This Won’t Be a Shock to some of you, but Verizon Wireless is absolutely obliviotic. Let me count the ways! And reveal something shocking.
Today I got a security alert from Verizon: my account email had been changed. That’s of course quite concerning! Is someone trying to take over my account and charge, say, a cell phone to my account? It’s a concern even though I closed that account last year when I ported my phone number away from VZW to a different carrier — they had my credit card info stored there.
Here’s Obliviocy point #1: “If you didn’t request this change, please call us immediately at 800-922-0204 or use the link below to contact us.” Seems totally normal, right? It does if you live in the U.S. and are currently in the U.S. Outside the U.S., you can’t call American toll-free numbers. Oops. It’s obliviocy to assume your customers are always in the U.S. all the time.
VZW “knows” I don’t have service with them anymore, and the only other way to contact them is via that button …and to “Contact Them” you first have to log in to your account. My old account credentials, saved in my password manager, no longer work. Which makes this Obliviocy point #2.
Ah! There’s a Chat function! Obliviocy point #3: their chatbot refused to connect me to a human without my logging into my account first. Round and round I went with no way to break out of the circle (other than closing the browser tab, which I did).
Now, I’m a pretty good researcher, but it still took some digging to find a non-toll-free number to call (put it in your phone if you use VZW and ever intend to travel outside the country: (908) 559-4899). I called and, after waiting 15 minutes with grating “Hold” music (“Hold” music is always awful …why?!), got a nice guy.
#4 I’ll simply call an eye-roller: he wanted to know my security PIN. Well, lessee… I have an old PIN and a new PIN. It’s an old account, so old PIN? Nope.
I tried the new PIN; right, he said, but apparently since it took two tries I had to give a second “secret” to ensure I’m the real guy. How about my email address? Well, that’s what I’m calling about. YOU think it’s X — an address that I never give out. It’s on gmail, and is my actual address there without a period in it. (Mine does have a period in it, and I never give it out without the period.)
Now, most people don’t know that with a gmail address, you can insert all the periods you want in the area to the left of the @ — example@, e.xample@, and e…x……….a…m…………………..p.l………e@ are all the same to gmail, including if your “real” address has one or more periods in it and someone leaves them out.
But, the guy said, while the “new” address was gmail, the old one isn’t. Maybe a work address? Ah! I told him my two @thisistrue.com addresses. Nope, not those, he said — “a .gov?” he asked, helpfully. Ah: indeed that sparked a memory that I did use my County email on my VZW account since that got me a discount. Bingo: he believes me now.
Obliviot point #5: if that’s the email on my account, then how did I get their security notification? How is it “secure” to send a message to say my address has changed when it’s sent to the NEW, perhaps a scammer’s, address?! My old County address is deleted, not forwarded.
Something begins to dawn on me, but doesn’t fully form at this point because I have to pay attention to what he’s telling me, and what I need from him right away.
His first order of business: he sees no activity on my account whatever (but then, how did my email address change?) My first order of business: I asked him to delete any and all payment info on my account — no bank links, no credit card info, nothing. Click – click – click – done, he said.
Enter the Bureaucracy
I told Nice Guy that I’ve now spent half an hour to address a “security issue” when the only victim possible is VZW, and that I almost wasn’t able to do that without spending 15 minutes before I called figuring out how to contact them — that here I am on the very-most-western-tip of Africa, and I can’t call American toll-free numbers from here. “Very cool!” he said of my location, and he did understand the problem. “Can you pass that up the line to give the security folks a clue?” I asked.
“I’ll note that in your account,” he said — apparently the only thing he knew how to do — but then Obliviocy point #6: he admitted it was unlikely anyone, let alone someone with any actual authority, might SEE that “note.” It’s such an eye-roller that the only way I know to get word out to someone at Verizon about their huge gaping security hole is to publish this story, knowing that someone reading this either works in Verizon’s executive offices, or knows someone who does and sends them the URL to this page. (In which case, let me know you read this so I can update the page, eh?)
Big cell companies charge top dollar as (they argue) they offer so much more “service” than the discount operators. But then they put as many roadblocks as possible between you, the person who pays, and them — “service” humans are expensive. Chatbots are relatively cheap, but they have to be programmed to deal with exceptions. When someone types “agent” again and again, and “security concern”, maybe pass the customer on to a human who can help?!
