Verizon to issue Tens of Millions in refunds for erroneous data charges.

As reported on CNN.com Verizon will be issuing tens of millions of dollars in refunds to customers that were erroneously charged for data usage that they did not initiate.

This has nothing to do with the VerizonMath data rate quoting issue that I was involved with, but is very interesting nonetheless.

I've often wondered about the implications of software glitches, and this one is a doozy. It's probably been hurting Verizon's bottom line for some time even just in customer complaints, customer service calls and customer dissatisfaction (assuming individuals were not able to get the charges reversed). It is tangentially related to my situation in that the CS feedback should really be a priority that is investigated and reacted to early, such that these types of problems are handled when the costs are low (nip in the bud) rather than the typical brush it under the rug and hope it will go away mentality. I can't help but think that if this problem had been caught when the refunds would have amounted to a few million that Verizon's net costs would have been significantly less. Administering millions of refunds has to be a costly process. I wonder if they will issue the refunds including interest.

PS: thanks to Chris for bringing this to my attention.

The Gregory Brothers

If you haven't yet heard/seen the magic of The Gregory Brothers, you should really check out their youtube channel and their more serious music "Meet the Gregory Brothers" available from online music retailers (google it for a free preview at amazon etc.).

Their auto-tune the news creations are absolutely brilliant, very catchy and hysterically funny. I have reserved a location on my featured "ads" area in the upper right to hopefully drive some traffic and enlighten people to their amazing creations.

New York Times Blog Covers VerizonMath

My brother sent me a link today to an article on The New York Times Blog that references my experiences with Verizon. It's an interesting article, if you are a math nerd like some of us clearly are :).

In other news, there is hope for nerds to find love, I got hitched last weekend! Good luck fellow nerds, there are women out there who appreciate us :).