Verizon Tells Cops "Your Money Or Your Life"

Mike writes "A 62-year-old man had a mental breakdown and ran off after grabbing several bottles of pills from his house. The cops asked Verizon to help trace the man using his cellphone, but Verizon refused, saying that they couldn't turn on his phone because he had an unpaid bill for $20. After an 11-hour search (during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill), the man was found, unconscious. 'I was more concerned for the person's life,' Sheriff Dale 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.' Score another win for the Verizon Customer Service team."

Comments

Simple solution

[Shadow of Eternity]

Any time something like this happens everyone from the first manager with the authority to do something that refuses all the way up the chain gets held responsible for whatever happens as a result of their refusal to act.

Guy dies, they get held responsible for murder because they chose to not assist the police knowing full well that their actions would cause the death of another human being.

Never going to happen.

Re:Simple solution

[Bigjeff5]

You should not be so blindly anti-corporate. I'm as anti-corporate as anybody, but in this case Verizon did the right thing. The 62 year old, crazy and suicidal as he was, had commited no crime and did not represent a threat to society at large. He had every right to grab a bottle of pills and run off, just like his family had every right to attempt to chase him down and calm him down before he does something foolish.

Enlisting the help of the police to find a missing person is fine, and a good use of public services.

Forcing a phone company to track down a customer (breaching contract or no) just because the police said so? Hell no. You don't want ISPs giving up personal information just because the RIAA subpoena it, well this has even LESS legal standing than that.

Honestly, had Verizon activated his phone and tracked him down, the crazy man would be in the right to sue the pants off Verizon, and he could probably win.

And you people are talking about sanctioning Verizon for protecting the man's privacy? Granted, it was definitely not for altruistic reasons, but frankly I don't want the police to ever have the right to call up the phone company and have them track me down without a warrant for my arrest (not that I should ever be under suspicion, but you never know).

And while you're attacking the phone company for not budging on the phone deactivation for a mear $20, bear in mind that neither the police nor the family was apparently willing to cough up the $20 to have the account unlocked.

Seems to me that the worst you can say about Verizon here is that they suck as much as everybody else involved. Maybe if this guy's family wasn't harassing him he wouldn't have lost it, you never know.

NSA

[Concerned Onlooker]

The cops should have just told Verizon they were the NSA. Verizon would have given them anything.

What about E911?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Don't even contractless cell phones have to support calling 911?
If so, doesn't that mean they are always talking to nearby tower(s) just as much as any other cell phone and thus just as easily trackable?

Re:What about E911?

[Xaoswolf]

article doesn't say anything about whether or not they followed proper channels. Anybody can call in and say, "Hi, I'm a cop, we need to find Bob, can you turn his phone on then track it?" Any customer service is going to say no. Cops actually have their own support teams that they work with, and generally, they will need things like court orders to access accounts or tracking.

Idiot Police imho

[Aranykai]

"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."

Why did it take the police 11 hours to decide to pay the $20 dollar bill? If someones life was likely at stake, $20 out of my own pocket is a pretty small price to pay to locate him.

Re:Idiot Police imho

[svvampy]

For ten and a half hours, the officer was on hold.

Re:Frankly I'm siding with Verizon. Good for Veriz

[Sta7ic]

Though they did support the guy's privacy, it was inadvertent. If you RTFA, there were two K-9 units, several fire departments and 100 individuals on foot looking for the guy after the police were called by a neighbor. They weren't concerned about the guy's privacy, they were concerned about the guy's unpaid debts.

Not murder

[MrEricSir]

But manslaughter.

Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.

Re:Not murder

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate death penalty: revocation of corporate charter, seizure of all corporate assets.

Probably a bit too stiff for this instance, but if a company shows a repeated "screw the community" ethic, why should the community suffer its continued existence?

The major problem I have is as little as I trust large companies, I trust the government to not abuse such a power even less.

Re:Not murder

[houstonbofh]

But manslaughter.

Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.

Oh yes you can. Look at the Enron folks. You have a legal duty to refuse an illegal request. If they fire you for obeying a police request, you will have a line of ambulance chasers waiting to "help" you.