And the little cell company I use? It’s EASY to get a human on their chat system because they’re hungry and want more customers. (If you want to know who it is, I wrote about them on my Residential Cruising site. They resell service from VZW …and AT&T, and T-Mobile — you choose! — and yes, I can use my phone overseas, and at much lower pricing: less than $30/month. So you can still get the Verizon network if you want, with better pricing and better customer service. You’re welcome!)
Obliviocy Point #7
So as I hung up with the guy from VZW, I noticed movement in my gmail window as another message came in. And then another, and another. Wait’ll you see what clicked for me, when that dawning realization fully landed.
The next email: “Thank you for choosing Verizon for your recent purchase!” My eyebrow goes up. Sure enough, they bought a cell phone! So much for “absolutely no activity” on my account! Well, sort of.
Second email: “What To Do Next: Verizon Home Internet”. My eyes roll. OK, so there wasn’t any activity on “my” account with Verizon Wireless, but with another Verizon subsidiary! And their obliviotic left hand has no idea what their occult right hand is doing, even though their account system is tied together enough to send me an email from VerizonWireless.com to alert me.
What I thankfully don’t see: any charges to the credit card that was on my Verizon account.
That’s when the thing that was dawning in my mind hit home — the thing that I couldn’t pay attention to since I was on the phone with VZW: someone else gave VZW that address. MY gmail address, but without a period.
And who could possibly do that?
A few years ago I discovered there’s another Randy Cassingham, and in the most ironic of places: Florida. That discovery came thanks to him giving out my email address as his, which means only one thing — that if there has to be another Randy Cassingham in this world, he’s naturally going to be a Florida Man through and through, in that he doesn’t know his own &#$%ing email address.
But how do I know he’s in Florida? Because the first time he did it, I got the receipts for what he bought, and it showed his home address in Holiday, Florida.
When that was happening several years ago, I emailed the vendor repeatedly to complain …and they ignored me. So I called them to explain that he is decidedly NOT at my email address, and because they are selling medical devices, sending me details of his purchases could be considered a HIPAA violation, and did they know how big the fines were for such a breach? They removed my address from his account immediately, and I never heard from them again.
But here we are again, since yes, Randy Cassingham is an obliviot. Very thankfully, that particular obliviot is not me. But he has now found a company that does obliviotic things, and once again gave them MY address, instead of his. Him and VZW: a match made in obliviot heaven.
Update
The emails from Verizon Wireless continue: “Redeem your ViX Premium 12 months on us offer within 60 days.” Whatever the hell that is. “Randy, 5G Home Internet was successfully installed.” Who cares? “Randy, set up your Disney Bundle.” I doubt tha’s the last one.
Yeah, it’s on the other Randy Cassingham’s account, so it comes down to Obliviotic Point #8: Verizon has no confirmation process whatever, and I continue to get some other customer’s email messages. I’ll give Verizon one last call to demand they stop emailing me. If not, every last message will be marked as spam in my Gmail, counting against them and making it harder for actual Verizon customers to get actual account notifications.
But hey: I didn’t start this war, they did.
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Well, I was just about to volunteer to drive the 35 mi up to Holiday and explain it to him and then I read the last couple paragraphs. Maybe not.
Ha! I feel your pain, Randy! I have exactly the same problem.
Not one, not two, not three, but at least *four* people with the same name have entered my email address (without the period) as theirs:
– one in South Africa
– one in Ireland
– one in the UK
– at least one, possibly two in the US.
It took a phone call to the Australian branch of American Express before the US version would stop sending me someone’s else’s credit card statements. Same sort of problems you had with Verizon: they wouldn’t let me contact them without logging in to an account.
I’ve managed to stop most of the other incorrect emails, but I still get them sporadically from a church group in the UK, and about half a dozen a day get spamfiled from real estate agents and political organisations in Arizona (who, naturally, ignore any and all requests to unsubscribe to their newsletter).
It could be intentional… Several years ago I started receiving emails from a hotel rewards program addressed to a “Juan A____”. The really funny thing is that they were being sent to the contact email for my company, which looks nothing like anyone’s name and very far from Juan’s — an address like “tireshop@mycompanyname.com”. I don’t know anyone with a name remotely close to Juan A.’s, and in fact I know Juan has never availed himself of the program since I get his account summary, still at zero points lol. If it’s a prank or a con it’s a long one, but in the meantime those emails provide a tiny bit of entertainment.
