Customer says Verizon confuses dollars and cents

Saturday, December 9, 2006 

Blogger George Vaccaro is a customer from the US who apparently purchased wireless network connection from Verizon, thinking that he was getting a good deal. Instead, he says he was charged about 71 dollars instead of 71 cents: 100 times more than what his bill should have been at the rate quoted.

When he called the Verizon customer service, he said he also found out that several Verizon representatives think 0.002 cents is equal to 0.002 dollars. According to the phone conversation recording he posted to his blog,

when I called before entering Canada I spoke to a rep who quoted me a rate of ".002 cents per KB." ... the charge for my usage at .002 cents/KB is $.71786 - or $.72 rounding up to the nearest cent - 72 cents. That is what I was quoted and that is what I am therefore willing to pay.

Vaccaro also posted on his blog the text of what he said was an e-mail reply from a Verizon Wireless customer service representative on December 8, stating:

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and confusion this has caused. Per the remarks in the account, I have found that the customer service representative provided the correct pricing information. However; due to the miscommunication, I am willing to credit half of the data charges which would be $-36.00. Please reply to this email if you would like to accept this offer.

Sources

• George Vaccaro. "VerizonMath" — Blogspot, December 9, 2006
• ScuttleMonkey. "Verizon Can't Do Math" — Slashdot, Dec 9, 2006

External links

• Recording of the conversation between George Vaccaro and several Verizon representatives posted on YouTube
• Report on Digg
• Google calculator showing how much the customer should have paid