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Web Site Problems

August 26, 2004. I ordered an accessory for my cellphone on August 19th. When it arrived today, the printed receipt said it was ordered on August 25th. 

August 19, 2004. I finally created a new account for myself and then got this message: "We are updating our online system, and as a result, certain My Account transactions will not be available between August 15-20, including...". Phone activation was working, so I went through the process only to have it fail at the last step. 

August 18, 2004. I bought a new cellphone and tried to activate it using the Verizon Wireless web site. It was down. For a company that "never stops working for you" (see image below) it did stop. The image below is from Firefox 0.92. When viewed with IE there were more options at the bottom. 

When the web site came back I tried to create a new account which requires a userid, email address and password. The password must be 4 digits. Not even four characters, just 4 digits. Not 5 digits, just 4. This is disgraceful security. 

When I gave it 4 digits, the account creation failed - I got a page can not be displayed error from the browser. Then I refreshed the page and this error: HTTP method GET is not supported by this URL. Then I tried again with a different password and got this error: My Account is unavailable. My Account services are temporarily unavailable. 

Verizon never stops working for you. Except when they stop working. 

Web Site Security Problem

September 5, 2001. Verizon Wireless has a security problem with their customer support Web site that enables unauthorized individuals to browse customer account information, including billing details. They were notified of the problem privately and did not respond to fix it. Only when news of the problem was made public did Verizon acknowledge that they were looking into it. 

A technical description of the problem written Marc Slemko who claims to have discovered it is available on the SecurityFocus.com web site. His advice to Verizon wireless customers is not to use their online "My Account" feature. He says that if you do not login, this vulnerability can not be used to hijack your session. 

As story about this appeared in The Register on September 5, 2001. 

Minutes Used This Month

July 24, 2001.  This web site is for computer gripes and these Verizon cellphone gripes are therefore limited to the Verizon computer that informs customers of the number of minutes they have used so far this month (really, during the current billing period). 

I recently signed up for a new Verizon cellphone. After using it a while, I wanted to see how many minutes I had used and compare it to the monthly billing allowance for minutes. 

The Verizon computer reported three types of minutes used: prime time, off-peak and weekend. My calling plan does not deal with prime time or off-peak. Instead there is one allotment for minutes used during the week and another for minutes on the weekend. 

The gripe here is that the Verizon computer is not capable of checking the calling plan used by a customer and reporting the minutes used in a manner that conforms to the calling plan. It reports its three buckets of minutes which leaves the customer to figure out how to mix and match the numbers to conform to their billing plan. How hard can this be? 

I spoke to someone from Verizon to ask if the off-peak minutes were included in the weekday total or the weekend total with my billing/calling plan. I was told that off-peak meant weekdays after 9PM. However, as to which bucket the off-peak minutes were counted in with my calling plan, I could not understand the persons explanation. Not being anywhere near the calling plan limits, I gave up. 

A few days later, I called the Verizon computer again and this time the numbers sounded wrong. It said that I had used 104 minutes of off-peak time and 104 minutes of weekend time. To the best of my recollection, I had used no off-peak time. Also, it was too much of coincidence for the two numbers to be exactly equal. Another call to a person at Verizon and again a very long explanation. The Verizon person explained how and why this happens. Again, it made no sense to me. Something about the computer adding numbers and subtracting them. 

Maybe you add the prime time and off-peak minutes together to get a weekday total. After all, they are both during the week. Maybe you ignore the off-peak minutes because the calling plan doesn't have such a thing? Then again, some calling plans have off-peak and weekend lumped together in one bucket of minutes. Weekend certainly is off-peak so maybe its included in off-peak. Or maybe off-peak is included in weekend. Or... 

It appears as if the weekend minutes are reported as both off-peak minutes and weekend minutes!  A casual user of the Verizon computer reporting system would think they had used 208 minutes in this case, when they really used only 104. Is this on purpose for a sinister reason?  Is it a bug?  If its neither, then the people that design computer systems for Verizon are intellectually challenged. It couldn't be more confusing. I'm hesitant to make a cellphone call during the week during off-peak hours (after 9PM). I don't think I could deal with the billing. 

August 16, 2001. I finally made some off-peak calls during the week and now know the formula for translating what the Verizon computer reports into what I need to know. 

Weekend minutes are indeed reported twice, as both weekend minutes and as off-peak minutes. Who thought this was a good idea? To get the real number of off-peak minutes used during the week, you have to subtract out the weekend minutes from the reported number off-peak minutes. In other words, what the computer calls "off-peak" is really weekend minutes plus off-peak during the week. 

