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AT&T's Bad Math Strikes MythBusters' Savage

Posted by Soulskill on from the do-they-know-he-has-explosives dept.

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."

2 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Its 1.5 cents per KB by pushf+popf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  2. Okay, I'll bite... by tehtrex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    9GB of data is 9,437,184 KB. The numbers don't add up.

    ".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 .015 cents and then tacked on 10k in fees...