Verizon Denies DSL Because of Subscriber's Name 493
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."
Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Next time someone will claim that monopolies' power over the market does not negate the very mechanism that is supposed to implement the market, refer him to this.
Then punch him in the face.
Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on. Don't defend these losers. He asked for an email address based on his name, just like millions of other customers.
It's a perfectly reasonable request, which Verizon denied solely because some arbitrary filter detected a naughty word buried in the address, a word that would only be noticed by someone with a juvenile mindset. The filter is obviously intended to screen out truly nasty phrases, like "verizonisfullofshit@verizon.com", but like most such filters it is crude and inflexible, and unsuited for its purpose.
And to make things worse, no one at Verizon had the authority or inclination to override this zero tolerance policy for the substring "shit". The only choice they gave him, if he wanted DSL, was to select an email address that was not based on his name. Naturally he refused, as would anyone with an ounce of pride in his family name.
Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They were also giving the reason that he couldn't have an e-mail address with his name in it was because it was offensive. That's not a valid reason to decline an e-mail address based off a person's name and he was quite reasonably offended by that. It's unreasonable to ban an e-mail address based off the clients name merely because you find a few select letters in his name fit a banned word. I know that, you know that, he knew that and now Verizon realizes their mistake.
You can be cut and dry about what went on, but seriously, life shouldn't be that way. If we all looked at and dealt with each other on that level, I think it would be time for me to find another country to live in.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change. They wouldn't grant him the address he requested. All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine. I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.
Are you serious? Why in the hell should he have to -- IT'S HIS NAME. It's on his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his drivers license. It's probably in the phone book, and on every check he's ever written. And now he can't use his OWN LEGAL NAME that he has had since birth for his e-mail address because it "contains an expletive?" It's not even like he's some anarchistic goofball who somehow managed to legally change his surname to "Shit" in an attempt to be cute or radical -- it's his family name, borne by his ancestors, and it just happens to contain that four-letter sequence in the middle of the name. And, what, he can't use it because somewhere, somehow there might be some handful of insanely moralistic wackos who would be offended by it?
I'm sorry, but this is just about the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life. And, given what I've witnessed in my half century on this planet, that's really saying something.
Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
But "Shit" is not normally considered to be a rude word.
I can understand if the name was Cuntington but "shit" is an everyday word (So is "cunt" where I live) and part of someone's name.
I've never understood the whole profanity thing, why would someone want to be offended by a word, you would think people would have better things to do than create reasons to be offended.
What about these names? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Verizon also refuse email addresses to those who have such last names like: Takeshita, Fukuoka (common Japanese names), Dikshit (common Indian name). There must be more unfortunate names.
Sorry to say: typical American (Score:2, Insightful)
Nearly any dickhead can (without serious checks on mental health etc) have guns but the moment someone has a misunderstood name it becomes a management issue.
I know many US ISP's don't allow hosting your own (mail)server at home, what would Verizon have done in case the man registered iamaturd.com (still free!) and pointed libshitz@iamaturd.com to his own server on a Verizon line?
Well at least someone finally had the good taste to not levy a fine for Janet Jackson's titty incident and now the name of Libshitz can be used on Verizon, there is hope!
Oh, and in a couple of months please go out and vote!
Re:Obviously.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Meh, you are redundant by perhaps a few seconds. Too bad (although I wish Moderators would double-check time-stamps before downgrading a person's Karma).
Re:the name fits here (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing inherently liberal or socialist about objecting to monopoly power. Monopolies destroy the market mechanisms vital for capitalism to work.
Headline/summary/article mismatch (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointing out the obvious:
The headline and summary aren't really accurate to the linked article.
Has anyone considered the impact this sort of thing has on Slashdot's credibility?
Maybe I'm looking at it through rose colored glasses, but I used to like reading through all the summaries and linked articles on Slashdot. Now it seems like in the last 8-12 months, more and more headlines and their accompanying sumamries are deliberately misleading and inflammatory. I skim the RSS headlines and have found myself assuming that any headline that says "Microsft does X", "Comcast now doing Y", "Verizon did Z" etc. is probably off the mark and just nother boy crying wolf. It seems that I'm right about hald the time; which is about 45% more then I should be.
Most of these "inaccuracies" seem to pander to various anti-insert-company-here sentiments - ie., Verizon has been shown to have done a bunch of shady shit regarding spying or Comcast with it's throttling/filtering/P2P blocking or whatever, so now they do something stupid and it gets twisted into something much larger and more sinister.
Yes, Verizon is moronic for not allowing customer serivce people a little latitude or for having simplistic filtering, but nowhere did I read they denied DSL. They did deny an email address though. Verizon should also probably work on dealing with people-telling someone to misspell their name in order to avoid some stupid email address name filter misses the point. BUT, everything I read suggests that he would have been ok with an email address like DrHermanIL@XXX; not that he should he have to do that though.
