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Verizon Sues to Stop Privacy Rules; Wants to Sell Call Data
Jake writes "Verizon has asked a federal court to stop state regulators from enforcing new privacy rules that would prohibit telephone companies from using or sharing details about customers' calling habits without permission. Verizon, which serves nearly 1 million customers across Washington state, had plans to begin a data-sharing system that allowed the company and its affiliates to collect information on when, where and how often customers make telephone calls. It would use that data to sell new products and services to customers." "We believe we have certain rights as a corporation to use this information," Verizon's PR person says. Great.
I was a Verizon customer up until a couple months ago . Since I enjoy a quality high speed cablemodem already, I signed up with Vonage. I "highly" recommend them to anybody who has the bandwidth to use their service.
They are not 100% perfect, but if/when something happens, they've made it a point to notify customers of what was going on. Without even complaining, I received a $5 refund for a 1 day outage. They also have very good customer reps that answer your email/calls quickly and professionally.
I never liked Verizon from the first time I moved into their service area. Their customer service seemed more wary of me as a new subscriber than happy to do business. I used their automated online system to order service, and they did not activate my phone service the day I requested. I called up to find out why, and they wanted me to pay $250 deposit. $250 deposit for phone service? WTF? That's at least 6 months worth of service. After bitching, they then offered to waive the deposit if I got my old phone company to right a "letter of recommendation" saying that I was a previous customer in good standing. Uhg.. pain in the ass, but worth saving $250.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
In this day and age, you should probably watch your words. Not to be paranoid or anything... but words like those can always come back and haunt you.