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I doubt it’s intentional: I’ve seen the receipts that O’Randy has paid; he’s real. -rc
They don’t teach them how to think for themselves.
My husband once worked for a company that had 2 people with the same name (common last name, non-standard spelling on the first) on the same job, and their payroll folks got their paychecks crossed. Even when he gave the woman on the phone his employee number, she didn’t want to believe him. “There aren’t enough numerals in that number.” “Lady, I’ve been in the company’s system since before you were born. Just look it up.” She finally did. Whenever he signs with them, he now checks that there isn’t another guy with the same name just in case.
I used to work in tech support. As soon as I got to “note on file” I rolled my eyes so hard I flipped over and landed on my back.
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Super helpful, ain’t it? -rc
My gmail address is my first initial and last name, and while my last name is uncommon, I do get other people’s e-mail too often. I’ve “met” several distant cousins that way. The last one I found because a service sent me a receipt, complete with home address and phone number, for a service he was paying for.
Gotta keep life interesting, right? Worst I’ve had was when we received a bill from my cell phone company several years ago showing a balance owed of MUCH more than expected. This was several years ago, I think I was still with T-Mobile at the time. Someone walked into one of their stores several hundred miles away in eastern Kentucky and bought five of the latest and greatest iPhones under my name. It took a bit but thankfully all that was cleared up and I understand they bricked all those phones remotely.
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Ohhhh… it cost them a lot of money due to their sloppiness? Good! Maybe they’ll work on cleaning up their systems. -rc
Allow me to tell a pandemic story. When the vaccine finally came out, I tried to book an appointment at a CVS near me (in Richmond, VA — hold that thought). They cancelled it. I rebooked. They cancelled again.
I went to the CVS and was (regrettably and extremely) rude to the pharmacist asking why I kept getting cancelled. They said, “you already got the shot in Birmingham, Alabama”. Different person, same name, same birthdate. CVS decided that (instead of asking me anything) we were the same person and didn’t need the vaccine. The solution? Set up a CVS account with my info in it so I could identify myself. It worked (and the vaccination drew a good deal of blood, which I considered the universe’s response to my rudeness to the pharmacist). Hasn’t been a problem since.
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I know your surname and it’s not THAT common, even if Robert is. Imagine the problems all the Robert Smiths have. -rc
I’ve had the misfortune of losing my identity to other countries — thanks federal government employer, OPM. I’ve also (about 30 years ago, before it had a name…) had my identity stolen when I moved out of California to another state. Somehow, someone got enough verification documents to get their picture on my CA ID number. Luckily, DMV caught on before I did. They cleared up credit accounts opened in my name for me too. Then they told me what had happened — after the fact. I got to see the other woman’s picture, but never got any other information — not even a name to go with it. I never even filed a police report at the time — it was taken care of prior to anyone telling me. (Waxing quixotic about the “good ole’ days” and I’m not even 50 y/o.)
I had to abandon my phone number last year after I spent a week trying to transfer it. I lost the phone on a roller coaster. Without it, they were all ten kinds of clueless. I never got the phone back either (while it was picked up and moved, it never made it to lost and found. I wiped it, but I wanted the SIM card with my number).
I’m convinced cell phone support people are lost when someone goes off script.
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Maddening! Reactivating an account on a new phone should be a cinch. After all, they WANT you to do that every two years! -rc
I know the feeling about people that have the same name…first I have a cousin with the same name and we use to live next door to one another. Oh and we had bank accounts at the same bank. I’m glad I knew a few tellers there and the president. Oh and we both married girls with the same name that lived next to each other. I finally did a little research and found out that there were 7 of us with the same name within 25 miles of each other…I met 2 daughters of one of them who had not seen their father in 10 years. Oh and last (time to stop) one was wanted by the IRS. I had several friends that worked for the IRS in New Orleans…they warned me and set the record straight. I’ll stop here… because there is more…lol.
I had a somewhat similar experience with Verizon Wireless in 2010 that lasted for about a year. They called me incessantly about a bill that wasn’t mine, but couldn’t talk to me about the bill because I didn’t have the account information. I won’t use any carrier that even rides on their lines to this day. I see they’ve made no improvements, and I’m sure they never will.