Re:Not murder

[Skuld-Chan]

I've never worked at a place in the US doing tech support or customer service where we couldn't make simple exception (not even needing manager approval). Turn the guys phone on for a day and put a note in there that officer so and so from the police department needed help finding him because he was suicidal - no-one should get fired for that.

That's actually the big problem with handing off all our support and customer service to India - having trained them, working with them etc (and even training my replacement) - if its not on the flow chart card they have no way of helping you.

Re:Not murder

[mdwh2]

It's also possible by ignoring the officers request the employee committed a crime. Obstruction of justice comes to mind, depraved indifference perhaps, though I am sure there are others.

Not obeying an officer's request, when they don't have a warrant or otherwise legal right to that information, should be a crime? I hope not.

We can debate whether it was a good thing or not in this particular case all we like, but I would be very worried of the precedent of making it illegal to not do as a policemen says. Suddenly everyone who tries to refuse access to the police would be breaking the law, even if the police had no authority to get that information!

Re:Not murder

[mdwh2]

You have a legal duty to refuse an illegal request.

Wait - without a warrant, which is the illegal request?

(Whether it might have ethically been a good thing to comply or not is beside the point, if we're talking about the legality of requests.)

Re:Not murder

[Jane Q. Public]

I agree. On the other hand, what was stopping them from taking a $20 payment from someone else? Do they have a policy against that for some unknown reason? I can't pay your bill?

I bet that at some point during those 11 hours, somebody offered to pay the $20. Why didn't they take it?

Re:Not murder

[sjames]

Forced operation as a non-profit for the duration of the sentence?

The major problem I have is as little as I trust large companies, I trust the government to not abuse such a power even less.

If government is trusted to hand out the actual death penalty to living human beings defended by draftee lawyers, why not to large corporations that are surely better represented?

Re:Not murder

[_KiTA_]

But manslaughter.

Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.

Rescind their business licences and enjoin the upper management from forming or working in another corporation for X years, where X is the years a normal person would be in jail.

Or better yet, rescind corporate personhood, it was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.

Re:Not murder

[SanityInAnarchy]

Read it again:

during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill

The $20 wasn't the issue. The fucking paperwork was the issue.

Re:Not murder

[Xaoswolf]

Exactly, what they should do is just give out the information to anybody claiming to be a cop, regardless of whether or they have a warrant...

Re:Not murder

[JWSmythe]

    I agree totally. Verizon screwed up, but Sprint will kill you with billing.

    I was a Sprint customer once. I was a happy customer for several years. Then they had an error. I was charged $300 over for "roaming". During that period, I never left the city limits where I live. I drove about 10 miles to work and back, with excursions to the grocery store, 1/2 mile from my house. It was a boring period, but I was busy with work. In my haste to pay the bills that month, I just wrote out all the checks and sent them off, and overlooked the overcharge. The next month I was charged $300 again for "roaming". I called. I disputed. They wouldn't listen. They claimed that during the month, I roamed for X hours in another city, about 100 miles away. I paid the amount I owed, without the overage. Now the 3rd bill came in, again with a $300 overage. I pitched a huge fit. I called many many times, and tried to get the charges removed. They wouldn't do it. Over the course of about a week my phone was disconnected because I refused to pay the overages. I continued to call to get it corrected. The insisted I was in the city 100 miles away. Finally, I was told by a slightly more friendly CSR that tomorrow the bill was being sent to collections. I had made a huge effort to make my credit perfect, I didn't want to have any new or bad marks on it. I told them to cancel the account. I had to pay all the "roaming" charges plus an early disconnect fee. Like I said, I had been a customer for years with no changes to my plan, but they considered it an "early disconnect" for unexplained reasons. So, I spent a lot of money to keep it from showing up on my credit history as a negative mark.

    A coworker knew a sales rep at Nextel. Most of the people in the company had Nextel phones, and at the time you had to be in the same group to use the 2-way feature (which sucked). I was happy with the bill and the service. Over the next few years, I had a total of 5 lines, for myself, my girlfriend, her daughter, and two friends. The friends couldn't get their own phone service without a huge deposit, so they paid me, and we all were happy. This lasted for several years.

