Wow. Nearly a year ago, I posted about an incident where a Verizon customer had been misquoted the overage charge for his data plan. The Verizon employees thought that “.002 dollars” was the same amount as “.002 cents”. He was quoted “.002 cents” when the actual price was “.002 dollars”. That’s one hundred times more expensive.
What I’m sure it came down to, was the employees were seeing this: “$.002” and saying “.002 cents”. At a quick glance, it’s an understandable mistake. The part that blew me away, was that after half an hour of the customer trying to explain this difference, the Verizon employees, including the supervisor, still thought the customer was wrong. They were convinced that “.002 dollars” was the same as “.002 cents”.
The recording of the call is still available if you want to follow my original link. However, if you are easily frustrated by displays of ignorance, I don’t recommend it. It was a pretty popular story on the internets for a while . Verizon received some bad publicity, released some official statements and like all things it eventually blew over.
I assumed at that point Verizon would make the necessary changes to its training program and make sure all the employees understood the difference. Apparently, I was wrong. Check out the video below, and you’ll see that not only are they making the same mistake, they are making all kinds of new ones. An astounding 93% quoted the wrong rate. Shame on you, Verizon and Verizon customers, be warned.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco[/youtube]