Absolutely unbelievable. I hope he contacts the BBB at least.
I've been trying to impress upon my 5 year-old the significance of units in quantity and my preschooler groks the concept better than this supervisor. Why is the title supervisor so often an oxymoron?
Oh holy hell. I just got to the part where the woman comes on line. This is my cell phone company?
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Is it really that hard to see from the other side that people use 'cents' colloquially to mean the american system of money generically? A lot of people when talking about an amount less than a dollar say the 'point' just because of their vernacular. They're just as likely to say 'point thirty-seven cents' as 'thirty-seven cents' and mean the same thing, because cents doesn't mean 'one-hundredth of a penny' so much as 'what you call money when you've got less than one dollar.' I can't believe no one's ever heard it used that way.
My real problem is that no one on either side of the phone call is smart enough to see that there are two meanings, that it's ambiguous and to just settle for the guy's interpretation since it's unclear.
Steam Id Twitter
Mixol on XBL, couldn't recover my old account, sorry!
If someone says $0.37 is the same thing as 0.37¢ then they're flat out wrong, colloquialism or not. Especially when it's a billing company.
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Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
If someone says $0.37 is the same thing as 0.37¢ then they're flat out wrong, colloquialism or not. Especially when it's a billing company.
And yet, people do it all the time. Particularly on sale signs or whatever. Hell, there's a store here called 'The .99¢ Store.' It's certainly not mathematically correct if you only use cents as a unit, but that's not it's only meaning in the spoken language. At any rate, I'm sure if you got far enough into billing you'd have to find someone smart enough to know the difference. However, I doubt they'd be very forgiving since it is common parlance and the person making the complain is, in my opinion, being intentionally obstinate.
Steam Id Twitter
Mixol on XBL, couldn't recover my old account, sorry!
If someone says $0.37 is the same thing as 0.37¢ then they're flat out wrong, colloquialism or not. Especially when it's a billing company.
And yet, people do it all the time. Particularly on sale signs or whatever. Hell, there's a store here called 'The .99¢ Store.' It's certainly not mathematically correct if you only use cents as a unit, but that's not it's only meaning in the spoken language. At any rate, I'm sure if you got far enough into billing you'd have to find someone smart enough to know the difference. However, I doubt they'd be very forgiving since it is common parlance and the person making the complain is, in my opinion, being intentionally obstinate.
Sorry, there is no room for THAT kind of mistake when dealing with money... there just isnt =/
PAR
LinkedIN profile ------------ For all who live in such times, it is not for them to decide. All we get to decide is what to do with the time given to us
I understand what you're saying. In fact I remember years ago as a kid getting into an argument with my mother because I laughed at a gas station that had their sign marked 0.85¢ a gallon. She didn't get my point and kept trying to tell me that was right.
We have units for a reason. A cent is a very tangible thing with a fixed quantitative value; it's not just a generic abstract concept of money. If units are used ambiguously you get this very sort of confusion.
The person making the complaint has a very justifiable stance in expecting to billed at a price he was quoted. Once again this is why we have standardized units and aren't bartering with chickens. The people calling a dollar store "The .99¢ Store" are idiots. I hold a megacorporation to a higher standard.
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--
Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
"do you recognize that there is a difference between one dollar and one
cent?" "yes." "and there is a difference between half a dollar and half a
cent?" "yes." "and there is a difference between .002 dollars and .002
cents?" "no."
THAT was the best part. I'm still rolling.
Nikki @ Verizon wrote:
However; due to the miscommunication, I am willing to credit half of the data charges which would be $-36.00.
I'm impressed that no one just offered to look into it and call him back. Even if they never did it would have gotten them out of the call and perhaps allowed them to find the local math wiz to help them out.
My favourite part was the lady saying, "Well, I see we have a difference of opinion..." and the guy snaps, "It's not opinion!" I thought he might actually lose it at that point.
I have this fight every day about picture sizes. "The whole picture isn't in this 8x10" "That's because an 8x10 isn't a full frame picture" "Of course it's the whole picture, it fits in this frame"
People are... consistently irregular.
wordsmythe wrote:
Also, math makes baby Jesus cry and emboldens terrorism. I hope you're sorry.
Personally, if I had taken the call, and somebody was talking to me like that, as an employee, I would have given the call to my supervisor- let him deal with his crap company. No crappy job is worth that nonsense between customers and company like that.
But that's just my .002 cents.. with the Canadian exchange rate.
MaxShrek .. The reason you keep falling, is there is no bottom.
