Education debacle... .002 cents = .002 dollars

A sad state when our education system has failed so much that a manager at Verizon cannot tell the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars.

This is a taped customer service call, covering the first funny, then sad conversation between someone who is quoted a .002 cents per kilobyte cost for wireless downloads, but is actually billed .002 dollars.

Good grief...I listened to the entire call and I'm amazed at the block-headedness being displayed.

unbelievable

Why on earth didn't he suggest changing .002cents x 100 to convert into dollars?



[edit on 12/12/06 by masqua]

I'm listening to it right now.

Hmmmm.....

Customer Service. YaY!!

Not!

Poor guy probably wanted to reach through the phone (if he could), and strangle the Manager he spoke to.

If it was me, as soon as I realized the Mgr did'nt know what he was talking about, I would have asked to speak with his boss.

And so on, and so on, until I found someone who knew the difference. All the way to the top, if necessary.


Sadly enough, customer "service" is lacking in many large companies and corporations.



[edit on 12/12/2006 by Mechanic 32]

Not only is this sad, it is also criminal. Quoting one price then charging another is illegal.

We all know that the phone companies overcharge all the time and generally there is little one can do. In this case there is clear and consistent evidence of wrongdoing and I urge EVERY member of ATS to contact Verizon and insist that they correct their errors. Generally the phone companies ignore pleas from customers but when there is a major public outcry and clear evidence that they were in the wrong, something has gotta give. Contact Verizon or send them an E-mail and lets put the power of the people to work for the good guys(us). Let ATS be a force for positive change.

I saw this a few days ago and immediately contacted Verizon and told them that if they didn't fix this ASAP, that I would cancel my contract with them in 30 days. Public exposure, and hitting them in their pocketbooks is the way to go.

LOL Interesting to note the VERIZON advertizement here on ATS often found at the top of the page. No conflict of interest here folks... keep moving.

Okay, so now I have listened to that until the end this time.

He did indeed speak with a higher manager, who still could not see the conflict.

Amazing. This is not triginometry or advanced calculus here. This is perhaps what 4th grade math here we're talking about.

Just amazing.

I always dread the thought of talking to "Customer Service".

It's no wonder MCI Worldcom (the former name of Verizon) had an accountancy scandal!

It's for real, schools are pumping out illiterates or semi-literate graduates. I bet you don't even get taught to use a dictionary anymore. And a dictionary is one of the foundations for learning. These days, you can get passing grades in school because standards get lowered so you can get by with a lower grade. It's actually not funny, because the folks coming out of the present school system are our future.

A big parrt of life is being able to comprehend language, whether it is written or spoken. How competent at life do you think these poor kids will be? Do we want people running the world who have trouble reading normal stuff? What will they do in technical jobs full of tech jargon? They could certainly mess things up if they don't know what they are doing, because they can barely read.

Some people might shrug this off, but I'm being serious about dictionaries. This is a huge part of the problem with our school system. It almost sounds too simple to be part of the solution, but it is part of the solution. We can talk and talk about spending more on education, but until you lay the foundation down for a "real" education, kids will keep coming out of the system inadequate.

Want to improve the education system? Good, spend some money on dictionaries and put them into the hands of students from the time they learn how to read, and you tell them if they see a word in their studies or in life they don't understand, then they need to look it up and get it defined. Then, by the time they get to college, they might actually have a good foundation from high school.


Troy





[edit on 13-12-2006 by cybertroy]

I can just imagine what these CS reps said when they went for their job interview:

"I'm not strong on science or math. I'm a people person. That's why I'd make a good CSrep/supervisor/manager."

SO,

I hate you now. I listened to that whole recording and my head hurts. Blood has begun to trickle from my ears. That was the most painful 20 minutes I have spent in all my years of life.

Blame it on the No Child Left Behind Policy, where students focus and only learn how to pass standardized tests, if the question or scenario isn't going to be on a test, they don't bother teaching it anymore.

or blame it on corporate America where customer service takes second seat to profit making. Maybe it's human resources fault and their hiring practices are to be blamed.

