Timeline
- Original Full Length Recording
- 12-07-2006 - Initial Post
- 12-08-2006 - First Email From Verizon - 50% Refund
- 12-08-2006 - My Response to Verizon
- 12-10-2006 - Response from Verizon - Full Refund - No Explicit Admission of Fault
- 12-10-2006 - Second Known Instance of the Problem
- 12-11-2006 - Verizon Admits Fault - But have not taken care of other cases
- 12-11-2006 - Open Letter to Verizon Management
- 12-13-2006 - Will Verizon Live up to its Worry Free Guarantee
- 12-14-2006 - Verizon is still Quoting .002 cents
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Original Recording of Verizon Customer Service Call
Here is a repost of my verizon call using blogspot's new video feature:
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63 comments:
We understand 1 second = 1 minute.
www.myvalidas.com
People need to get this message. I'm going to post this on the blog I have with a bunch of friends and probably circulate it anywhere else I can.
Just listening to the recording from that phone call made me want to kick my computer...I can't believe that they don't understand the difference between a dollar and a penny.
I also find it very "convenient" that youtube deleted your video. Can we say "payoff"?
Good luck with this whole thing,
-kmanning2008
http://lolqft.blogspot.com
Verizon = Morons!
This is INSANITY. I'm sending this to everyone I know. I found a link to your blog on a forum for owners of Acura cars, so the word is getting out. And we understand BASIC math... Good Luck.
hahahahha. It's like trying to teach a 5 year old calculus. But in this case its a grown-up and 1:st grade math =)
Can you get AT&T to fund you to take that bill to court or as public as you can?
Unbelievable, after at least 12 years in our countries school system, these people can't do or understand basic math. These people aren't even the normal hourly workers but managers! I would have lost it long before that recording started.....
i agree this is insane! however, i think you could have solved the issue or at least made it more clear by talking the rep. through the equation. you kept giving examples of the problem, but not actually using the specific numbers of the problem.
e.g. "take .002, divide by 1000, multiple the minutes, there's your answer."
the whole time i was listening to your conversation i was hoping you would do that. just my .02 CENTS.
JFGI Verizon!
(.002 (U.S. cents / KB)) * 35 893 KB = 0.71786 U.S. dollars
VS.
(.002 (U.S. dollars / KB)) * 35 893 KB = 71.78600 U.S. dollars
Isn't there a way for you to sue them? AFAIK, a verbal compromise is valid and they are ignoring it using their ignorance as an excuse. I used to have Verizon, but I cancel the service one time I called them to ask them why I was dropping calls when my cell phone was showing me 5 points of signal. The conversation was like this: "Are you indoors sir?" "No, I am not, in fact, I am in the middle of a playground, no trees, no buildings nearby, 5 points of signal, and I am dropping calls... " -"Ok, this is what happens: when you try to walk through a door that is closed, you can't! it is the same for the airwaves... walls are closed doors to them" -"Yes, I know that. I am doing a PhD in EE so I probably do know that better than you. My point is that, right now, I have 5 points of signal, I am in the middle of a field, and I am dropping calls. My phone is 2 weeks old, so I doubt it is the phone, hence I want to know if you are making changes in my area" -"Sir, if you are indoors, we cannot guarantee anything" -"But when I drop the calls I am outdoors, hence your argument doesn't hold" -"Sir, I am sorry for the inconvenience. If you are outdoors you should have no problems" -"I know, that is why I am asking you why I am having them outdoors" -"I suggest you to go to a Verizon Wireless store, they can explain you better why you drop calls outdoors".