    When the Sprint/Nextel merger was announced, I talked to a Nextel CSR who assured me that the bad billing practices by Sprint wouldn't start be reflected at Nextel, as they were to maintain their own separate companies despite the merger. A few months after the merger, my first $300 over charge showed up. I called, I disputed, the refused to fix it. During that billing period, I had moved, and there simply was no Nextel service in the area. I left the phone plugged in on my desk for about a week, and never saw service. I then unplugged it and let it die. I got another bill with $300 in roaming charges. I explained the situation. The refused to fix it. The final bill came in, and I told them, "The phone is dead. Sitting on my desk. The battery has been dead for weeks. It hasn't been used. I refuse to pay this." They didn't show any minutes used, but they still showed the roaming. At this point, I wasn't entertained. I went and bought a Verizon Wireless phone, knowing this wouldn't be resolved. They sent it to collections. I was able to negotiate for a reduced bill, but it shows as a bad spot on my credit.

    No, unless you have lots of money to give to a corporation who doesn't care for anything but overcharging, don't go with Sprint/Nextel. You'll be ok for the first few months. Then they'll rape you, and keep raping you. Even if your phone is turned off and useless.

    I was very happy with Verizon. They may have screwed up this incident, but in general they're ok. I don't like that they get you for "extras" that should be free, like unlocking the GPS ability in GPS enabled phones, but if you just use the phone as a phone, they're ok. I don't my own Verizon phone right now, because of the economy, or more importantly my lack of money, but when things get better, it's very likely I'll go back to them. My work phone is through Verizon, and I'm happy with the service itself. If they had billing irregularities like Sprint/Nextel, we wouldn't have them right now.

Re:Not murder

[Bob_Who]

I went from Verizon to Sprint. Now I hate them both and will never do business with them again. Like AT&T, Comcast, and the rest of the monopolies I have to deal with because extortion is their marketing strategy. So now I have NO CELL PHONE at all.

  I sure showed them!!

Now I feel like I'm Amish and should ride a horse and buggy to my next job interview....jeez, sorry...I only have one phone #, and its always ringing in the same place, all alone in a room without me. Like a Cave Man.

The good news is I don't have to screen my messages anymore, I don't have to pay for minutes that you already paid for five times, and my sperm count is rising.... the brain tumor has gone away.... and I can drive a car without crashing.

Can you hear me now? Nope. I'm all alone. And Sprint and Verizon and Metro and AT&T can just KMA and sell someone else their overpriced electrons and imaginary minutes.... But not me!!.... Not in my cave!!.... Not in the previous century, not at that price... I'd rather talk to people I can see. I may be a dinosaur, but I wasn't born.... recently!.

Just say no to cellular phone companies.

Re:Not murder

[mcvos]

Excuse me, but why are you paying money you don't owe, when they're the ones committing fraud? Isn't there some agency in your country that investigates and fights this sort of fraud? Aren't there any media willing to give lots of attention to companies screwing over honest customers for hundreds of dollars?

You should have nailed them to a cross, publicly shamed them and sued them for everything they're worth. Instead you're rewarding them for their crime.

Seriously, hundreds of dollars? I'd make an issue out of this for tens of dollars. Why pay through the nose to reward someone who criminally screws you over?

Bully for the cops!

[furry_marmot]

'I was more concerned for the person's life,' Sheriff Dale Williams said.

Bully for the cops, for a change! The guys who are supposed to protect and serve, who get such a bad rap in recent years, were trying to figure out how to pay a bill for a guy who was trying to off himself. Goddamit but that makes me feel good.

How do you punish a corporation?

[Tokerat]

Fines. Very large fines. Verizon sounds here like they would have complied with the request had the bill been paid. Hell, if I was a Verizon tech and I knew the request was legitimate, I'd have paid the damn $20 to get the system to activate the phone, if that's what it took.

Verizon should have to forfeit to the government all profit their shareholders would have received in dividends or share increases for 3 months. We'll see if they ever pull this shit again. Someone's fucking life was at stake! Who cares if the guy was crazy, or an asshole, of owed them money - dead men can't pay bills! Help your customer survive to outlive that service contract, if for no better reason such as, you know, saving someone's life! Fucking idiots.

