Barron of Blog Wife, Libby, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Verizon Math

In case you haven't heard yet, Verizon customer service representatives can't do basic math. This one guy moved to Canada and selected a plan that was quoted to cost "0.002 cents/kilobyte". But when the bill came he was being charged 0.002 dollars/kilobyte.

Seems like a simple problem, right? Wrong. Evidently Verizon employees and managers have no idea that "0.002 cents" is DIFFERENT than "0.002 dollars". Here's a short clip [40sec] from one of his phone calls to customer service:

Caller: Do you recognize that there's a difference between 1 dollar and 1 cent?
Verizon manager: Definitely.
Caller: Do you recognize that there's a difference between 0.5 dollar and 0.5 cent?
Verizon manager: Definitely.
Caller: Then, do you therefore recognize that there is a difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents?
Verizon manager: [pause] No.

Classic. What's incredible is that EVERYONE he talked to didn't understand the difference. He even walks them through all of the math at a simple 2nd grade level and still couldn't get them to understand. You can listen to the entire 27 minute long exchange and judge for yourself - it's a little bit scary how inept most people seem to be at math.

You can see the original post here.