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 the difference between the two rates. You really have to hear it to believe it. Kudos George, you have the patience of a saint.

Morons

[kilonad (157396)]

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.

Re:Morons

[by Anonymous Coward]

Had a similar situation with a major commercial bank a few years ago when I electronically transfered euros. This was payed with U.S. dollars. This was when a dollar was worth more than a euro.

When I received my statement, I was charged more dollars than euros. And so started hours of phone calls working my way up the bank's food chain.

I said $1 = 1.16 (euros - as Slashdot doesn't accept the euro symbol), so we therefore we can set up a proportion, cross multiple and solve for x. That was way too confusing, but thought almost everyone at least knew this by the 7th grade. A sample matrix got people confused.

When I spoke to the vice-president for international currency transaction, she was also confused and like many said their computer didn't make mistakes. I of course said it was not the computer, but the operator.

I said, remember when you took elementry algebra, you hated it, but your instructor said one day you would need to know it? She laughed and said she remembered. I said, now is that day. No longer laughing, she said they must do math differently in Europe. I was transfered to one of the banks currency traders.

The currency trader nearly laughed his head off. He corrected the transaction and noted this is why he makes the big dollars.

Ah, the dumbing of America. It's truly sad.

Re:Morons

[thynk (653762)]

listening to that tape was downright painful, brought up my own very nasty battles with verizon a few years back. In a two year period, I had over $800 in over billings reversed but only by keeping accurate logs and countless hours. You know you're getting a rep at a place when the customer retention department refuses to talk to you. I used to think that phone companies were trained in terrorist camps, now I know better. They run them. This is why I'm with Cingular now.

Unless Verizon has changed since I was with them, he'll get the money back if he fights for it, but it won't be easy.

updates

[oedneil (871555)]

According to his blog [blogspot.com], Verizon has contacted him and said they'd waive half of the data charges. They still don't get it.

Re:updates

[BootNinja (743040)]

having worked in the industry, I can tell you, it's not that they realized they were wrong and are trying to make amends. On the contrary, they still believe they are 100% in the right, and are only offering a credit because they are afraid he will cancel his service. I can guarantee you there is a catch. Probably a 2 yr contract renewal that he is automatically approving if he takes the offer. It's called a loyalty credit or retention credit, and they are giving the credit because he is extending his contract, not because they overcharged him.

People are uneducated

[quokkapox (847798)]

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?

Re:People are uneducated

[sumdumass (711423)]

I know the feeling. I had to explain to a customer's accounts payable rep that .75 was actually 3/4 of a hour or 45 minutes so 2.75 hours was actually 2 hours 45 minutes.

To be fair, I think being married to the owner was the prime qualifications on getting the job. So the call complaining about there only being 60 minutes in a hour and why do i think there are 75 was more humorous then anything. I almost laughed out loud when she suggested I was making numbers up. I almost told her it was code and only her boss could understand it. She better show him first.

Re:People are uneducated

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

and they complain because perentages are hard.

Dude, parentage is hard!

Damn

[morissm (22885)]

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.

Write a letter (not an email)

[Matt Perry (793115)]

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.

Verizon's accounting department...

[RealGrouchy (943109)]

...should teach these people a lesson and pay them their salary in cents!

- RG>

Key Moment

[dcollins (135727)]

This is about 16 minutes in:

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 .002 dollars and .002 cents?
Andrea: No... There's no .002 dollars.
George: Of course there is.

Transfer to India

[Dak RIT (556128)]

I find it incredibly ironic that for once the customer would have probably been better served by a customer representative in India than by one who speaks (presumably) the same language.

"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'm from India and

[vasanth (908280)]

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

Re:But did he know?

[Brianech (791070)]

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.

Re:But did he know?

[Yaztromo (655250)]

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.

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.

Re:class action lawsuit in the works?

[kingbyu (682024)]

I think this guy has Verizon somewhat scared. I mean, the audio he has is pretty condemning, and seems to make it clear that point zero zero two cents is the standard quote that they give all their customers. That is why they've emailed him with an offer to take half off his bill. They're giving him a settlement where he agrees that Verizon is right. If he pays half, which agrees that Verizon is right, then none of the audio or other evidence he's collected could really be used it court. In no way does Verizon want to make any appearances that they were wrong, or they would leave themselves wide open to a class action lawsuit.

I think the Google calculator [google.com] really makes things very clear.

Also, I can't help but ask what the average math completion level is for call center people in that particular industry.

Re:class action lawsuit in the works?

[Propaganda13 (312548)]

This is Slashdot. If I didn't RTFA, what makes you think I read your post.

And yes, I just reply to random threads with this post.

Re:Verizon makes this mistake all the time.

[moresheth (678206)]

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.

Re:knowing verizon...

[Dominic_Mazzoni (125164)]

even if they did it on purpose I think the customer is a jerk: .002 cents is 500 kbytes for 1 cent, 1 megabyte for 2 cents, 5 megabytes for 10 cents. That's outrageously cheap and obviously not correct.

Really? In the U.S. it's pretty common to have unlimited Internet access for $40/month. Now, of course there are different definitions of "unlimited", but for the sake of argument let's say that I download for 1 hour every night - that's pretty reasonable, right? With a 256 kbit Internet connection (most people would have even faster than that) I could download a little over 100 MB in an hour. In a month, that'd be 3 GB. $40/month divided by 3 GB is 0.0013 cents per kilobyte. That's 1/1000 of a cent (not of a dollar), or less than what the guy in the story was quoted.

Or, think of it this way: the guy apparently downloaded 35893 kilobytes in a month. That's only ~36 megabytes - hardly anything! That's like downloading one album from the iTunes Music Store. And he was charged $72? No wonder he was mad.

5 megabytes for 10 cents is only cheap for a cell phone. For a shared home broadband connection it's pretty average.

Re:knowing verizon...

[aussie_a (778472)]

$40/month divided by 3 GB is 0.0013 cents per kilobyte.

It's also 0.0013 dollars per kilobyte. Because hey, there's no difference!

My Message, for example

[Kalak (260968)]

I am writing in regards to the incident recorded at http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ [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.

Re:My elementary teacher was right..

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

You know what bothers me? That all the people at that call center have the right to vote.

Re:Type it into google

[warmbowski (1011503)]

To be more specific, type this into google:

.002 cents per KB times 35893 KB

Re:This is why small claims court exists....

[tricorn (199664)]

I think I might have approached it like this: "Ok, so 1 kilobyte costs .002 cents, right? So how much is 2 kilobytes? .004 cents, ok? How much would 5 kilobytes be? .01 cents? Still wtih me? Ok, how about 50 kilobytes? .1 cents, right? And 500 kilobytes would be 1 cent, you still with me? If 500 kilobytes is 1 cent, how much is 1000 kilobytes? 2 cents? Ok, 1000 kilobytes costs 2 cents, how many of those did I use? About 36, right? So if each one is 2 cents, then that should be about 72 cents, right? So how come you're charging me almost 72 DOLLARS?" The point is to NEVER let them multiply anything by .002, always keep it in scale, always keep it in cents, scale it up until you're talking whole cents, then go from there.