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AT&T's Bad Math Strikes MythBusters' Savage
etherlad writes "MythBusters' Adam Savage got a bill charging him $11,000 for 'a few hours' of Web surfing while in Canada, using his AT&T USB Mercury modem. AT&T gave him a quote on the data rate: '.015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb.' Looks like AT&T didn't learn from Verizon's inability to do math. AT&T is also claiming Savage downloaded over 9 GB, which he calls 'frakking impossible.' Savage's huge following on twitter got him a speedy response by AT&T."
No, you divide the larger by the smaller.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
AT&T clearly states on their website its $0.015 which translates to 1.5 cents per KB.
I've been around since data was shoveled through modems that were so slow that you could actually type faster than the modem could transfer, and data was sent dial-up over expensive long distance phone lines.
And it was still cheaper than 1.5 cents/KB.
Does AT&T send a free jar of Vaseline with each new contract?
There's nothing wrong with charging per kilobyte. What they should do is *only* charge per kilobyte, and not differentiate between "voice", "local calls", "tethered data", "text messaging", etc. It's absurd that it's cheaper to acoustically-couple a 300-baud modem to your cell phone for 5 minutes than it is to transfer the equivalent amount of data over text messaging, despite the massive overhead of the audio traffic.
http://outcampaign.org/
9GB of data is 9,437,184 KB. The numbers don't add up.
.015 cents and then tacked on 10k in fees...
".015 cents": 9,437,184 KB * $0.00015 = $1,415.5776
"a penny and a half": 9,437,184 KB * $0.015 = $141,557.76
Since the published data roaming rate in Canada is $0.015/KB, let's go with "a penny and a half".
$11,000 of usage at $0.015/KB equals 733,333.33333333...KB or 716.145833MB.
So not only do they not know the difference between a cent and a dollar, but their system for measuring data transfer is also off by a factor of ~12.87... unless they somehow billed him for
I was up in Canada for a coupe months, a while back (like, a few years ago). We learned quickly that the calls were expensive. Luckily, I got my first bill at home shortly after my arrival, so it was very obvious, and only several hundred dollars high. My work reimbursed my phone expense, and my cell calls suddenly became "state your emergency" and "I'll call you back from my land line", which was actually my Vonage phone plugged into a wireless bridge in the hotel. :) They still got me for international roaming, which was still a bastard.
That's actually one of the nice things with the Vonage phone. If I'm out of town for more than a couple days, I bring a spare handset and the box, and plug it in when I settle in. I've gotten some strange looks wandering the halls of a hotel on my cordless phone, but the calls didn't cost me any extra. :)
American cell phone providers are generally terrible. Our phones, for the most part, won't roam to Europe or Asia, but I've had people from Europe come here without any substantial problems. Ya, ya, I know the technical reasons. I don't like them, nor the contractual reasons. Cell phones are for portability, why can't I get on a plane in New York, and hop off in Hong Kong, and call home? For a 1 week job in Amsterdam, I picked up a cheap prepaid just so I had a number people could call.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.