I don't understand this unwritten law that telcos must all act like they have some kind of mental handicap.

Re:How do you punish a corporation?

[SkyDude]

Nowhere in TFA does it indicate there is any law, rule or regulation requiring Verizon or any cell carrier to activate a delinquent account. Can there be an agreement that this may be a unique situation that has possibly not occurred before?

What about the customer service rep - is s/he really heartless or just following company rules to prevent losing his/her job? How many times have we heard stories of 911 operators ignoring calls for help? Being unthinking is not limited to employees of major businesses.

The last thing I'm going to do is defend a giant corporation, but before the nuclear bombers are called in for an air strike, let's all take a breath. I think the situation is just so unique, there is no procedure for the police to reach the right person to override problems like this. If this were a landline, there are certainly contact people who can be reached to assist with a police investigation.

Cell phone technology is still new, and the capabilities are still being learned. The cell carriers, who many believe should be regulated, must make an effort to prevent situations like this from happening. If events like this happen on a regular basis, the carriers will find themselves heavily regulated, and that will serve no one well. As more and more people eschew landlines in favor of cellular service, carriers need to be proactive in making sure they are ready to help and prevent corporate policies from benefiting the communities they serve.

Re:How do you punish a corporation?

[twidarkling]

I'm going to try very hard not to flame you here, because you're trying to be the voice of reason.

But you're talking bullshit. It doesn't matter if it's never happened before. There's a first time for everything. They could have set a precedent. As for "not being able to." That's what the managers are there for. There is no way on this planet that there wasn't someone higher up the chain to talk to for 11 hours. And those managers routinely waive overages on minutes, or reconnect fees, or shipping charges on new handsets, and give out hundreds in freebies every day to keep customers "happy." If the manager couldn't pull his head out of his ass to waive $20 to try and help save a life, the company doesn't deserve its customer-base. They wouldn't even have needed to waive it. Just send a temporary reconnect.

Re:How do you punish a corporation?

[jhfry]

think the situation is just so unique, there is no procedure for the police to reach the right person to override problems like this. If this were a landline, there are certainly contact people who can be reached to assist with a police investigation.

Exactly the problem, they were dealing with someone who isn't empowered to help.

What all major carriers need to do is create an "emergency services" department that is empowered by executive management to make decisions that run contrary to company policy when it makes sense to do so. Then they give that number to all call center staff who will forward calls like this immediately when they realize that they cannot help.

Re:How do you punish a corporation?

[BriggsBU]

Allow me to preface my comments here by saying I've worked for Verizon Wireless customer service.

Now that that's out of the way, Verizon Wireless DOES have policies outlined in their "Methods and Procedures" (documents telling agents what to do in X situation) for this circumstance. In fact, when an agent receives a call from someone stating they are a police officer that agent is required to immediately transfer the call (cold transfer, IE: agent transfers and doesn't introduce the officer to the other line) to a special department that is under VZW's legal department (same speed dial number). I've actually had a call similar to this. I don't know if the account was suspended for non-payment, but I received a call from a police officer needing to locate an individual that had been reported missing.

I warm transferred the call (I was honestly nervous as hell because I knew someone's life could be in danger). Instead of just transferring the call, I stayed on the line until I got the agent from that department on the line.

According to the M&Ps, those agents are supposed to do ANYTHING to assist the police in locating a missing person. If that means reconnecting the line, they are supposed to do that.

What this sounds like is that the agent who received the call didn't know that they were supposed to transfer the call to that specialty team and instead tried to handle it themselves. That agent will probably be out of a job very shortly.

So no, this wasn't something that happened because of a corporate policy, this is something that happened because the agent who received the call didn't know what to do and didn't properly follow the corporate policy.

Re:Frankly I'm siding with Verizon. Good for Veriz

[The Breeze]

You're kidding, right?

a. Verizon didn't decide not to help the police due to some great respect for civil liberties.
They wanted money. Period. They made it clear, apparently, that as soon as the cops coughed up the $$$, they would get the info. Why are you applauding Verizon?

b. Police have broad powers when a life is threatened. Very broad. They need a search warrant to go into my house. However, if they hear a scream and a gunshot, they don't need anything other than the soles of their feet as they cheerfully kick in my door and swarm in. They are safeguards against abuse of this power. Although it happens, judges frown when officers are caught abusing it and tend to toss any illegally gathered evidence out the window. Several companies have a policy of following emergency requests with paperwork stating what was done and why. It's highly likely that if the cops were making stuff up in an excuse to scam information out of Verizon it would have come back to bite them.

No, sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. Verizon just sucks.

Re:Terms of service

[MtHuurne]

In the EU, you have to be able to call the emergency number 112 (equivalent of 911 in the USA) even if you have no calling credit. I think that also means the phone is still connecting to cell towers and therefore traceable.

Re:Terms of service

[Shikaku]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1#Inactive_telephones

Incorrect. 911 services in the USA must always work from any phone. Even disconnected unpayed cell phones.

Take away their spectrum

[Entropius]

Right now many of these companies have been granted a public monopoly on RF spectrum. The public had better be getting something in return for this; as soon as we're not, as soon as it's no longer in the public interest to grant exclusive license to broadcast on a given frequency to Verizon, that license ought to go away.

Re:Take away their spectrum

[Tisha_AH]

They are regulated by the FCC and clearly their lack of cooperation in finding this guy was not in the public interest. The fine print in the Code of Federal regulations does require licensees to cooperate in a legitimate emergency.

It sounds like their customer service people were more concerned about the little red box on a computer screen than in helping the sheriff. The article does not go into enough detail on if an escalation procedure was requested for or offered. No matter what time of the day it is, there is always someone available with enough authority to turn the service on temporarily. It is not as if the sheriff was asking for a service restoration so the guy could make a five hour cell call to Bangladesh.

Verizon should be burned for how they handled this. Maybe someone needs to make a stink with their elected officials or to file a formal complaint with the FCC.

Punishing an employee for obeying corporate policy

[qbzzt]

Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.

No. The corporation's status as a legal person protects share holders. It does not protect employees of the corporation. If I charter the "Mafia Collection Agency" corporation and hire assassins, they can still be punished for murder.

In this particular case, an employee that receives the request from law enforcement has three possible actions:

1. Help, turn the phone on.
2. Ignore or delay the request.
3. Escalate to a supervisor.

#1 may or may not be possible to a customer support representative. #3 is an acceptable action.

The highest level that got a documented request and ignored it should be criminally liable. After a few mid level managers go to jail, nobody would be willing to ignore this type of request. Managers would make sure the CYA and send this up the chain until it got to somebody with common sense.

Large, bureaucratic structures at work

[Opportunist]

Here's a classic example of strict and rigid rules laid down without any sensible leeway, and how it backfires. A lot of companies actually have a "bible" with the correct procedure for every standard situation. ISO 9001 and other similar standards actually support this behaviour.

I can well imagine how this happened. First, there is some flowchart that dictates how and when who may turn what phone on and off under what circumstances. My guess is that some relevant part reads something like "do not turn phone on unless bill is paid". Furthermore the "executing" levels of the company (i.e. the grunts doing the work who are disallowed to think for themselves) most likely got directives to stick to the rules by the letter or face consequences (i.e. start sending out resumes, you have 2 weeks).

I pity only the poor guy who actually had to decline the request. Because he had the choice between shooting himself and finding a beam strong enough to handle his weight plus rope. If he activated the phone, he would have broken the all sacred and holy document telling him how to do his job and be fired. Now, he didn't and sure enough he'll be made the scapegoat for the blunder of a manager who created the rules without thinking of emergencies like this.

Re:Terms of service

[Dgawld]

i guess if you acquired your information from a show on HBO it MUST be true.

11hours and they couldn't find a judge

[space_hippy]

Or Sheriff Dale Williams got in a huff because the damn civilians didn't lay down and do what they are told. I'm sure the 20 dollar story that the sheriff told is the absolute truth and nothing but the truth..... right.

11 hours and they couldn't find a judge to issue a warrant.

Personally I'm glad Verizon refused to track the phone without a warrant regardless of the expressed reason. I don't think we have all the information, and I doubt the parties involved will ever release the documented facts.