Verizon Denies DSL Because of Subscriber's Name

mikek2 writes "When retired Philadelphia-area doctor and Vietnam veteran Dr. Herman I. Libshitz went to upgrade his dial-up connection to Verizon DSL, he was informed they wouldn't complete the order because his last name contained an expletive. Repeated calls to several levels of management at Verizon failed to resolve the problem, with several managers suggesting he change his last name. It all worked out in the end, after the Philadelphia Enquirer intervened."

Change of name

[Fred_A]

In the end he changed his name to "Harold I. Libshitz" and everything finally went through.

Wait, what?

[untaken_name]

So, let me see if I have this straight: Verizon wanted someone to change their last name in order to get DSL, and that person didn't do it??? What, are you going to get a cablemodem or something? Just change your name, already. This is internet connectivity we're talking about here. It's important. It isn't like you haven't been getting libshitz for yoru name all your life, anyway.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said, good sir, well said!

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

Yes you are, read the fucking constitution.

Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even get dial up and had to wait until my neighbors had wireless to steal it.

  -- John Fuckinson

What's in a name?

[unlametheweak]

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

- Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

Of course that quote would have serious humour ramifications with a name like "Libshitz". Shakespeare was however cognizant of the political ramification of mere words and, alas, names. My theory that bad and stupid people primarily get into management positions has once again proven to be correct.

Re:Obviously..

[unlametheweak]

Good thing he didn't live in Dildo, Newfoundland Dildo, Newfoundland [wikipedia.org]

Re:Obviously..

[MrNaz]

Good thing he didn't live here [wikipedia.org]

Re:Obviously..

[srjh]

Or Fucking [wikipedia.org], Austria.

Scunthorpe

[cliveholloway]

Coincidentally, nobody in the town of Scunthorpe has Verizon service either. Reps are apparently mystified...

Ahh memories...

[sleeponthemic]

I used to amuse myself by ordering free stuff from the internet using abusive names. It was great receiving hand written postal pickup notices for Peter Cuntbridge.. I could see the turmoil the employee had clearly suffered in writing that surname. The slight "squiggle" at the un to cloud the perception just in case ole Pete's name had been mistaken.

Jason Vomit has been receiving his victoria's secret catalogues for quite some time.

Mario Luigo Bowserpeach entered the readers digest sweepstakes. Believe it or not, he has in his possession a genuine cheque for 1 million dollars*

I guess they might want traceability in this particular instance but in general, from working in a mailing house and my exploits of immaturity I think it's pretty clear that businesses mostly have a "whatever" attitude to this sort of thing.

*This is not a real cheque.

Re:Wait, what?

[untaken_name]

Very true. However, it's funnier for Verizon to want him to change his last name, so I prefer to believe that version.

I had a company website blocked for the same thing

[Lord Byron II]

Back in the early days of the WWW, I was doing IT for a small business whose name was RTS Executive Services. Their phone number was 1-800-RTS-EXEC, so they wanted their website to match: www.rtsexec.com, but that lead to a "sex" in the middle of the domain name and I can't tell you the number of customers we had who couldn't access the website because the blocking software they installed on their computers to stop their kids from accessing porn had determined that our website must be porn too.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[rve]

My friend mister Koksukhar had no such problems

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change.

Next up: Verizon denies peering to China and Korea in response to the flood of "wang" derived email addresses.

Re:Obviously..

[bhima]

I don't live all that far from Fucking. It's a tiny, tiny village and they can not afford to replace the signs that get stolen... mostly by tourists from the UK.

So when you go to fucking, please just the pictures of the Fucking Signs and do not steal the fucking signs.

Really.

You Americans and your "morals"

[Cathoderoytube]

Here's a personal story about profanity and a content company... My user name for my cable account is an expletive describing my feelings about the cable company. What's interesting though, is that apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way about the company, since 'fuckyourogers' has been taken and I've had to add numbers on the end of it.
What's even MORE interesting though have been my attempts to get technical support on my account. But during my somewhat angry registration process I didn't hit any snags where the cable company thought my username was inappropriate.