And so, I went to a Verizon Wireless store... the very same one where I bought my cell phone, and they tell me: "hmm.. This should be your phone. I am going to be honest with you, this phones are bad... buy a new one, a better one!" -"But I bought this one 2 weeks ago!!!" -"yes, but you can change it for something better!" -"So, are you telling me that you are selling phones that you know are going to fail, so people have to expend more money?" -"No... I am telling you that this model of phone is not really good, so you should change it to solve your problem" -"But you sold this phone 2 weeks ago. Furthermore, you are still selling it..." -"so, do you want to see a new model?" -"No, I want an answer... are you selling phones that you know are defective, and then suggesting people to buy another model? That is what you are telling me" -"But the other model is better, so you win" (by this time, since I was speaking louder and moving through the store, I had enough people looking already at the argument) -"So, you sold me this phone two weeks ago, now you are telling me this model is not good, you are not taking any responsibility whatsoever, and are asking me to change it, right?" -"sir, with a better phone you will not have that problem" -"Please, answer my question... did you tell me that this model is defective yes or no?" -"sir, with a different mod..." -"Yes or no?" -"It is not a good model, ok" -"And you are still selling it, right? is that the model you have there in display, and the one that this other person is choosing, right? (I pointed to one of the guys that was looking at the argument) is the same model?" -"Sir, with a diff..." -"Is it the same model, yes or no?" -"yes, but if you buy a diff..." -"Ok, so you are selling models that you know are defective, so you can sell another phone two weeks later..." (the guy that was going to buy that phone walked away from the store) -"do you want to discuss this privately in my office?" -"No, I have had enough from you". I left, I send a letter complaining, never got an answer. I cancelled my contract, had to pay the penalty fees, but much better than dealing with those incompetents.
My teacher just did a lesson on the .002 money issue. It's absurd how some people can confuse dollars and cents. Anyway, the lesson got the message across that students need math!
wow man, i feel your pain. i couldn't listen to that whole call, but seriously! the guy didn't know the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents!
staying away from verizon in the future....
Have you already paid the bill? If you havent, take them to court. IF you when they will fix your bill and have to pay the court fees (that includes any lawyers you hire. you can also get some one who has a degree in math to call up to the stand, further proving your case)
Oh man! I hate dealing with crazy customer service issues. Saw about this story on an Infiniti FX owner's thread. I can't BELIEVE they can't see the difference between dollars and cents. Problem is, the value in question isn't a sum worth going to court over.
Glad they took care of you!
Math is NOT a difference of opinion! I cannot believe a manager told you that.
I couldn't stop listening to this entire train wreck of a call.
I will never ever switch to Verizon. Ever. (Thankfully I am not with Verizon right now.)
In reality, it doesn't matter whether you go to verizon wireless or any other company. You will always run into the same problems because of the way our society has been created. These "faceless" companies are protected because there isn't someone who owns the business, there are shareholders, more than one person. Workers are working because they need money, businesses are there to make money, no one is there to solve YOUR problem or issues with the company.
I could go on and on, but in the end, there really isn't anything you can do. The only thing "we" can do is to stop supporting capitalism, which is profit friendly, NOT people friendly.
My mind truly hurts!
I resorted to eye-twitching...
My brain hurts, I'm 15 minutes into the video and the guy you're talking to honestly doesn't understand that he's calculating in cents.....it's mind boggling......and then the lady comes on the phone at 15 min in, and sounds insulted that you won't accept their bogus crap math.
LOL. So dumb! Good on you for your patience!
I work in Verizon Customer Service and I cant believe what you went through on this call I wanted to strangle the supervisor what the hell is the problem with him! I am so sorry you are awesome though I would have been yelling at him.
Oh my god. Are you f-ing kidding me? And you spoke with this many people? What the heck? Did nobody cover UNITS with them in the 5th grade?
I am... I mean... I don't even know what to say. ...Wow.
Excuse me while I show this video to everyone I know...
Ah, I think I know why YouTube removed it. It's got that woman's phone number right at the end.
facebook video it :)
I AM A VERIZON WIRELESS REP AND I DO UNDERSTAND OF THE MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN REP AND VALUED CUSTOMER. I DO (PERSONALLY) UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE OF BEING QUOTED ".002 CENTS" WHEN PUT INTO PAPER FORM AND THE CHARGES USED WAS USED AT ".002 DOLLARS". JUST PUTTING IT OUT THERE THAT I UNDERSTAND.
OMG! "This is obviously a difference of opinion" - I love how you can keep your cool man, I would have tracked them down with an axe by now if that was me
Unbelievable. I am a lurker and never comment, but now had to to release the anger this brought up in me.
The "In4mer" person's comment summed it up. Verizon isn't the problem, you will find service reps everywhere who wouldn't understand this issue. It's more than a math misunderstanding, it's a metrical analysis misunderstanding.
Listening to this I figured the only way to resolve this is in court; hopefully a judge is smart enough to understand it, especially with a lawyer spelling it out with diagrams. But the court costs would probably be more than the $71.79 bill, which makes this a no-win situation.
