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As part of his master’s thesis, a grad student did the impossible: He persuaded Verizon to give him a refund for a bogus late fee. Experts were confounded last week when the School of Business Administration at the University Of South Carolina Aiken announced that graduate student phenom Cashin Carrion has successfully obtained a refund from Verizon Communications as part of his masters thesis. "I’m flabbergasted!" said Professor Hardass of the Aiken school. "Refunds form cell phone conglomerates are obviously unheard of, but that he did it through their customer service department is astounding." Mathematics professor Livina Chatrume concurs. Using computer simulations, she estimates the odds of a customer service rep at a cell phone provider issuing a refund to be 1/(p-x)a . When pressed to explain what p, a, and x represent in the equation, Livina mumbled, broke eye contact and became engrossed in an online message board conversation. It began almost a year ago when Carrion canceled his service by phone while living in Atlanta. He paid his final bill during the same call. "That bill had all the usual bogus fees and overcharges" says Carrion, "but I had been a loyal customer for several years so I was used to that." |
Somehow, news of the cancellation never made it to Verizon’s Fee Generation Department, which issued a $35 fee on Carrion’s closed account last June. Carrion discovered the fee in the fall when a credit check revealed Verizon had issued a judgment on his account, destroying his credit. Generated fees and abominable customer service are the cornerstones of the wireless industry. The fees are mathematically formulated to be just small enough that the average American would make more money per hour by collecting deposit bottles or waiting tables at a corporate-owned restaurant than they would disputing overcharges with customer service.
In September, Carrion approached Professor Hardass with his concept. "He wanted to navigate the labyrinth of their voice response system, and eventually try reasoning with a live person," says Hardass. "I tried to encourage him to choose a more realistic goal for his thesis, like creating an algebraic formula for calculating the complete series of prime numbers." But Carrion was steadfast. Cashin’s roommate, Marty Moocher, says: "Cashin was up at it day after day talking to voice-response systems and punching in his account number. On days that he got a live person, they’d make him repeat his story from the beginning. The best was when Cashin would lose it and curse out some poor, underpaid, bumbling service rep until they were on the brink of tears." "I tried to keep the abusive approach to a minimum, but at times it does help to get a supervisor on the phone." Carrion adds. "It’s an advanced technique. You have to switch out of psycho mode quickly or the supervisor will work against you. So you watch what you say. Besides, you never know when President Bush is listening in." After months of airing his gripe, Supervisor Ivana Pummelim finally cracked and issued a refund to Carrion’s credit card. "It’s ironic that Pummelim is the one that finally caved." says Nekus Aiken of the Aiken School. "Verizon specifically sought her out for that role because of her aggressive approach to customer service." Pummelim first gained notoriety as a bank manager in New York. When customers would ask her to check their balance, she would reach over and push them. The Stock Market reacted negatively to the news last week, as investors feared copycats would go home and begin questioning random charges on their cell phone bills. City Paper was able to reach only one Verizon representative for comment, who stated repeatedly: "I’m sorry, I did not understand you." |