Horror Vacui
Sorry, there is no room for THAT kind of mistake when dealing with money... there just isnt =/
PAR
I agree, and this would be a lot different if he were talking to someone not specifically in a billing department, like a sales associate or telemarketer. If you're dealing with hundreds of people's billing inquiries every day, you better well know the difference between units of currency, and how they relate. I would have hung up the phone on the chick in the call, and looked up the number for the BBB.
Then again, I also have to say that the guy making the call gave them a little too much credit, especially when talking to the chick. The first guy didn't get it, so keep it simple with the second. By this, I mean he should have stopped using "point zero zero two", and instead said "two thousandths". People who are not mathematically inclined can generally understand words a lot better than numbers, even if the words are referring to numbers. Most people will figure out that two thousandths of a dollar is not equal to two thousandths of a cent. He even proves this with his example.
I can see where Mixolyde is coming from, and I've probably seen and overlooked examples of the use of the word "cent" to mean "fraction of a dollar".
I'm personally a stickler for details, so in my eyes, the shift in definition of this math and accounting term is still a mistake. This mistake might be common enough now that it's becoming widely accepted, but I think it's still a mistake. In this case, the mistake was particularly important because it comes down to an amount of money that you can't ignore.
I didn't listen to the audio, but this guy probably at first thought to himself, "Wow, $0.00002 per KB is almost too good to be true." And it was.
Upon first glance at this thread, I thought maybe the error was in one of Verizon's contracts, which would be be a little more unbelieveable since I'm sure that they have teams of lawyers reviewing them.
Quote:
It's like saying that 12 grams is the same as 12 kilos if I 'meant' them to be the same.
I'm likening it more to the mistake people make when they say, "PIN Number". The problem is that they're trying to specify an amount less than a dollar, and then they use two different methods of specifying it at the same time. At that point they've overdone it. They could've just said, "point two cents" or "point zero zero two dollars" but instead they went so far as "point zero zero two cents" and threw it into the nether region. But that's almost the same thing as surprising someone close to you with a finger-butt, and that's never a mistake. Now, for those of you viewing this page at 1280x1024, can you spot the mistake I've made in the contracts paragraph of this post? I may have made more than one, but I made one on purpose. I'm curious to know if your brain caused you to overlook it as I had when I first saw it.
In Ultima Online I used to poison hams and leave them on the ground in cities for people to pick up and eat. I can't believe how many people thought street ham was a good thing to eat. -Elliottx
I was looking at some Verizon UK VOIP online charges the other day. They had a similar prob; one page said the calls were £0.12 per minute, another said they were £0.012
Or whatever the hell that number is. I understand it, but I can't bloody write it.
Upon first glance at this thread, I thought maybe the error was in one of Verizon's contracts, which would be be a little more unbelieveable since I'm sure that they have teams of lawyers reviewing them.
...
Now, for those of you viewing this page at 1280x1024, can you spot the mistake I've made in the contracts paragraph of this post? I may have made more than one, but I made one on purpose. I'm curious to know if your brain caused you to overlook it as I had when I first saw it.
yeah, I saw it. And I overlooked it the first time, too. and the second.
The biggest problem he had was trying to explain that they completely missed the conversion from cents to dollars. They could do the math, but while they were doing it in the unit of "cents," as soon as they hit the equal button, they read it as "dollars."
Someone mentioned above about passing it on to a supervisor, and that it's not worth it for a regular employee to deal with that stuff. Well, at the point that the recording started, it was the supervisor. I think he mentioned that he had gone through about 2 regular employees who failed at math, then this supervisor, then his manager, who was, at that point, the highest level he could go. There was absolutely no one of a higher position that he could escalate it to in the office at that time. That's why, at the end of the call, she gave him the information to contact the corporate office.
For what it's worth, the guy on the phone should have said told them toget a pen and paper, write down 1 dollar (or 100 pennies) and work backwards. That's how I would have understood it. People need to write down the zeroes to understand this sort of stuff.
For what it's worth, the guy on the phone should have said told them toget a pen and paper, write down 1 dollar (or 100 pennies) and work backwards. That's how I would have understood it. People need to write down the zeroes to understand this sort of stuff.
Sometimes you have to write with the big crayons for people. My job is very technical and even being in the Army previous to this I had to 'dumb it down' for some to understand it. I am used to this all too well. It just makes me sad that things like this happen all too frequent.
We shouldn't be so forgiving to those who don't even know basic math when they're working in billing. What were they doing during grade school? This is why IT rips on the liberal arts/management majors...