I worked for a small police department just outside of Philadelphia and handled all the emails. There are only three towns in the world with the same name as ours, us, one in England and the third in Australia. We consistently got emails for the English PD. I would forward them and let the sender know they had reached the wrong department. The funniest actually involved snail mail. We received a return receipt from the Australia postal service. We also received a block party application for the English department. When I notified the sender (after scanning and emailing it to the correct country) they wrote back to say it served them right for blindly accepting the first Google search result.
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And they were right! -rc
Not saying this is what happened. But of a similar vein when companies were starting to collect email addresses of those that did business with them, and some utilities were forcing customers to provide email addresses, my dad ran into a problem. He never in his just over 70 years of life had an email address. I created one to get the local phone company to leave him alone. HisFirstName at myvanitydomain.tld (Not looking to join any lists today, thank you.) This allowed him to get a discount on a phone service bundle with internet services. (Guess who still lived at home and was USING and paying for said services?)
Anyway, fast forward to 20 years later and he is having problems in one of their subsidiaries buying some equipment. They want an email. He explains over and over that he does NOT have one. Finally the CS rep says “Oh here it is.” He had searched my dad’s very unique name (In my 50+ years never met anyone but my dad with that name and spelling.) and found the email address I had given them to get the discount 20 years before. They put that on it and so he was shocked when I called him later and asked him, “Did you buy XXX at ABC Telco today?” “Yes, how do you know that?” “They emailed me your invoice and stuff.” Since some of it was stuff he needed, I printed it out put it in an envelope and snail mailed it to him.
So I wonder if perhaps Florida Randy is a bit older or just analog and never having had an email address, some enterprising CS rep went “above and beyond” and found your email address from the database and boom.
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Entirely plausible. Based on the medical invoices I deleted after seeing what they were, I’d guess that the Florida RC is significantly older than I am. -rc
My brother here in Canada started getting emails for someone with the same name for their Scottish Power account. After finding someone with that name in Scotland who was not the same person, he tried calling SP’s support to get it corrected. They also could do nothing. He was able to log into the account by resetting the password, since the link came to his email address and he could tell support the address for the service and everything, but there did not appear to be anything they could do.
Eventually he looked up the VP of SP and changed his account email to that. Never got another email.
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Oooh… I like it! -rc
I received email for someone in New Zealand from his lawyer. His name is similar to my email address. I replied to his lawyer, informing him about the mistake, but still got a few more emails from them. I tried one more time, after that I marked everything as spam.
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Sounds like malpractice. -rc
My gmail is jim.something [@] gmail, so I have run into the obliviot thing from two CONTINENTS, North America, and the UK, so I know your pain. You are the first person that have heard having the same issue with a Gmail account.
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I have a friend who was a very early employee at AOL, and his email was thus [firstname] @ AOL. He got hundreds of misrouted emails because so many obliviots thought that was their address. -rc
Similar issue with snailmail databases. My husband’s father died in 1989 and never lived at (or received mail at) our address. But about a dozen times a year, we get junk mail addressed to him at our address. I’ve tried to track down the source of the source of the source, but have been unsuccessful in finding the nexus to get it deleted.
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My first wife and I divorced when I was still in California. I moved to Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. In 2003 I moved to the other side of the mountains, a 6ish-hour drive from Boulder, but still in Colorado. And I STILL occasionally got mail in my ex-wife’s name, even though she legally changed her name back to her maiden name upon divorce. Astounding. -rc
Reading this I thought I was deep into one of Cory Doctorow’s novels! So sorry you had to go through this, but it sure is instructive!
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Glad you found it useful. -rc
I feel your pain.
I have mike.(lastname) @ gmail.com
So far, other people with the same name trying to use my email without the period:
3 in the UK
4 in Australia
5 in the US
I’ve received copies of a mortgage application in LA, asked to supply cookies to a fifth grade class in MI, a vet appointment for my dog in Perth, and an invoice for an orchestra member’s performance in the UK.
Most annoying is the guy in AZ who just donated to the Republicans; I’m an Independent candidates. I’m now bombarded with fundraising requests for Republican candidates all over the country.
I feel your pain!
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Ugh, on the political mails. Horrible. And YOUR surname isn’t all that common either, though a bit more popular than mine. I’m starting to feel lucky…. -rc
Both my first name and family name are common in French, and I was lucky to the first one to use them early on to get a gmail address.
As a result I regularly get emails for other people in France, Belgium and Canada. Sometimes I answer that they have the wrong address, other times, I just flag them as spam.