Funny how life works...

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[jeremyp]

The filter is obviously intended to screen out truly nasty phrases, like "[e-mail]"

FFS stop posting my e-mail address on the Internet. Now I'm going to get spammed.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

This drama was brought to us by the very same people who brought the world Verizon math (http://www.verizonmath.com). Is Verizon trying their very best to humiliate themselves at every turn?

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[rolfwind]

Cultural habit, sorry:) Otherwise, I really don't give a shit.

nom nom nominative determinism

[huwgently]

What's in a name? [wikipedia.org] Ask Bobby Tables [xkcd.com]

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's not very welcoming, is it?

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Tony Hoyle]

I can only guess what the owners of Pen Island [penisland.net] especially if they need a therapist [therapistfinder.com]

Re:Change of name

[jamesh]

I remember it as a skit from a Monty Python or Not The Nine o'Clock News or something from that era. The joke is probably much older. It goes something like:

A man walks into the office of the department of name changes:
Man: I'd like to change my name please
Clerk: Okay, what is your name?
Man: Colin Tittybumface
Clerk: I see. And what would you like to change your name to?
Man: Roger Tittybumface

Re:Obviously..

[srjh]

Theft isn't as much of a problem any more, they've welded the Fucking signs to the posts.

Family Guy

[plutoXL]

"Thomas Jefferson." "Here." "Benjamin Franklin." "Here." "John Footpenis." "It's John Hancock now." "Why?" "None of your damn business, that's why!"

Re:Obviously..

[morgan_greywolf]

So, what you're saying is that Fucking tourists from the UK visit and then steal the Fucking signs. Since the Fucking village is so small, they can't afford to replace the Fucking signs.

And what you're asking is, then, for the Fucking tourists to keep their Fucking hands off the Fucking signs? Sounds Fucking good to me.

Also Experts-Exchange.com

[Airw0lf]

I was told that experts-exchange.com used to be expertsexchange.com. At the time I had a bit of a laugh and dismissed it as a good story. However, Wikipedia confirms it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experts_exchange#History [wikipedia.org]. So in all, I reckon that must be one of the more famous examples of an embarrassing domain name.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[jollyreaper]

People who have odd names (it seems especially prevalent in the Jewish community) are at a serious disadvantage in the culture that considers the name odd. This is the reason that the most famous Lipshitz ever changed his name to Ralph Lauren.

The second-most famous Lipshitz changed his name to Dirty Sanchez.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet I could register evil.is@verizon.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[jez9999]

And for some reason, the New York council's www.nystopchildporn.com website seems to be attracting a very different calibre of individual than they'd planned...

Hey, Fuk U Do Me!

[cbowland]

My favorite name is the Chicago Cubs player Kosuke Fukudome [wikipedia.org]. MLB won't let you put "cubs suck" on official merchandize, but you can get "Fuk u do me" (minus the spaces) with no problem. Plus, his number is 1, which could be interpreted as extending the one figure salute.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[swv3752]

I remember working tech support and getting a call for a Harold Bawlz. "Go ahead and call me Harry, everyone else does."

Re:Monopoly

[jimicus]

So how did that crude obscenity filter come into place when he spoke to people at Verizon... multiple times?

I once had the misfortune to be a customer of an ISP with such an attitude. They'd essentially installed an obscenity filter on all their staff and if you said anything which tripped the filter, they'd put the phone down on you.

What made this particularly galling was that the service they were selling was filtered internet access for the benefit of the sort of organisation that wants one - schools, mainly. So you ring them up to say "There's a problem with your filter - it lets me visit www.hotteensluts.com" and they've hung up on you before you can finish the sentence.

Re:Obviously..

[sukotto]

The less you get of something, the more obsessed you become. :-)

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Dirtside]

Let's just hope they don't work in the Italian energy industry [powergenitalia.com].

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a lot of merde to me.