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THis is. This is just insane.
Gamertag: GWJ Rabbit | Last.fm | Twitter
"In other news, Miyamoto pissed on my head, and gave me a forecast of rain." - *Le
Absolutely unbelievable. I hope he contacts the BBB at least.
I've been trying to impress upon my 5 year-old the significance of units in quantity and my preschooler groks the concept better than this supervisor. Why is the title supervisor so often an oxymoron?
Oh holy hell. I just got to the part where the woman comes on line. This is my cell phone company?
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
Is it really that hard to see from the other side that people use 'cents' colloquially to mean the american system of money generically? A lot of people when talking about an amount less than a dollar say the 'point' just because of their vernacular. They're just as likely to say 'point thirty-seven cents' as 'thirty-seven cents' and mean the same thing, because cents doesn't mean 'one-hundredth of a penny' so much as 'what you call money when you've got less than one dollar.' I can't believe no one's ever heard it used that way.
My real problem is that no one on either side of the phone call is smart enough to see that there are two meanings, that it's ambiguous and to just settle for the guy's interpretation since it's unclear.
Steam Id
Twitter
Mixol on XBL, couldn't recover my old account, sorry!
As you can plainly see, it is not.
It's not Wandering Toast. Except in TF2, where it usually is.
Oh no, there's one of them!
If someone says $0.37 is the same thing as 0.37¢ then they're flat out wrong, colloquialism or not. Especially when it's a billing company.
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
And yet, people do it all the time. Particularly on sale signs or whatever. Hell, there's a store here called 'The .99¢ Store.' It's certainly not mathematically correct if you only use cents as a unit, but that's not it's only meaning in the spoken language. At any rate, I'm sure if you got far enough into billing you'd have to find someone smart enough to know the difference. However, I doubt they'd be very forgiving since it is common parlance and the person making the complain is, in my opinion, being intentionally obstinate.
Steam Id
Twitter
Mixol on XBL, couldn't recover my old account, sorry!
Sorry, there is no room for THAT kind of mistake when dealing with money... there just isnt =/
PAR
LinkedIN profile
------------
For all who live in such times, it is not for them to decide. All we get to decide is what to do with the time given to us
I understand what you're saying. In fact I remember years ago as a kid getting into an argument with my mother because I laughed at a gas station that had their sign marked 0.85¢ a gallon. She didn't get my point and kept trying to tell me that was right.
We have units for a reason. A cent is a very tangible thing with a fixed quantitative value; it's not just a generic abstract concept of money. If units are used ambiguously you get this very sort of confusion.
The person making the complaint has a very justifiable stance in expecting to billed at a price he was quoted. Once again this is why we have standardized units and aren't bartering with chickens. The people calling a dollar store "The .99¢ Store" are idiots. I hold a megacorporation to a higher standard.
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
Believe it.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Never heard of "cents" and "dollars" being interchangeable.
It's like saying that 12 grams is the same as 12 kilos if I 'meant' them to be the same.
Absolute Bullpuckey.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
If someone quoted me a price of money/KBs transferred I'd have no idea how reasonable the rates were. Units are key.
Xbox Live: StaatsM
http://verizonfails.ytmnd.com/
THAT was the best part. I'm still rolling.
They're going to credit $-36.00?!
$72
- $-36
--------
$108!
FGS!1!
XBL / Art / Blog (09/20) / Buy! (10/07)
That was awesome.
So simple, yet so far out of their grasp.
Moo.
My head hurts. Is this really that difficult?
Is this guy the Dalai Lama, or how come he's so patient? Maybe a professor?
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I'm impressed that no one just offered to look into it and call him back. Even if they never did it would have gotten them out of the call and perhaps allowed them to find the local math wiz to help them out.
The voices say hello.
My favourite part was the lady saying, "Well, I see we have a difference of opinion..." and the guy snaps, "It's not opinion!" I thought he might actually lose it at that point.
MechaSlinky wrote:
-on L4DI have this fight every day about picture sizes. "The whole picture isn't in this 8x10" "That's because an 8x10 isn't a full frame picture" "Of course it's the whole picture, it fits in this frame"
People are... consistently irregular.
wordsmythe wrote:
Crouton wrote:
Personally, if I had taken the call, and somebody was talking to me like that, as an employee, I would have given the call to my supervisor- let him deal with his crap company. No crappy job is worth that nonsense between customers and company like that.
But that's just my .002 cents.. with the Canadian exchange rate.
MaxShrek .. The reason you keep falling, is there is no bottom.