You are the victim of the a lack of understanding and education in today's society. There's nothing you can do, which is frustrating and sad. If you were dumb, like these service reps, you wouldn't have done the math and found the billing error, and everyone would be happy.
Ignorance is bliss?
These people are retarded, although you could have just said .002c is = .00002$ so multiply my kb by .00002
"It's obviously a difference of opinion"
I'm totally using that line for my thesis defense.
Are you all crazy??? There is NO difference between $.002 and .002 cents!! This supposed "math" is incorrect on the part of the person who created this video. In math the general rule is what ever you do to one side of the equation you have to do to the other. The author incorrectly posted:
$.002 does not = .002 cents
$.002=.2 cents
See anything wrong? I do, you cannot remove the 00's from one side of an equation and not from the other; thus $.002 still equals .002 cents. I am a very happy Verizon customer and they have done nothing but make me proud to say they are my carrier. Did you know they spent 6.5 billion dollars on their network last year? T-mobile spent a meer 3 billion and AT&T also lagging with 5 billion. The problem with consumers is that they want. They feel that they are ENTITLED to new phones whenever they feel like it or free services when it best suites them. And that i'm afraid it what we as America have come to except. Well grow up CHILDREN! You can't always get what you want!
Another Verizon Wireless rep here.
I joined Verizon after your situation and I can tell you, during training, they made it VERY clear to us there is a huge difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars, even going so far as to say in one document "DO NOT QUOTE THE CUSTOMER .002 CENTS" so apparently you and anyone else that encountered this were finally recognized. I remember that sticking out in training wondering what caused them to put that in their training docs, and now I see why..
Seeing this is definitely embarrassing, but knowing how stubborn my coworkers and supervisors can be, its not surprising. The most rewarding part of my day is taking a call from someone thats been screwed around by previous reps and being able to buck the trend of just "going from what the remarks say" and actually being able to help them.
Also, Brianne, what you're saying would be right but you need to realize in the first line he said it DOES NOT EQUAL then in the second he says it DOES EQUAL. Theres no math being done between the first and second lines. Instead, hes taking the incorrect first line and showing in the second line how it would look if it was correct.
This is one of the funniest things I've ever heard on the web :)
Awesome...
Oh dear...... You are too patient!!!!
I just want to cry....
As I said before, I work in Verizon customer service. The other day we were all in a training about Broadband Access and the trainer used you as an example. I believe his exact words were "THIS IS WHY YOU MAKE SURE YOU DOUBLE CHECK BEFORE QUOTING A PRICE ON KB USAGE! DONT JUST TRY TO GUESS! AND MAKE SURE YOU NOTATE THE ACCOUNT CORRECTLY!" Trust me you have impacted this company GREATLY. I am embarassed on behalf of the representatives that you spoke with.
@everyone, thanks for stopping by and for your comments.
@verizon reps, thanks for your comments. It's nice to know 1) I may have helped others to avoid this in the future, and 2) that there are some good reps over there :).
@brianne, talk to a math teacher or other smart person ;), they should be able to explain the issue to you.
Dude, did you ever get the issue resolved? I hope all those reps involved got sent back to 3rd grade.
ps. Don't you think Verizon should open a bank... I'll put in 0.002cents x 100000... and they'll magically turn it all into dollars for me ;)
Here in Brasil (Brazil) we call it "propaganda enganosa".
It's only going to get worse in the future. I keep reading about the standardized testing being made easier and easier so more kids will pass them. I go to the store and have people hand me back the change I give them telling me they don't need it. Well, sure you don't need it, but I'd rather have a $3.25 back instead of $3.14. And they don't seem to get that I gave them $10.11 for a reason.
I liked the comment about the teacher who used this in math class to teach the students about why math is important. Maybe this is a lesson for the education system. Maybe we need to be teaching kids mathematical (and I'll argue scientific) principals using real life examples...things that they can relate to...instead of showing them the theory behind it all. Leave the theory for the college math & science majors. Teach practical, everyday math & science at the K-12 levels.
Blogger Brianne said...
"Are you all crazy??? There is NO difference between $.002 and .002 cents!!"
My Master's Degree says I, and all the others here, are sane. You are incorrect, Brianne. By your logic, 20 ounces and 20 pounds are the same. 300 feet = 300 miles and 60 minutes = 60 years.
