I claim shenanigans and thievery on George.

Force VERIZON to figure out their own error.
Don’t hypothesize or conjecture where their error is. Don’t say “I am being charged 0.002 dollars per kB.” Just simply state:

“I owe you 71 cents. That’s all I owe you.”

Then, just pay the 71 cents this month, 89 cents the next month, and so on. Make VERIZON complain when they don’t get the money they “think” you owe them.

“We agreed and I owe you 0.002 cents per kB”

After the first hypothetical situation, he should realize that won’t help with these people.

Just send them what THEY had agreed to charge you – each month – and nothing more. Then call them if they dare try to violate their agreement.

It’s NOT just a “math” problem. It’s also a “human psychology” problem.

Trust me – when people / organizations / corporations don’t have the money – suddenly they get VERY good at math.

Piers W,

“To those above using commas and getting confused thereby, the metric system has no commas.”

Tell it to these people:

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Costa Rica, Croatia (comma used officially, but both forms are in use elsewhere), Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg (uses both separators officially), Macau, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa (officially[citation needed], but dot point is commonly used in business), Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam.

“In Croatia, Estonia, France, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and much of Latin Europe as well as French Canada: 1 234 567,89 (In Spain, in handwriting it is also common to use an upper comma: 123.456’89)”

“In Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Sweden and much of Europe: 1 234 567,89 or 1.234.567,89 (in handwriting, 1Ë™234Ë™567,89 is also seen, but never in Denmark or Sweden)”

“In the Netherlands: for currencies the thousands separator is a dot, e.g. EUR 1.234.567,89, but for other numbers a (narrow) space is used, e.g. 1 234 567,89”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_comma#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_comma

Come on!

#36 – You are wrong, this dude was as polite as a guy running into total ignorance could be. Sometimes I think certain strains of politeness weaken the very fabric of reality, such as politeness in the face of total stupidity. But, I live int eh Midwest and it is the norm. People need to stand up for the brain, as it is getting a good pummeling in the screen age. “My computer says this…” Who’s smarter?

I can use my powers of mouse and trackpad to skip stories that do not interest me. However from a journalistic point of view, republishing stories without additional news, commentary, info, links, jokes, or context is something to be avoided, don’t you think?

Unless this, like most folk stories, have some power in the telling. It doesn’t matter that it has been told before, it must be told again. To exorcise mathemagical demons perhaps?

$2/MB is about an order of magnitude more expensive than South Africa.

Pedantic, but this is kind of a maths thread…

35,000KB is around 34.18MB

In India, due to a numeral system using lakhs (lacs) (1,00,000 equal to 100 000) and crores (1,00,00,000 equal to 10 000 000), comma is used at levels of thousand, lakh and crore, for example, 10 million (1 crore) would be written as 1,00,00,000.

Things aren’t nearly as universal as we’d like…

They confirm, multiple times, that .02¢ is the same 2¢. This isn’t a matter of similarity of rates, it is a distinct lack of mathematical comprehension. They clearly believe that any decimal points in money refer to cents, and any whole numbers refer to dollars, and nothing beyond that.

A bunch were still quoting it wrong.

Either way, more schooling please people!

I was hoping to hear him say .002 cents is .00002 dollars, that way they reps could not have done the false conversion and the figure they saw on their calculators would have been exactly the same as what the charge should have been, .71786 dollars.

It’s like he was trying to teach them to understand math, when all he needed to do was to firmly illustrate the error. Even so, I’ve been in similar situations and empathize with him.

http://xkcd.com/

Who in their right mind would pay $70 to download a 35MB file?

The poor guy should have asked to speak to someone in engineering.

Dude, when they send you a bill for 143 dollars, you send them a check for 143 cents.

Then provide the name of the customer service rep you told you they’re the same.