But whatever the reason, that is just disgraceful.

School also has memorization as a basis for learning, and this can be bad. Before anyone disagrees, let me explain.

Let's say you have a sentence. "This morning Mary had a niggling doubt about what she ate yesterday." Let's say I memorize this sentence word for word.

On the test I might get asked, "what was Mary having problems with this morning?" So, I write down "Mary had a niggling doubt about what she ate yesterday." I get the answer right, according to the teacher, and I end up passing the test. But, memorizing the sentence has nothing to do with actually understanding the sentence I read about Mary.

I'm willing to bet most people have not heard of the word, "niggling," which means, "not very important, but continuing to annoy someone."

I didn't know the word either, I just pulled it out of the dictionary. But do you get my point?

A person can get all the way through school like this and have very little comprehension of a big part of the materials studied.

A lot of education therefore ends up missing, just like with my high school education. My literacy improved more out of school than in school. And that is a profound statement.

Troy

Originally posted by worldwatcher
Blame it on the No Child Left Behind Policy....

"No Child Left Behind" hasn't been around long enough to account for the sad state of America's schools.

More fodder for my "I'm a people person" theory:

I was at a design review meeting for a large computer system. The machine required two power units, designated 0 and 1.

A woman attendee (I forget which group she was with, we just called her the Human Resource) argued successfully to get the power units renumbered 1 and 2, saying that that was the way humans counted.

In every class I ever taught on the machine, the engineers would ask where Unit 0 was.

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with a lack of education. In truth, I think it was a poor attempt at deception. I think the last two people on the phone knew precisely the difference between .002 dollars, and .002 cents. To me, they sounded nervous, as though they were trying to confuse the caller. Now, that's not admissible evidence in court, so don't quote me on it.

Of course, that suspicion is probably just due to my lack of faith in people in general.

Wow, that is frightening. The caller thought he was being a smartass when he first asked, I got the impression. He must've been floored when this guy thought they were the same!

"well thats per kilobyte"
"yes, and is it dollars or cents per kilobyte"
"well let me take a look here"




ARGH!!!

And then they quote him again with it being .002 cents per kilobyte!

And this caller is actually being nice about it, thats perhaps the most incredible part. That there are people in the world that can go through all that and explain something like that so many times over and still be nice about it.

Dear god now the guy says 'I see that serveral of our reps have noted on the account as it being cents'

*smacks forehead*

Working here 2 years and a supervisor for a year and a half'
So this knucklehead actually got bumped up to 'supervisor" within a few months, because apparently they're ALL idiots and he was the best. Distrubing.

And this supervisor is actually a little nasty with the guy.

And then this higher supervisor gets on and says 'THere's no such thing as .002 dollars'



Its especially funny because he's talked to a bunch of people prior to the recording had started. And the woman he talks to at the end is telling him 'you've talked to a lot of peopel about this and we've all told you its 70 something dollars'.

Sometimes, when you are amazed that people don't understand what you are saying, you think 'hey, maybe everyone else isn't crazy and wrong, maybe I'm wrong'.

But no, in this case, everyone else is an idiot.

Blame it on the No Child Left Behind Policy,

The guy at that service center is too old to have been brought up with no child left behind.

Its not a single thing in particular that has made america stupid.

Americans, simply are stupid. Its america's natural state to be stupid. Only hard work can undue

But beyond that, it seems that hte people at the call center simply didn't care, didn't want to think, and just read what was on the screen. THe screen says he owes 70 something bucks, the computer figured it out, therefore he owes it. Normally, if they realized that he was quoted the wrong rate, and understood that it was the wrong rate, they'd say 'thats not our problem, you should've known that it wasn't so low, you owe what you owe and thats that'. But here, they're so god awful stupid that they don't even understand what is going on and just rely on that computer screen.

