notice, and it will be a joke on Jay Leno, then the supervisor will get the ass.
Verizon Communications
Corporate Headquarters
140 West Street
New York, NY 10007
Telephone: 800-621-9900
Airfone
2809 Butterfield Road
Oak Brook, IL 60522
Telephone: 630-572-1800
Fax: 630-572-0506
Verizon Internet Solutions Texas
P.O. Box 152212
Irving, TX 75015-2212
Telephone: 800-567-6789
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Is that like a plugged nickel?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Well, this would not be too so outrageous if it did not happen to so many people all the time: talking to a customer rep that just does not understand the problem. So I feel identified with this call. And since they can't hang up on you, they just try your stamina.
Ironic how they give grants to other people trying to help them in learning math when they cant even deal with there own problems. http://www.niu.edu/northerntoday/2005/july5/smile. shtml
I was in a nice and not expensive italian pizza cafe, the large pizzas (thin and plain 2 toppings at most), were about 8euro or so each, so that was
close enough to back home prices I thought cool. They noted on the side prices in British Pounds, at 14 pounds which equated to about 25 euros. Man
those italians either were bad at math, or hated the british or the british were dumb enough to pay 14pounds.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
actually, get a sound board online and call them to play it.
But the CEO himself is a big dick any way, ever read interviews with him defending his companies policies and charges.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
and just said "I was quoted .00002 dollars per KB, but you charged me .002 dollars per KB", that or just faxed the results of the google query above to the idiots.
Buh. This caller gets at least an A-, probably an A for patience. But he gets like a C+ at best for communication. You aren't going to overcome an understanding gap by talking over people. You have to listen to them work it out and then point out the problems with the analysis. The people are being slow, or unclever, or obstinate, but they're not being given much help to comprehend the problem. If they're honestly looking at 78.12 and assuming that's 78 dollars and 12 cents or whatever, his exhortations won't really overcome that.
Not that he should be expected to have these skills. And customer service types should absolutely have these skills, but it makes a really dull and annoying recording.
The guy should have explained X per Y is X / Y, therefore when you multiply by Y you get X. A few images on a website and them pointing the browser at it would have driven the point home in a way that can't be ignored, if they really wanted to understand. Telling them they can't do math is accurate, but doesn't really help.
-josh
While we had our laugh, it is statistically improbable that a successful corporation like Verizon can have so many people that fails grade school math. My guess is that they have been handing out A LOT of these 0.002cent/kb deal to users, and they will not admit to a single one of them. A mere $72 lost to a customer is nothing compare to paying up everyone who received this quote. Then again, I think 90% of us would not be so smart to ask the rep. to write a note when it was first quoted. This is a well-learned lesson for the a consumer like me.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
We had a similar problem with rogers (for our cell phones) a few years ago.
Now I have the problem of being assigned an account number my bank and their system won't recognize, so I can't pay it. I get a bill every month, but my bank, nor their website, nor their customer service department can process payment.
- The Google Toolbar has a spell checker button AND it works, consider that before hitting submit next time k?
The fact that five Verizon representatives could not tell the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars says nothing about their intelligence or math skills. The fact is, they have to follow a script. If the script says the rate is .002 cents for every kilobyte, then that's what it is, and they cannot say anything different. If they do, the legal liability faced by Verizon is enormous. That is why, in the email sent by Verizon, they still refuse to recognize the error.
The irony is, now that Verizon's error in its script has been documented, Verizon is open to a huge class action so that everyone who was charged .002 dollars/kilobyte (not the .002 cents per kilobyte in the script) is refunded 99% of those charges. I don't know how much of Verizon's customer base uses this data service, but it could represent many tens of millions of dollars, not to mention interest and attorneys' fees-and all the publicity. This is a no-win situation for Verizon, and they know it. I am sure their counsel is working late tonight, as are their accountants to assess the magnitude of the damage, effect on quarterly earnings, share price and the like. For those who do get the refund, Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa!
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But I've tried telling the reps I get that I will be recording the call (after getting that canned message), and they protest, and state that if I continue the call, they will disconnect. And under the law where I live, both parties must consent. They are as free to hang-up as you are.
