Wanna see something funny/scary? This guy has posted his dealings with Verizon regarding a billing issue he had. Basically, he was quoted a rate of “.002 cents per kilobyte”, but on his bill, he was charged “.002 dollars per kilobyte.” One hundred times more than he was quoted.

You’d think this would be easy to explain. One person had a brain fart and said “cents” instead of “dollars”. They should, at the very least, acknowledge that someone screwed up and apologize. But no…he talks to FIVE different people, who don’t even understand what the problem is. They don’t get that there’s a big difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars. There is an audio file where he spends half an hour talking to 2 different Verizon employees, explaining in the simplest of terms the difference between dollars and cents, while they continually (but mistakenly) say that the rate is “.002 cents”. It’s mind boggling that they can’t wrap their heads around this grade-school math.

You can go to the site to see how it worked out. Scary. I hope this is something that’s unique to the United States, but I doubt it.