Man Hit With $2M Cellphone Bill

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Dear customer,

An unfortunate $2,156,593.64 error on your bill caused us to send you to collections. You know, because normal people always rack up phone bills in the millions.

Sincerely, your friends at Verizon

“We have apologized to an Oregon customer for a programming error in an automated voice response system,” Verizon said in a statement. “The error caused him to receive an incorrect voice message that he owed $2 million on his bill. We are correcting the error now and have resolved the issue to his satisfaction.”
 
Lose your house, sue Verizon for fucking up in a royal way, I see punitive damages as well, hell maybe HE'LL get $2,156,693.64
 
This is unfortunately the price of computerizing everything ... as the old saying goes, "To err is human, to really foul things up takes a computer" ... of course this could be the first strike from Skynet ... the AI is going to corrupt all our cell phone bills and let us destroy each other :cool:
 
I think this was on our local news or something. I believe they lost a house because they couldn't get the financing due to the collections mark on their credit report or something like that.
 
Parmenides said:
Where are the programs that under charge?
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It happens occasionally ... usually when it does they send you a retroactive bill ... I had this happen once (not due to a software glitch though) ... my electric meter was failing which I noticed by the really low bill ... I reported it to the electric company and they replaced the meter ... they also retroactively billed me for when the meter wasn't working based on my previous usage ... no good deed goes unpunished :cool:
 
TechLarry said:
I think this was on our local news or something. I believe they lost a house because they couldn't get the financing due to the collections mark on their credit report or something like that.
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I didn't read the article. You telling me this thing lasted more than a... day? :/ now I get those people calling for a lawsuit.
 
TechLarry said:
I think this was on our local news or something. I believe they lost a house because they couldn't get the financing due to the collections mark on their credit report or something like that.
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They were trying to buy a house to be clear here and that mark on the credit report prevented it.

You can't lose a house you never owned to begin with in the first place.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Lose your house, sue Verizon for fucking up in a royal way, I see punitive damages as well, hell maybe HE'LL get $2,156,693.64
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They should be sued up the wazoo for a "programming error" that sent the collection agency after you, these things should be double and triple checked rather than automated.
 
It would take all of 5 seconds to put in a line of code that says something like, if total > $10,000, flag bill for verification. I can't imagine a lot of residential accounts are over $10K a month, so it's basically going to catch any billing errors and have someone verify it's accuracy before sending it out. Worst case is the bill is legit and someone had to spend a couple of minutes ensuring it's accuracy.
 
dgz said:
I didn't read the article. You telling me this thing lasted more than a... day? :/ now I get those people calling for a lawsuit.
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Yeah, this lasted a long time. If I recall from reading this a few days ago, they got service and every month their bill was some random amount in the few hundred range, they then got a letter saying they were being taken to collections for not paying a $200-$400 bill so they cancelled service. They then got a bill for $2M. They had been fighting with verzion since day one of their service and never got any help.

At the same time as people stated they were in the process if trying to close on a house, but since this happen during that process the bank wouldn't give them money until it is all cleared up. Which didn't happen for them to get that house.

So yeah, this is one is one of the few times where a lawsuit is justified as these people just got screwed by this and the company has zero interest in doing the right thing by the customer. So that would be one way to make them care a little more when screwing over customers with "billing errors"
 
rigurat said:
I love my prepaid plan.
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Yeah. I'm done with contracts. The headache of being back on a contract for two years after having used prepaid for two years before that was enough to break me of my flagship lust. I will also never, ever use Verizon again. Fucking bunch of twats.
 
It's verizon.. Fuck em.. They got the money. Sue the twots for what they said you owe.
 
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