[edit on 17-12-2006 by Nygdan]

I don't know what I should tell myself to rest easy. I am a verizon customer and find them to be OK, but that is only because I used to be a cingular customer and Cingular is a pile of horse crap. (I am sorry if I offended any piles of horse crap that might be reading this.) What is more disturbing

1. Two grown adults in "managerial" positions do not know the differnence between a dollar and a cent

2. A corporation, or at least a division of it, have a dishonest policy of playing dumb so customers will pay disputed charges rather than put up with the hassle of trying to rectify the issue.

Groupthink can cause the smartest people to miss the most obvious answers in a group situation. It did with the Challenger launch, and it has with other infamous disasters of human error in the past (Bay of Pigs) Unless it's all a conspiracy, of course!

I think the Reps have "explained" the situation to this manager who is on the clip, and I think they are in there together trying to "deal" with the situation, to figure out "How to explain it." At the least, he has their notes in the system to further confuse him.

They think the problem is this: "How do we explain to this customer that we are not misquoting our rates?"

While the problem is actually this: "How will we understand our customer's issue so that we can provide him quality customer service?"

Not defining the problem properly + groupthink... providing customer service IS problem solving. These guys seem to think it is explaining to the customer how he/she is wrong. Nope! What good does that do? They are very incompetent, but it's not about math or reading in my eyes.

They need to teach about groupthink, problem solving, and teamwork as well in the education system and employee training, not every problem is caused by reading levels and mathematical ability.

My 2cents, wanted to add that about groupthink cause nobody mentioned it yet.

EDIT: The point is they are not attempting to understand the customer, and that is the root of their problem. IT doesn't matter how smart you are, if you don't listen well enough to understand.

[edit on 22-12-2006 by Novise]

Originally posted by stumason
It's no wonder MCI Worldcom (the former name of Verizon) had an accountancy scandal!

I think you've got some wires crossed stu...Verizon has nothing to do with MCI, it's a product of the merger of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, two baby bells created with the breakup of the AT&T Bell System monopoly. MCI was always a separate firm and actually its lawsuits led to the AT&T breakup.

[edit on 12/22/2006 by djohnsto77]

Originally posted by djohnsto77


I think you've got some wires crossed stu...Verizon has nothing to do with MCI, it's a product of the merger of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, two baby bells created with the breakup of the AT&T Bell System monopoly. MCI was always a separate firm and actually its lawsuits led to the AT&T breakup.

[edit on 12/22/2006 by djohnsto77]

Erm, beg to differ. I work in telecoms and who we used to call MCI Worldcom are now known as Verizon..

EDIT: here is were the confusion lies:

MCI Acquisition


On February 14, 2005, Verizon agreed to acquire MCI, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T just a few weeks earlier.

Media coverage has focused on several ways in which that acquisition, once completed, would benefit Verizon, including economies of scale derived from a potential productivity boost to be achieved via the elimination of thousands of jobs at the combined company, and access to the large base of business customers currently served by MCI. The real benefit to Verizon was the acquisition of long-haul lines. The bulk of Verizon's business is concentrated in the eastern United States. This not only renders the company, effectively, a regional phone company, but also forces it to pay usage fees to long-haul carriers, such as former MCI, to complete calls for its customers whenever those calls go outside the Verizon "footprint". That need is obviated by the MCI acquisition and was key in the long term market position strategy. By January 6, 2006, MCI was incorporated into Verizon with the name Verizon Business. With this merger, Verizon also acquired the naming rights to the Washington, DC home of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals, the Verizon Center (formerly known as the MCI Center).

Just prior to the acquisition, MCI had purchased an internet services company, Totality.

Verizon, with MCI, is currently the largest telecommunications company in the United States based on sales of $75.11 billion, profits of $7.4 billion and assets of $168.13 billion. After completion of the BellSouth/AT&T merger, AT&T will become the largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of assets and profits.

[edit on 22/12/06 by stumason]