Keep in mind that laws vary from place to place, and in the US, it's a per-state thing.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The parent post was moderated incorrectly. It should be "+1, Scary", not "+1, Funny".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This could really be a benefit for everyone. Anyone here who uses Verizon should pay pennies on the dollar for next month's phone bill. After all, we have recorded statements from a Verizon rep that $0.002 is the same as 0.002 cents. So if your phone bill is 36.23, you should be able to pay 37 cents. Be nice, tell 'em to keep the change!
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I have a strong feeling that the low wage call center moron you speak of surely doesn't understand that this is a million dollar decision they have on their hands. In fact, not resolving this quickly and quietly ends up in a situation like this where it is posted all over the internet. They made a poor million dollar decision. And... it would be a million cent decision if anything.
Depends on Federal and State regs. In many places it's perfectly legal to record a call as long as ONE party involved has knowledge that it's being monitored.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
This comment may only apply to a small subset of readers here, but allow me to make the point that as frustratingly obvious as it may be to the numerically literate that "99 cents" is not the same as ".99 cents," so too is it frustratingly obvious to the , erm, literally literate that "cents" is not the same as "cent's." Those of you who are comfortable with numbers but not with grammar: this thread is what it feels like to have to wade through the commas and apostrophes that get thrown around by those who were under the bleachers when their proper usage was being taught.
Evil is the money of root.
For bonus points, he should have pushed to be billed in CANADIAN cents. After all, he was in Canada. That takes his data bill down to ~0.63 USD at current rates.
± 29 dB
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Wrong. .002 Cents/KB. If after the fact they charge $.002 then guess what: They are committing a scam/fraud. This whole thing is going to blow up on them. This is getting so much coverage, it will lead to a class action law suit. Employing idiots is not an excuse for defrauding your customers, quoting one price and then charging another. Just like you still get a speeding ticket even if you didn't see or even pass a posted speed limit sign on the street you were speeding on (IE you turn right onto a street and floor it, you're going 45 in ~300 feet and you haven't even passed the 25mph speed limit sign, the cop is still well within his rights to pull you over and ticket you even if you've never driven on the street before, and have no knowledge, and no possible way of knowing the speed limit of that street, your ignorance of the law does not excuse you). Ignorance is not a valid defense. Stupidity is not a valid defense. Verizon quoted .002 Cents ($.00002). They Charged $.002. The ignorance and stupidity of their CSRs does not excuse them from fraud. They are responsible to train their employees, if they have not done so, it is their fault.
Verizon CSRs uniformly quoted the price as
I often hear people recommend small claims court, but what about the Better Business Bureau?
I too used to have Verizon service. They made a few mistakes when I first signed up -- charging me for 2 lines instead of one (plus overcharging for that extra line). They agreed to resolve things on the phone, though I had to fax in copies of my contract. Sadly, none of the reps could do the math for the refund correctly. I tried to make it simple, asking to refund just the flat monthly rate (ignoring the taxes and such, figuring it wasn't worth my time arguing). I still spent hours on the phone.
Frustrated, I wrote a letter to the BBB. The resolution with Verizon was immediate. I received a letter, refund, compensation for my time, and a direct line to an upper manager. I was very satisfied with the result.
in long math, like you'd do to show a child.
.002 cents per KB.
.002 of a cent?
.002 cents per KB x 35893KB?
What is a cent?
One hundredth of a dollar.
1x0.01=0.01
What is
Two thousandths of one hundredth of one dollar, or one hundred thousandth of one dollar.
1x0.01x0.002=0.00002
Now what is
Two thousandths of one hundredth of one dollar multiplied by three thousand eight hundred ninety three equals seventy two hundredths of one dollar.
1x0.01x0.002x35893=0.71786
Not because I really care that much.
I just think it would be funny to call a middle school maths teacher as an expert witness.
Okay, so I listened to all of the conversation between a person who was quoted a price in cents/kilobyte, and several Verizon representatives, all of whom are so addled by reliance on their computer screens that they are unable to grasp that they are mis-quoting a price by one hundredfold by failing to convert between dollars and cents. Then it got me thinking about why they should find it so difficult to multiply and divide by 100. It's not that that can't perform the arithmetical calculation, it's just that they are experience a disconnect linking this operation with their intuition about how much something should cost. What we call "numbers" are in fact two different things: symbols that we manipulate using mechanical and representative operations, and sensations that we intuitively experience and comprehend.
