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Verizon Sued After Tech Punches Customer In Face
suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"
Calling Verizon techs IT guys is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? That's like calling a Comcast tech a "network engineer."
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Can you !(*^&%$%^$#-ing hear me NOW????
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If not, the customer is going to have to wait another month for a new appointment.
That's better then most of the names we want to call them.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
He shouldn't need to show identification. All Verizon guys walk around with an entourage of hundreds of jumpsuited, smiling techs and assistants. You really can't miss them.
The fact the Verizon tech still has a job is interesting.
"In the months since this incident, his conduct has been blameless. As a result, we will not take further action," Young said.
The lesson here is if you work for Verizon you get to punch the customers as long as you only do it every now and then.
Verizon spokesman Rich Young said the company has "zero tolerance for any sort of unethical or illegal behavior" and noted Benjamin was not convicted of any crime. "In the months since this incident, his conduct has been blameless. As a result, we will not take further action," Young said.
Wow, they've gotten no complaints from the HUNDREDS of homes they've sent this guy into since "this incident." Makes you feel warm and trusting all over, doesn't it?
Apparently "zero tolerance" doesn't mean the same thing to Verizon that it does where I work. Do they at least give their service techs "___ Days without Attacking a Customer" buttons?
Having made your post, if you now shoot a Verizon technician it would probably be interpreted as premeditated.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
You mean like the customer consenting to getting beat up, right?
It's probably right there in the Verizon contract fine print.
I am not a crackpot.
I don't know who that other guy is, but here's a few... *wink*
*cracks nuckles*
First, the common mistakes:
You've got the classic case of fall/winter installations, where the tech doesn't take into account the fact that the dish they just installed is pointing through the branches of a (currently) leafless tree. Come spring, the customer calls in with no signal, and claims damage for holes in their wall, where they should not have been.
Technicians also seem to be fond of drilling holes into carpet, without cutting it first. This is especially fun with Berber, when the entire carpet is one long, braided strand. Yeah for whole-room carpet replacement!
Techs also don't always seem to check for a good line of sight when they should. I had many, many claims where a tech tried mounting the dish in 3, 4, 5, or more spots on a roof, without finding a good signal. That wouldn't be a problem, if they didn't drill holes each time...
Ok, some exceptional stories:
Technician finished a job, no problems, got in the van to leave, and backed through the customers fence.
Technician, weighing ~285lbs, stood on top of customer's washing machine while running cable. Dented the lid badly enough that it wouldn't open.
Technician, doing an installation at an apartment complex, removed 5 DirecTV dishes from the roof. Apparently he didn't realize that Dish's new customer wasn't the only person living there...
Technician, when grounding the system he had just installed, soldered the wire directly to the hot water pipe leading to a shower. It took the customer a month to figure out why they were feeling mild electric shocks when showering.
(And, just to prove customers can be bad, too, this one actually turned out to be the customer's fault...) A customer called in, extremely irate. He claimed that the tech, while installing a box in the master bedroom, went through his wife's underwear drawer, and then urinated in the bedroom. Of course, a claim was opened, the tech almost instantly lost his job, and it seemed that was that.
Well, doing due diligence, the facts of the situation came out. It turns out that the customer hadn't moved necessary furniture away from the walls, as is requested. So the tech, needing access to a coax outlet behind a dresser, opened the top drawer, in order to use the inside of the lid as a handle to pull the furniture out. Right then, the customer came in, assumed the tech was after panties, and pushed the tech into the corner, holding him by the neck and yelling. The tech, terrified, peed his pants.
I really should have blogged these when I still had that job, but I was worried about getting fired.