Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Verizon Math Strikes Again!


Just wow! This is clearly worse than my situation, similarly comical but just sad and really bad business:

Verizon Math Strikes Again: Promises 2 Years Of Free Data Access To Chromebook Users; Delivers Just 1

My favorite comment:

"Personanongrata, Jun 25th, 2014 @ 1:29pm
Verizon's New Math

Verizon's new math formula and solution:

Google's 3 year service offer minus Verizon's 2 year service offer equals 1 year of service.

That was easy."

10 comments:

Bart said...

There's a reason I've never signed up with Verizon. I've followed this blog for years and an old comment woke the blog up for me. I figured I'd wake this part up too.

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing this insight! It's too bad that I didn't see this blog before I signed up, as they aren't only bad at math, they like to threaten customers who complain about their business practices with termination. There's a special place in hell for Verizon executive staff.

TRR said...

I had a frustrating incident of funny math with the post office (I'm in Australia) - I had to give "3 business days" of notice on an application. I was filling out the form, and it was a Tuesday morning, so I put down Friday on the form.

The lady wouldn't accept the form, saying that I need to give 3 business days' notice.

That is three business days, I say. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

No, she said, that's only two. Three business days would be Monday.

I said, what's three days from now?

Saturday, she said, but you have to put Monday because it's only business days.

But three days from now is Friday! I say.

She proceeds to explain to me how three days from today is Saturday. Well there's Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so three business days from now is Saturday.

But the third day you just said was Friday. That's the third day after today.

No, you don't count the three days, she said. It is "after" 3 business days.

So, apparently, according to her, 1 day from now is actually not tomorrow, but the next day, because you "don't count" tomorrow.

It didn't really matter to me, I didn't mind waiting until after the weekend, except that it was frustrating that someone was correcting my math on something that seemed so absolutely crazily obvious, that three days from today means three days from today, not four.

Bart said...

You need all of Friday. Tuesday doesn't count, because it's paperwork that has to be processed. It'll go through and eventually be posted for notice at some time. Then you have all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. You can't do anything Fri morning or Fri afternoon, because you need three full days of notice, and by then Fri is basically over, so you might as well wait until the next day.

George Vaccaro said...

I wonder what she would have answered if you asked her "How many business days ago is yesterday?"

Her head might have exploded if you were sending "back in time" to Hawaii. :)

TRR said...

@Bart Humphries so, 4 business days after the form is submitted then.

This was my thinking behind their reasoning too, though if that was the case it would have been more helpful just to say "4 business days" on the form instructions rather than 3, so we don't have to telepathically detect that they need to round up to the next whole day. As it was they said 3 business days but meant "the next whole day after 3 business days".

Bart said...

You said that you needed to give the days of notice. So you need to make sure that there are three full days of notice. If that requires that you wait four days, then so be it. But you need to fulfill the requirements, at least as far as I understood from your original post.

TRR said...

From Tuesday to Friday is three *full* days.

Bart said...

Tuesday is when you filled out the paperwork. The notice probably appeared or was otherwise first visible Wednesday morning.

George Vaccaro said...

@Bart, this seems like an explanation which is great. I think the issue though is that the wording is not clear and consistent with people's expectations so perhaps warrants futher clarification. This seems to be TRR's point.

Most people probably interpret business days like any other unit. "Processed in 1 business day" generally means by the same time the next business day. It would not be clear that the counter starts after some unquantified internal lag as that would defeat the purpose of the statement.

It's not reasonable just to expect outsiders to know internal processes. In my admittedly uninformed opinion based on what you've both posted here it seems like it would be clearer to just say "4 business days" as TPP suggested because that's what it seems to practically translate to.