While planning a trip to Canada, Mike called the company to scope out his potential AT&T data charges. He got ahold of a CSR who must have missed those years in elementary school when they taught you about decimal points, because he quoted a nonsensical rate.

Mike explains:

I called them up just now because I’m going to be in Vancouver and wanted to know what it would cost to use my data plan there. The representative said “point zero one nine five cents per kilobyte”. I said, “So if I use 100 kilobytes, that would cost one point nine five cents?” “No, that would be a dollar ninety-five.”

As you can see, their math doesn’t add up.

I even asked to speak to a supervisor, who was named Adam [redacted]. Adam claimed that 0.0195 cents was almost the same thing as 2 cents, and when I pointed out that it was actually less than one hundredth of that amount, he acted like I was a crazy person.

I would have liked to write to AT&T’s executive customer support about this, but I could only find a phone number for Gina Cain in the office of the president. I left her a voicemail, but it was hard to explain the above verbally and briefly in a way that, frankly, doesn’t make me sound like a crazy person. If you have any ins with the company, you might want to let them know that their customer service agents and supervisors need a refresher on basic math.

The CSR most likely misspoke, but when you’re talking about decimal points, dollars and cents, it’s really, really crucial that you nail the details.

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