Your argument about what you do to one side of an equation you must do the other has algebraic merit, but a false equation is still false, in spite of manipulation. And, hanging different units on each side of the equation (in the cited case, cents and dollars) doesn't make it true.
I respect that you are a proud Verizon customer, and that you are impressed by their annual investments in infrastructure. Your missive suggests that you are actually a Verizon employee defending your company. However, that does not make .002 dollars and .002 cents equal amounts of money.
I'll "grow up" when you learn mathematics.
My only question is, what do you call $.99? You call it 99 cents.
So, it's a simple way of looking at it to think the rep saw $.002 and said it exactly as they would $.99.
Hello. I find your blog very interesting. Good Customer Service is a rare thing at the present time. Although companies offering the same services are numerous and have somehow to drift on the market they still do not care about their clients. And the worst thing is that the customer services of these companies do not care about the filed complaints. They simply ignore them. What a mess!
@Adam,
notice you didn't call it "POINT ninety nine cents." By removing the point, you multipled by 100, and converted the units from dollars to cents, allowing you to say "cents."
With $.002 you can do the same thing, and the result would be .2 cents - "point two cents."
Does that answer your question?
I'm 15, and I even get it! I got so frustrated just listening to this!
How can people NOT see it?!
"There's no point zero zero two dollars." Andrea talks about the number as if it doesn't exist.
The interesting thing is, that probably 99% of the US population deals with parts of a cent on a regular basis. When one goes to fill up his or her gas tank, the cost is always some amount (in dollars) and nine tenths of a cent per gallon. For example, last time I filled up, it was one point five nine nine dollars per gallon ($1.599/gal)
Perhaps this misunderstanding (on the part of several Verizon CSRs) is in part due to not being familiar with a system of base ten units like the metric system. Alternatively, one could argue that perhaps none of our units should be base 10, so that when one switches between units, the numbers look altogether different.
I have taught mathematics at the high school level, and currently at a university, and I am most certainly going to incorporate this into my lessons and make sure that my students know and understand the difference. Furthermore, I'm going to make sure they know how to multiply numbers with units, and figure out what the resulting solution and units are.
Years later, this audio is still making the rounds. I feel for you. Painful. Verizon drives me up a wall too but this sounds more like phone calls I've had with insurance companies ...
unreal...
so unreal, that is actually probably worth being ripped off the $71 for this ridiculous entertainment.
verizon is the absolute WORST. i wonder how much money they have actually stolen from people...
Even after acknowledging that they have lied to you about pricing they are still free to steal your money...And this happens everyday not only with Canadian rates but with text message rates, pic. message rates, navigation/gps rates, etc...
They tried to/are still attempting to charge me $500 dollars for text message usage even though I was on an unlimited text-message plan (and had been for 1.5 yrs!).
They lie to your face and say that you are signed up for a certain plan and/or that you will be charged a certain rate, but when your bill comes, BIG SURPRISE ;)
After making phone calls and stressing-out trying to convey to every rep that all logic has been lost at Verison...I request to simply re-listen to my customer service calls...They don't care.
The only thing I can decide is that it is bs to pay...Verizon
then has collection agencies pursue stealing your money.
Gross and shameful.
Awesome that you were one of the lucky ones to get it on tape!
Death to verizon!!! :)
*Strength and Unity through understanding verizon sucks.
I just heard this, am so sorry for the complete stupidity of some people, and am going to spread the word. Hopefully Andrea and all of her idiot collegues will somehow hear this again. She still might not understand, but at least she knows that I think she's a dumbass.
You could say:
Covert 1 dollar into pennies.
They say: "100 pennies in a Dollar"
Alright, so, that means, you have to multiply .002 cents by 100 to get the actual dollar value of: .00002 dollars. Then multiply that by the Kb usage and you get what you owe.
I'm sorry, this sounds incredibly frustrating.
This still cracks me up! Did you know that the Senator of Arkansas wanted to change every textbook to reduce pi to 3.14. I wonder what the buildings would look like down there.
I hope you don't mind I re-posted the check on my blog.
http://www.webinometry.com
This is really getting sad, I think you should just go to a verizon store and talk to them firsthand. Might work better.
