Many people are still idiots
In keeping with the general theme that lots of people seem to be idiots these days, I just found an excellent blog that I wish I'd heard about months ago. This guy has been chronicling how Verizon employees don't know the difference between dollars and cents. Literally. The short version is as follows: when he signed up for their data transfer service, he was told by 3 different salespeople that he would be charged 0.002 cents per kilobyte, and got them to put that in writing in their records of his service. He was subsequently charged 0.002 dollars per kilobyte, and went through 4 customer service representatives, including a supervisor and a floor manager, without finding anyone who understood the difference between the two. Thankfully, he eventually got someone higher up to realize the mistake and reverse the charges on his bill.
He also links to the story of another person who had pretty much the same thing happen to them, though they haven't gotten the charges reversed yet. The audio (embedded as a YouTube "movie") is amazingly exasperating: it basically comes down to the customer service people agreeing that there is a difference between 2 dollars and 2 cents, but that 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents are the same. This story has apparently appeared on all sorts of news/blog/&c outlets. Verizon has subsequently "changed" their rates from $0.002/kB to $2.05/MB.
He also links to the story of another person who had pretty much the same thing happen to them, though they haven't gotten the charges reversed yet. The audio (embedded as a YouTube "movie") is amazingly exasperating: it basically comes down to the customer service people agreeing that there is a difference between 2 dollars and 2 cents, but that 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents are the same. This story has apparently appeared on all sorts of news/blog/&c outlets. Verizon has subsequently "changed" their rates from $0.002/kB to $2.05/MB.