"We won't let you DF the dying guy until you pay his bill."
Posted on 05/22/2009 6:29:27 PM PDT by HikikomoriWarrior
...
Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff’s department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment.
... “I was more concerned for the person’s life,” Williams said. “It would have been nice if Verizon would have turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes, just long enough to try and find the guy. But they would only turn it on if we agreed to pay $20 of the unpaid bill. Ridiculous.”
...
(Excerpt) Read more at timesreporter.com ...
Well there ya go — add this story to a long list of reasons we finally left VZW after many years. Never goin’ back.
Makes me recall Ernestine, the Telephone Operator, played on Saturday Night Live by Lily Tomlin.
Well, I knew that Verizon was getting more and more ruthless, but this is excessive. Not exactly good PR. I guess they don’t care what people think of them.
Actually, that was Laugh In with Dan Rowan and Dick Martin...
“Can you hear me now?.....”
We’ve been happy with Verizon for years, but this is disturbing. Really bad press for the company.
same here! verizon continued to charge me for services that I had opted out for at one point and pretty much told me to take it or leave it after 4 months of my phone calls and emails to the appropriate verizon customer services people did not gain me any satisfaction. so I left, never to return for sure.
This is business, the woman had rules, yeah, most people with common sense would see that there is a time to break rules but this woman was a coward.
It reminded me of my first job when I was 15, the owner made me night manager and I was told never, ever to take a check over 10 bucks, no circumstances and no excuses. Then one night one of his friends came in and wanted to cash a check for 20 bucks. I wouldn’t budge because I had been told not to but in the end, I let him write 2 $10 checks. My boss thought it was funny.
From the comments at the link:
Our next ad:
Verizon Wireless guy: ‘Can you hear me now?’ (while choking someone)
Victim: yes (gasping)
.
(repeat until no response)
LOL!
I think they are all pretty much that way. Pay or you die.
Corporate attitudes like that keep plaintiff’s lawyers in business.
Verizon data charges and texting charges are amongst the highest in the industry, and they nickel and dime you with everything.
They cripple all the features in their phones.
And they plaster their Verizon name every possible place, on both the hardware and software. It irritated me so much on my Razr that I hacked the phone to remove their name everywhere it appeared in software. Like I don’t know who my friggin carrier is.
I’m with T-Mobile now and have none of the above problems.
I was PO’d with Verizon one time.....I told them “fix this problem or I will drop you and go with a cell phone” the lady on the line said “now calm down Ma’am” She knew I meant it.
there are others out there. I hope he gets a lawyer!
they continued to charge me for caller ID, *69, *67 and call block for 4 months AFTER I had opted out of those services. I deducted those deleted service costs from my current charges as I continued to pay the monthly bill and explained many times why but it made no difference to them so I payed off what I owed (minus the by now fraud charges) and canceled. everything fine until 6 months later a new verizon bill arrives still charging me for everything PLUS a $29.95 ‘reconnection’ charge! I wrote back and told them they could take this and shove it you know where and make it disappear or I was again contacting the BBB over it. 8 months on now with no contact of any kind with these crooks.
They turned off ALL my phones the day my husband was in surgery for 5 hours. a $200 credit they OWED me hadn’t posted yet and I hadn’t paid anything on the bill. They insisted I had to pay almost $600 to get any service back - let’s see: $600 - 200 credit due - 300 not late until 10 more days... I wish we had more options - just can’t do Time-Warner.
good for Verizon!!
T-mobile is wonderful to me.
Well, I ended up paying Verizon almost a thousand bucks because one of my daughters went off to college with what used to be my cell phone, for which I paid basic rate, and the first month she was there she was texting with her friends.
I presume they all thought it would be free. But if you have a basic account, they charge you the earth for long distance texting—including messages that somebody else sends you.
I didn’t know about any of that, since I don’t text, and my daughter had never done so either until her friends started doing it.
Naturally they said that the account couldn’t be changed right away, and I’d have to pay an extra charge for this and another extra charge for that to get it changed.
"We won't let you DF the dying guy until you pay his bill."
Think about it - This Sheriff’s deputies have often given wrong, bad, or downright stupid answers. All he had to do was call Verizon corporate !Voila! problem solved. HINT: Its a NYC number. Sherrif Deserves Unelection for waiting on hold and being stymied by a clerk, and a wrong one at that. Verizon’s corporate policy is to preserve life and property. Did he get the clerks name or ID number? Send THAT to corporate... Future problems solved, also.
I thought this wasn’t suppose to happen anymore after kelsey smith’s (later found dead in missouri) cell phone company refused to help law enforcement?? I guess I was WRONG. (I think I got her last name correct)
Hubby says it was verizon, and sprint gave her parents free phones later...
Ok, I googled “kelsey smith phone company”
I was incorrect. This was state legislation..should be a federal law.
_______________
This is an excerpt
http://www.pr.com/press-release/147074
The Kelsey Smith Act is Signed Into Law
Overland Park, KS, April 23, 2009 —(PR.com)—
Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has signed the Kelsey Smith Act, allowing law enforcement to gather cell phone information more quickly during an emergency situation. Kansas is the first and only state in the nation to pass such a law.
House Bill 2126, named the Kelsey Smith Act, requires wireless telecommunications carriers to provide information about the location of the telecommunications device of a user of the carriers? services, if requested by a law enforcement agency in order to respond to a call for emergency services or to respond in an emergency situation that involves risk of death or serious physical harm.The bill, introduced by Representative Rob Olson (R), requires wireless telecommunications companies to release location information to law enforcement of a missing person?s cell phone in a timely manner in emergency situations.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation will be required to collect contact information for all wireless telecommunications companies authorized to do business in Kansas and then share that contact information with law enforcement agencies and 911 call centers. This requirement was an amendment added to the bill.
Kelsey Smith was abducted and murdered nearly two years ago.
Since then her parents, Greg and Missey Smith, have fought to have the state of Kansas pass “The Kelsey Smith Act,” which will strongly require phone companies to help police find missing people.
After Kelsey went missing, her parents and law enforcement fought with the Smith?s cell phone company for days before the company released the so-called ?ping? records. Police used the information to quickly find Smith?s body, four days after she was abducted and killed.
Would this be good for your ping list?
A call for cell phone companies to cooperate with law enforcement!!
“...All he had to do was call Verizon corporate !Voila! problem solved...”
Not exactly—it took police 4 days to get the records for kelsey smith. See above article/press release.
I’m not surprised. We were on a Family Plan, and my wife was getting harassed by a stranger, so I finally asked Verizon to change her phone number. Because it was harassment, they agreed to change her number for no charge. But when I got the bill, they had charged us $15 for the number change. When I called customer service, they weren’t going to remove the charge. Finally they did remove it after I really raised hell and talked to a supervisor, but it really p-ed me off. I was a customer with them for 20 years, never used anywhere near all my minutes, and paid the bill early. And then get lied to. It wasn’t the amount of money involved, it was just their blatant lying and rude attitude.
We’ve been with T-Mobile now for 6 months and love them. Their customer service is great. They bend over backwards to be accomodating, and then offer you one of those cold beers in the big mug, LOL (T-Mobile USA is a part of Deutche Telecom). We just got “sales credits” on our latest bill totaling $47.00, I have no idea why, but I won’t be calling up to complain.
See ya Verizon, we are permanently divorced.
our kids hurt us the first month they had their phones - we got verizon to split the $767 bill with us - they didn’t explain all the ways they could charge us! Nor will they put a spending limit on an account like Sprint does. (That saved my daughter’s you-know-what several times!) We now have unlimited texting on those phones and my son pays his $20 every month.
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