Dear George Vaccaro,
I used to be mathematically retarded too. But after your fantastic half hour lecture, I now knows the difference between a dollar and a cents. I was hoping that you gave other amazing lectures in economics so that one day I may rule the world. Thank you for making America the greatest city in the world by helping it simplest people. Sorry about verizon... they suck.
You should be able to sue for this, correct? If they're quoting you different then you're being charged you should be able to bring this to court. Am I right?
The only way this will ever be understood by the majority of Americans is for us to finally convert to metric. I understand that .5 cm is different than .5m. They are grossly different and the problem here is none of these reps get that. They understand simple things requiring no decimals. 16 oz = 1 lb. No decimal. Once ya start flinging those around, people here who do not understand their usage are screwed.
This is unbelievable. What idiots. You apparently don't have to take a basic math class to work for Verizon.
Posted on my blog as well (http://gradysghost.doesntexist.com/blogman) and also on a social bookmarking site called HighCow. http://www.highcow.com
amazing, there are those that will never understand and one of the writers said it, it will only get worst.
go to any store and buy something, they don't count back the change and if you give them a balance difference of say the item cost is $2.67 and you give them $5.17, they look at you like what the *ell are you doing and try to give back the 17cents because they don't have a clue how to enter it or what to give back.
I have a strange desire to call Andrea @ 888.581.1070 xt 2234 and see if she still has a job after such arrogance and outright lack of follow through.
She and the person before her both use their position as some sort of proof that they are immune to making mistakes. Even at first glance or minor error I could totally understand someone making this mistake. While the difference is clear and genuine it's the little things that get us, but pure ignorance just for the sake of being right.
My favorite part was when Andrea was asked if she acknowledged the difference between $.5 and .5 cents and she said yes. However there suddenly "is no difference" between $.002 and .002 cents
I just called Verizon sales with 2 separate calls to find out if years later this is still a problem...
both reps incorrectly quoted me Canadian bandwidth charges of .002 cents/kb. Both reps argued that I was wrong and they were right. I asked them to give me an example of what I'd pay if I downloaded 1,000kb and the answer was always incorrectly $2.00.
"My finance calculator is telling me $2!". It was telling her "2.0" but she was reading the answer in dollars but quoting me in cents.
No matter what methods of calm, collected, and clear analogy I gave them, they would not admit that .002¢x1000 = 2¢. Not until I asked them what they were literally seeing as the documented rate on their screen. This is when it dawned on me. Why are they (and thereby most human beings) confused at these calculations and why does this continue to happen? Here's an answer.
I did this little social experiment in order to understand where our human reasoning is breaking down. If the same very specific problem is happening on multiple occasions there has to be a common cause. It's not necessarily their poor math skills or poor corporate cold-hearted customer care, or some nonsense like depending on capitalism.
The problem is simply design.
The left brained egg-head who decided to advertise their rates as a complex drawn out decimal both on their website and internally in their support documentation, he's the culprit. Why not communicate in a term easier than $.002 which is supposed to read as "point zero zero two dollars"? You see reps are going to look at this weird monetary unit and just do what they've done since they were small children. Announce it in "cents" because we all know that $.02 is "two cents". You see it's just a habit to say "cents" when you see a decimal immediately following a dollar sign! It's our habitual nature. If the egg-head had simply documented the rate as "you'll be charged 1/5 of a cent per kilobyte" or even ".2¢/kb" wouldn't that communicate better to both the customers and the reps?
In short, once the rep had read and interpreted the oddly written "$.002" as ".002 cents" it was carved in mental stone and never reconsidered for re-translation to a new concept. The problem is that the figure $.002 is simply a new and too confusing way to begin thinking about small rates. Why measure millimeters in units of kilometers? Leave it to our new and ever increasing rate of technology to spring fractions of a cent on us in new ways.
I'm an avid supporter or empathy in writing and design. You have to think about how your readers and viewers are going to interpret about what you're creating.
Don't blame all of Verizon (although I probably won't use them for other reasons), this is a poor reactive generalization. Don't even blame the support agents who are just trying to make it through life with their bland jobs. Blame the egg-head who decided to communicate in obscure formats. Blame the guy that one of the reps I spoke to called their "smart, resident mathematician". Usually those who focus on left-brained logic ignore the right-brained creativity and empathy.
Let this be a lesson to us to remain well-balanced individuals.
Enjoy my report and, please, comments are welcome.
Joseph Knight
http://www.JosephKnight.com
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