An Ohio insurance company is setting letters to 21,000 people who potentially have been affected by a basic maths error on its web site's comparison calculator. The calculator compares prices from Progressive Insurance against some of its competitors. However, what the programmers failed to deal with was that Progressive quotes rates over a 6 month period, compared to its competitors' 12 months.
"Our system is programmed to divide the Liberty and Commerce rates in half so that consumers see apples-to-apples comparisons," Cristy Cote, a Progressive spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. "Because of a programming error, the competitors' annual rates were shown."
According to boston.com this is the second such problem with the Progressive web site in recent times, and the calculator is being discontinued until the programmers pass their primary school maths exams.
Of course there's nothing on the Progressive web site 'Newsroom' page, either in the form of a news item from the company, or in the section where it tracks mentions about itself in the media.
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