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.

knowing verizon...

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.

Hello from George Vaccaro

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.

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 .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.

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 .002 cents/KB, confirmed the rate, the one who wrote the first note in the account.
2. Brie: rep I called first, went through the same stuff, she seemed to get it, even noted .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."
3. Trent: First rep on 1st call, same nonsense, quoted .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.
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

Re:

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.

It wouldn't work -- they could just ignore you. You'd have to get them on the hook for something else first.

Oh, by

Re:class action lawsuit in the works?

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:class action lawsuit in the works?

These guys work in an environment where *every word* they say on the phone is scripted and approved by management. So of course it's deliberate.

Re:class action lawsuit in the works?

I've worked in a call center (Comcast High Speed Internet Technical Support). It's nothing like that. I don't think even the most nazi call center boss you can find would do that. For two reasons:

1) Nobody would work there.
2) A recording would do the job far better.

Basically, how it works is that you are told to give the customer accurate information to the best of your ability (although slanted in favour of the company). You also follow guidelines while in the call, to keep in accordance with company policy. You can get in trouble for going outside of those guidelines, but they are guidelines, not rules. The whole reason you are there, instead of a recording is to keep the customer happy.

Now, what I would have done in this case (and would have gotten full support from my supervisor), would have been to credit the ~$60 back to the customer's account, and inform him that he will see the credit on next month's bill. (We actually were only allowed to credit a maximum of $50 without going through the billing department, but the point remains).

No, I think the short and sweet of this story is that Verizon employs morons. (And just a tip, if you ever call Comcast, and get someone with a Texas accent, ask if they are from Lubbock. If they say "yes", then just hang up and call back).

Re:class action lawsuit in the works?

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:Verizon makes this mistake all the time.

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...

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...

$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!

Re:knowing verizon...

Your comment is absurd. There is no 0.0013 dollars.

Re:knowing verizon...

256 kbit for $40? I have 6 megabits for $15. (student rate, I live with my girlfriend. It's $50 for other people). I download 3GB files in a day or so. Unless I made a mistake and am adding myself to the category of math idiots here, that means I could theoretically be paying as little as 0.0000001 cents per kilobit if I saturated my connection.

But that's not the point here. He asked them about the rate, and he thought that they had it wrong. Because they insisted that was the rate when he asked, he had them make note of it on his account before he even left on the trip. It absolutely doesn't matter whether it's a reasonable rate or not. If they quote you a price for something and put it in writing, and you ask them and prod them about the price because you think they're making a mistake and don't want to get things wrong, then they #$&! well better charge you that price. When someone agrees to sell you something for a certain price, they can't just go billing you 100x what they said they were going to charge after the fact. It's their responsibility to charge you a reasonable price, not your responsibility to pay something they consider reasonable after the fact regardless of what they said they were going to charge upfront.

My Message, for example

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..

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

Morons

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

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

It was in Britain. The shop in question was Debenhams. A british shop in euroland would give change in Euros.

Re:Morons

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

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

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.

Type it into google

.002 cents times 35893

Re:Type it into google

To be more specific, type this into google:

.002 cents per KB times 35893 KB

Re:Type it into google

The trouble with this is that there's no way in hell he'd be able to actually get her to type that string as given.

She would instead type this:

$.002 cents per KB times 35893 KB

which leads to a nonsensical result (as well it should). That's the whole problem here - people like her who think that "$.002 cents" means something.

Re:Type it into google

No, it's a suggestion for how to prove his point to them. The assumption is that if they typed it into Google, and Google showed them the right answer, they would understand their mistake.

People are uneducated

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:

Someone in payroll?! Jeez, tell us where you work so we know to avoid that place!

Re:People are uneducated

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

and they complain because perentages are hard.

Dude, parentage is hard!

Works For Them

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.

Goddamn stupid morons..

This is what happens to those who flunked out of.. grade 4 math.

Damn

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.

How to bypass the problem

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.

Write a letter (not an email)

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...

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

- RG>

Key Moment

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.

Y'all are on the wrong page...

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

Unsurprising

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.

Transfer to India

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

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

Where the real problems exist here

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.

Two tips for cell phone complainants

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. [fcc.gov] 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.

Re:But did he know?

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?

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:

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?

And if you'd listened to the audio you would know that they refuse to

Re:

> 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.

Re:But did he know?

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.

Re:Rep know he's being recorded

He told the supervisor at the end of the call he had recorded this, and told the supervisor he was going to put it "on his blog" and the supervisor replied "go ahead." So this guy actually had the blessing of the supervisor to post this! Then again she thinks at the time she is in the right... Good luck to her with that

Re:

The original audio is on putfile: http://media.putfile.com/Verizon-Bad-Math [putfile.com]

I believe the audio on PutFile is longer (27 minutes verse the YouTube's 22 minute version).

Also, Andrea (the call rep) leaves her contact information at the end. Maybe someone her

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

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.

Re:Your primary mistake...

Rather, he wants someone who *passed* *elementary school maths*. Or have standards slipped on your side of the pond, too? :(