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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."
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.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The cops should have just told Verizon they were the NSA. Verizon would have given them anything.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
For ten and a half hours, the officer was on hold.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
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!
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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.