News

Verizon, Dollars, and lack of sense

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 21 December 2006

It's not news that call centre workers are not uniformly recruited from the cream of the intellectual crop. But Verizon seems to have mined an unusually rich seam from the other end of the bell-shaped curve. Try this:
George Vaccaro: Do you recognize that there's a difference between "point zero zero two dollars" and "point zero zero two cents"?

[pause]
Mike from Verizon: Point zero zero two dollars?
George Vaccaro: Do you recognize that there is actually...
Mike from Verizon: ...and point zero zero two cents.
George Vaccaro: Yes, do you you recognize there's a difference between those 2 numbers?
[pause]

Mike from Verizon: No.

With hindsight, the caller (George) should have insisted on waiting until Verizon found an agent who could understand the difference. Instead, he tried to explain.

The ensuing half-hour conversation was recorded. He completely failed to explain, and the agents and the supervisor all agreed that

the rate was, indeed, 0.002 cents per kilobyte and

nonetheless the bill was what you'd get if it was 0.002 dollars per kilobyte.

At the end of the day, the phone company has finally back-tracked, and refunded the money.

It remains to be seen whether they have to do this again, or not, because according to George Vaccaro, the customer who travelled to Canada and got a bill 100 times greater than he was expecting, the amount they quoted him is the amount they still quote if you ask them.

What British readers may have trouble with, here, is the belief by the American staff of Verizon that the issue is mathematics, or "math" as they call it. If schoolkids in the USA are learning their arithmetic from mathematicians, then the mystery ceases to be mysterious.

Perhaps there's a market over there for genuine Arithmetic teachers?