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by Benjamin_Dobell 1208 days ago

You just made me realise something. For 10 years, every month I'd received an SMS saying:

> Your latest bill $-0.02 on [... blah blah...]

From a telco provider I no longer use. Turns out they finally stopped messaging me in November last year. I wonder if they worked it out or whether their system gives up after 10 years.

Hopefully you don't have to wait that long!

3 comments

smcl 1208 days ago

Ha hopefully not! To be honest given that home-office is quite important nowadays I'd like to just have some closure. Being told you have to pay an unexpected, positive quantity of currency is annoying but if you want to resolve that it's usually achievable. Being told you have to pay negative amount and that your contract is in jeopardy feels like you're on a bit of a knife-edge. Throw in Czech customer service (lol) and the company either playing games with their systems being "down" when I go, or pretending they can't understand me because I'm a foreigner and my Czech is a little off sometimes - it's a little stressful.

Sorry for the diversion, I'll make another pilgrimage to the Vodafone place nearby tomorrow, it's possible they had "billing our customers negative numbers" above Raspberry Pi fun on their TODO list!

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jackvalentine 1208 days ago

Oh I had the same problem with Vodafone Australia a few years ago. In the end I called them up about it and they sent me a physical cheque for 3 cents - the postage cost more.

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mouse_ 1208 days ago

I wonder if there's a way we could estimate the global power consumption for digital junk mail in units of tons of coal

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wumms 1208 days ago

~ 4-5 million tons of coal (33 TWh in 2009)

- Equals ~1/3rd of Bitcoin's energy consumption (~115 TWh per year, 2022) [6]

- A pile of 8 million tons of coal is ~1/2km (~1/3 mile) in diameter and 167m (549ft) high [3]

- Poland uses 10 million tons of coal a year to heat households (2017) [4]

- Annual world coal production 7,741.6 million t (2020) [5]

33bn kWh [0] = 4.056.268 TCE (Ton Of Coal Equivalent) [1]

33bn kWh / 6.7 kWh/kg [2] / 1.000 kg/t = 4.925.373 t