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.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

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

External links

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.