Why should it be so difficult for these Verizon people, all apparently USians, to handle such a simple operation as taking powers of ten? I think it's to do with a lack of basic Metric education in the US. It seems obvious to me that in a culture where Metric conversion techniques are not routinely taught to schoolchildren, then the casual manipulation of powers of ten and powers of a hundred must become (when compared to other cultures) significantly less easy, common and apparently mind-numbingly abstruse and esoteric for a significant proportion of adults.
The unusual resistance of the U.S. to Metrication is both a symptom of and a driver of adult innumeracy.
Metric instills a basic intuition about powers of ten and orders of magnitude. Or at least, it will tend to, relative to indifferently scaled arbitrary measurements. Once you build this mental framework, it can be easily integrated into novel experiential learning.
I am unfortunately old enough to have begun primary school in a country using Imperial measurements that then switched to Metric. I can still recall being taught arithmetic as a young child, and being shown how to convert between ounces and pounds, and pounds and stone. That sucked, and made no sense.
Being indoctrinated into Metric within a few years reduced my cognitive load apppreciably, while enlarging my ability to estimate weights and measures. By exposing children to tanglible object weights such as 1g, 10g, 100g, 500g, 1kg, 5 kg and so on, one forms a consistent appreciation of mass. The same is true of learning distance.
I had to re-take basic physics and chemistry in a US university recently. I was quite shocked at how a significant proportion of the students had little conception of how much 1 ml was, or 10g, or 1m. It makes them even less able to relate the scientific measurements they read about and note down in lab to their own experience. Seriously, it's a problem. Many of them had less cognitive ability to deal with weights and measures than a typical 10-year-old European child. USians now have the worst of both worlds: thanks to globalisation, pretty much all their commodities now carry measurements in grams and litres, but they are not really taught how to think Metric in school and so have little idea of how to work with them.
Powers of ten make life easier. I now saying that being taught Metric would have avoided this Verizon arithmetic abortion, but I think it might have increased the probability of finding a rep who got it.
Some might say that the basic reason for the communication disconnect is that dollars and cents are "different", but I think comment in and of itself betrays a lack of Metric education.
I think the problem is that the Verizon people were incapable of intuiting on a fundamental level that the two are in fact the same thing, currency, but that the $ sign is a 100x multiplier of the unit. Or that the sign is a 100 divider of the $ unit.
As a pedagogy, Metric is based on the idea of as few fundamental units as possible, and everything else being created through powers of ten. It sim
Da Blog
1 cm3/ of water is of course 1 gram, or 1 mL, a cube of water 1cm on each side which, when absorbing 1 calorie of energy, will exhibit a temperature raise of 1 Celsius.
Da Blog
I guess you meant to say "not a real coin or paper currency" then. Your claims: "This isn't a real number we're dealing with. This is a fictional number. Just as half a cent is a fictional number." are both false. Regardless of the exitstance of coins in those denominations, 0.002 and 0.5 are real numbers. There's nothing "fictional" about either one. I'm baffled by your ridiculous claim.
Note also that these real numbers are used as multipliers with large multiplicands in this situation. So the "problem" of paying "0.002 cents" or "half a cent" isn't a problem at all. Moreover, a number need not have a piece of currency available to be "real."
everything in moderation
he failed to explain that the problem was they should have multiplied the kilobytes by .00002 instead of .002, he never made that clear. Not that he is to blame for anything that happened here.
http://www.google.com/search?q=.002%20cents%20time s%2035893
I want my 0.002 dollars!
If you steal from a source, make damn sure you don't copy their errors as well.
It gives you away
(Yes, the blogger actually cited his source as
Side note: I seem to recall that a major English dictionary (Oxford English?) introduced a few non-existing words in order to catch fraudulent dictionary editors copying their work illegitimately. I can't find a reference, does anyone else know anything about this?
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I just called Verizon's customer service 800 line. George, you have had some effect. However, they still don't quite get it. The price I was quoted for usage in Canada was two cents per Kb.
I work with a repository of teaching materials (among other things). I just took a look through it and found that the difference between units is generally taught in second grade. OSIC code Y2003.CMA.S02.GPK-02.BE.L02.I03, for anyone who cares about that.
Check this out.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.