Oh dear God the pain.

[denny]

Via various people: Maths Is Hard, Let's Sell Bandwidth!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0HyxQv97Q - 22 minute video of call to Verizon support.

http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ - text transcript of same call.

Words fail me.


Update: http://xkcd.com/verizon/ *laughs lots*

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The joke is of course that they are suffering the very confusion they intended to create by quoting the price in dollars rather than in cents.

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

Oh, my heavenly forebears...

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

This made it to mock_the_stupid the other day. I tried listening to the call, but just wanted to stab the stupid people...

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

That was laughable to start with, then became oh so very painfull..... Think of all the thousands or 10's of thousands of dollars that have been overcharged for...lets hope if he writeds to their accounts department they get it right, mind you their tax return could be a bit of a laugh, possibly anough to bring down a company if they do the maths in the same way...

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

the question is whether the top-level staff are really that dumb, or if it's a scam.
me, i call scam.
xx

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I think the pricing scheme is supposed to confuse customers, and is therefore also succeeding in confusing any of their staff who haven't been told. Although the fact that they couldn't get it when it was spelled out is scary.

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

Hm. I've just noticed I read all the same comics as you, minus Alien Loves Predator and Penny Arcade, plus many more... ah well.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

...we discussed this on IM last month. Nice to know you were paying attention :)