February 12th, 2006
Verizon Mistakenly Charges $0.5 Million For 3-Way Calling
By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being charged too much for services on your monthly phone bill? Well, it’s not just you. Victor of the Typical PC User podcast was shocked when he found that Verizon had planned to charge him a monthly fee of exactly $417,949.73 for 3-way calling. Of course, after calling Verizon he discovered that it was indeed a computer error that Verizon was aware of already. The surprising thing is that this apparently happened to a lot of people. I would think that Verizon would notice if they were quoting $500,000 to large numbers of individuals since I doubt you could rack up that large a phone bill in one month–even if you were on the phone with someone in Antartica (just for example) 24/7 for the whole month. In fact, I just looked it up since I was curious. After a $3.99 fee for international long distance calling on your cell phone, you’d then have to pay $2.90/minute (the highest I found, Afghanistan was a close second). In a 31-day month, that would put your bill at approximately $129,459.99. That’s still a far cry from the half million that Verizon was charging for 3-way calling. I guess Verizon doesn’t really double check their computers’ math (or their programmers’ code) at all. I hope that people who have their bills set up to be automatically paid from their bank accounts don’t get a nasty surprise. In any case, let this be a lesson to you to always double check those suspicious looking phone bill charges. Your instincts might just be right.
Read the first hand account (including a picture of the actual bill) here.
Victor (Typical PC User Podcast Host) says:
Two comments. One they actually did not charge me that money. The letter was a statement of what my services included and what they “Would” charge me.
A second comment, I’d be interested to see where Real Tech News heard of the story first. Specially if it was Digg.com. Because if it was the story is now buried and no one else will see it. So thanks for picking up on it.
When you come by to check out the picture of the bill, check out the rest of the site I put on a weekly podcast for PC newbiew. Thanks again Victor
February 12th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
David Johnston says:
I frequent Digg.com and I also remember your story that covered your iPod woes. I think I may have covered it in fact. You’ve got a very good site in my opinion
February 12th, 2006 at 12:14 pm