Doing this subtraction, leaves you with prime time and off-peak minutes used during the week. For my calling plan, I add them together to get weekday minutes. As the Verizon person had said on the phone, there was a bunch of adding and subtracting going on. As I said before, it couldn't be more confusingly designed if you tried. 

The table below illustrates the necessary translation. 

Expressed as a formula: 
  Weekend Minutes = Weekend Minutes 
  Weekday Minutes = Prime Time Minutes + (Off-Peak Minutes - Weekend Minutes)  

August 23, 2001.  The Verizon computer today reported my minutes used during the current billing period as of August 17th. Six days ago. They should update their computer database more often. I checked the next day too and the database was still from August 17th. 

The Printed Bill is Worse

October 5, 2001. As confusing as it is to figure out the minutes used so far this month via telephone, it's worse to figure it out from the printed billing statement at the end of the month. Over the phone there are only three numbers to deal with, on the billing statement there are more. My real gripe is with the computer program that generates the monthly statements. On my calling plan, there are only two numbers that matter: the minutes used during the week and the minutes used during the weekend. Rather than calculate and report these numbers in a straightforward, simple, clear way, the Verizon billing statements force customers to use a calculator and a cheat sheet to make sense out their bill. 

The table below illustrates how the current months usage is reported on a Verizon statement. The numbers are from a recent bill of mine. The billing plan provides for 300 weekday minutes and 2000 weekend minutes. Any time over these limits is billed at 55 cents per minute. 

Lets analyze this: 

As with the usage totals Verizon reports on the phone, their computer systems remain married to the concepts of peak and off-peak even though they do not apply to my calling plan. 

The last line, Mobile to Mobile airtime, is irrelevant on my billing plan and can be ignored. The bill notes in a footnote that Mobile to Mobile minutes are included within Airtime Minutes (what time is not airtime?). No help there.

The next to last line is a monetary amount, not a tally of minutes used. Verizon is saving on ink by not printing dollar signs. This is in effect the answer, if you can explain where these numbers come from, you have solved the puzzle. The $46.75 is the amount I paid that month over and above the normal monthly charge. 

Weekend/Night Minutes are confusing. My plan does not deal with night time calls. The zero in the peak column should really be an X as weekend minutes can never be peak minutes. However, what is the 150 minutes of Weekend/Night that occurred Off-Peak? Is it the weekend part of it? Is the weekday nighttime part of it? 

The Monthly allowance line adds up to 300 minutes which makes sense. I am guessing that the breakdown of 261 peak and 39 off-peak is irrelevant. 

The true meaning of the Airtime minutes line is really hard to guess at, except for the total of 535 minutes. My first guess was to subtract the 300 minutes from the second line from this 535 total. But that leaves 235 minutes which when multiplied by 55 cents does not come out to $46.75. 

At this point it occurs to me to divide the $46.75 by 55 cents. The result is 85 minutes, so somewhere, somehow I used 85 minutes over my allowance. But where? 

If you subtract the 150 Weekend/Night Feature Minutes from the aforementioned 235 minutes, you get 85 minutes. A miracle.

Working backwards, it seems that the first line, Airtime Minutes is a grand total of everything. From this number you subtract the next line, Monthly Allowance. From the remainder, you subtract Weekend/Night Feature Minutes to end up with the minutes that have to paid for at 55 cents each. In other words, from the grand total, I have to subtract the allowed time used during weekdays and the allowed time used during the weekend to get the un-allowed time used.  Whew. 

Trying to make sense of the Off-Peak column, the 191 minutes includes time during the week and during the weekend. The 39 minutes must be the time during the week and the 150 minutes the time during the weekend. Subtracting the last two numbers from 191 leaves 2 minutes. I must have used two minutes during the week after 9:00 PM that were not in my monthly allowance. To repeat myself, on my calling plan this is irrelevant. 

Formula: 
(Total Air Time Minutes - Total Monthly Allowance - Total Weekend/Night Feature Minutes) * .55 = Charge for extra minutes 

Thank goodness I didn't make any calls from outside my home calling area. That would have entailed roaming charges and made this even more complicated.

Other Gripers

With Cellphones, Who Knows Where the Time Goes? The New York Times. October 4, 2001. This article details the authors experience trying to learn the minutes used so far this month from AT&T. It's worse than Verizon. If you call AT&T and deal with either a person or a computer, they will not tell you how many minutes you have used to far. Their web site does provide this information, but there are two problems with it. The first is that you have to register with the web site and then wait until the end of the current billing period before it will tell you anything. When the author checked the web site in the middle of the next billing period, it reported the wrong number of minutes used.