Horror Vacui
I agree, and this would be a lot different if he were talking to someone not specifically in a billing department, like a sales associate or telemarketer. If you're dealing with hundreds of people's billing inquiries every day, you better well know the difference between units of currency, and how they relate. I would have hung up the phone on the chick in the call, and looked up the number for the BBB.
Then again, I also have to say that the guy making the call gave them a little too much credit, especially when talking to the chick. The first guy didn't get it, so keep it simple with the second. By this, I mean he should have stopped using "point zero zero two", and instead said "two thousandths". People who are not mathematically inclined can generally understand words a lot better than numbers, even if the words are referring to numbers. Most people will figure out that two thousandths of a dollar is not equal to two thousandths of a cent. He even proves this with his example.
IronClad Online: PurEvil
I can see where Mixolyde is coming from, and I've probably seen and overlooked examples of the use of the word "cent" to mean "fraction of a dollar".
I'm personally a stickler for details, so in my eyes, the shift in definition of this math and accounting term is still a mistake. This mistake might be common enough now that it's becoming widely accepted, but I think it's still a mistake. In this case, the mistake was particularly important because it comes down to an amount of money that you can't ignore.
I didn't listen to the audio, but this guy probably at first thought to himself, "Wow, $0.00002 per KB is almost too good to be true." And it was.
Upon first glance at this thread, I thought maybe the error was in one of Verizon's contracts, which would be be a little more unbelieveable since I'm sure that they have teams of lawyers reviewing them.
I'm likening it more to the mistake people make when they say, "PIN Number". The problem is that they're trying to specify an amount less than a dollar, and then they use two different methods of specifying it at the same time. At that point they've overdone it. They could've just said, "point two cents" or "point zero zero two dollars" but instead they went so far as "point zero zero two cents" and threw it into the nether region. But that's almost the same thing as surprising someone close to you with a finger-butt, and that's never a mistake. Now, for those of you viewing this page at 1280x1024, can you spot the mistake I've made in the contracts paragraph of this post? I may have made more than one, but I made one on purpose. I'm curious to know if your brain caused you to overlook it as I had when I first saw it.
In Ultima Online I used to poison hams and leave them on the ground in cities for people to pick up and eat. I can't believe how many people thought street ham was a good thing to eat. -Elliottx
I was looking at some Verizon UK VOIP online charges the other day. They had a similar prob; one page said the calls were £0.12 per minute, another said they were £0.012
Or whatever the hell that number is. I understand it, but I can't bloody write it.
HatchetJob.com - a netcast about more than videogames.
yeah, I saw it. And I overlooked it the first time, too. and the second.
The biggest problem he had was trying to explain that they completely missed the conversion from cents to dollars. They could do the math, but while they were doing it in the unit of "cents," as soon as they hit the equal button, they read it as "dollars."
Someone mentioned above about passing it on to a supervisor, and that it's not worth it for a regular employee to deal with that stuff. Well, at the point that the recording started, it was the supervisor. I think he mentioned that he had gone through about 2 regular employees who failed at math, then this supervisor, then his manager, who was, at that point, the highest level he could go. There was absolutely no one of a higher position that he could escalate it to in the office at that time. That's why, at the end of the call, she gave him the information to contact the corporate office.
Moo.
For what it's worth, the guy on the phone should have said told them toget a pen and paper, write down 1 dollar (or 100 pennies) and work backwards. That's how I would have understood it. People need to write down the zeroes to understand this sort of stuff.
HatchetJob.com - a netcast about more than videogames.
Sometimes you have to write with the big crayons for people. My job is very technical and even being in the Army previous to this I had to 'dumb it down' for some to understand it. I am used to this all too well. It just makes me sad that things like this happen all too frequent.
Fathgar - Feathermoon
wordsmythe - "Jesus would drive a Hummer and burn as much oil as possible, since the dinosaurs it's made out of seem to be confusing people.
We shouldn't be so forgiving to those who don't even know basic math when they're working in billing. What were they doing during grade school? This is why IT rips on the liberal arts/management majors...
I wanna friend you up!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/bravace
And why real computer scientists rip on IT
Steam Id
Twitter
Mixol on XBL, couldn't recover my old account, sorry!
Man, this is scary.
"We will keep training our employees..." Train them to do what? Count to one thousand? Shouldn't they already know that, being older than 10 and such?
Panem et circenses
"You really need to smoke a tree first to appreciate that one." - Sanjuro
So the expression would have to be "just my 0.02 cents"?
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