If Slashdot's motto was something like "It's not news, it's Slashdot", I'd make a little one line post about how the headline and linked article disagree. But with a motto of "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", I'd expect accuracy and a little less hysteria and/or pandering.
Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I usually tend to use this angle when it actually applies. If he had already paid for service, they were being scum by denying him a legitimate email and violating THEIR contract. I have a feeling that being Jewish, this fellow would have been educated on the issues of contracts (the Torah seems to be quite specific that contracts are the way things are done, between humans and between them and their god(s), devils, etc). I'm fairly sure it wasn't just dragging them through the mud that did the trick. However, the Constitution has no provisions for "large corporations violating contracts into which they entered voluntarily wanting someone's money but failing in the providing of full service as paid for"... stuff like that. Laws and rules about that precede most national governments, and tend to be grandfathered in, since they work.
This is just your typical bureaucratic monkeys being bureaucratic monkeys, that usually get attracted to bureaucratic jobs (management, government, etc...) and doing exactly what and WHY they are hired. Being bureaucratic monkeys, with just enough firing neurons to be annoying bureaucratic monkeys, but not enough to actually be reasonable men... this is usually why you hear of bureaucratic monkeys, or monkeys obedient to bureaucrats tazering paralized kids 19 times or shooting old ladies full of juice even though they're wheelchair bound. Bureaucratic monkeys are examples of scumbags that would've been aborted (post natal if need be) by any self respecting parent, long before they got to breed more bureaucratic monkeys... until they bred and over bred to the situation we have today.
Again, the Constitution of the USA or for the USA (depending on which one you take an oath to when you get sworn in to your bureaucratic job) has nothing on this issue... this is purely a contract law issue, and that precedes the Constitution by several centuries at the least.
Also, his name containing an expletive can easily be explained as NON expletive, and can be interpreted as such by any lawyer or judge with enough functional brain matter. Why, you ask? Simple. Cultural difference. If a man who is a DOCTOR can carry that name and not change it, you can be fairly sure he has traded on it.
That being said i've seen some screwy names in the past, so while I want to believe this article is bogus, I am unsurprised if it is true. Bureaucratic monkeys make every part of the world miserable, where the locals allow them to infest. Voting has never been a cure. It wasn't when they did it in the name of the king, or the oligarch, or the tyrant (in the greek meaning of word) or the dictator or "the people's party" or any other reason for which bureaucratic monkeys perform their unquestioning duties. People to whom "duty" is a primary prerogative, should concern you, worry you, and scare you. These are the monkeys who shot kids in the back of the head for merely not complying with the new "party" or for their parents being rich (see Che and Cuba literature on this issue). Sure, here they're obeying a different "letter of the law", but its all the same. Monkey see, monkey do. We don't need "less abortions", we need a lot more. They should be looking for bureaucratic monkey genes, but who would be doing the legislating but other bureaucratic monkeys... the sense of survival is strong in the bureaucratic monkeys.
MUD: Thou canst not put this genie back into the bottle. The genie reads a scroll of rules and regulations. Thou art Screwed... royally, and without vaseline.
Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, monopolies are overall not good, but not everything bad they do is *caused* by them being a monopoly. That's just a stupid position to take.
Re:Sorry to say: typical American (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep the people focused on the trivial and they won't notice the important stuff.
It works so well we don't realize that it's being done a lot of the time. And it's not just the US - here in the UK it's just as bad if not worse.
'Swearwords' outdated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet again the answer lies with kdawson. I'm not trying to flame, but every point you've mentioned is valid and the vast majority of cases regarding mis-information, poor headlines, shoddily edited articles and the general "Anti-company" tendencies come from kdawson.
Lately I've been playing a game with myself. I'll read Slashdot articles and try and guess who "edited" them. Strangely, the only guesses I get right are the stories posted up by kdawson.
Re:the name fits here (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopolies destroy the market mechanisms vital for capitalism to work.
Unfortunately for many theories and schools of economics, it turns out that capitalism destroys the market mechanisms supposedly vital for capitalism to work.
The markets - and capitalism - go on working all right, but not along the lines of Adam Smith's fairy-tale "hidden hand". Oh no.
Free markets go either of two ways. Either they remain entirely free and unregulated, in which case they sooner or later evolve into "robber baron" markets dominated by players like Microsoft and IBM. Or else governments step in to regulate them, in a process that soon comes to resemble the Ptolemaic system of astronomy - adjustments to adjustments to adjustments, while the whole thing becomes steadily less stable and credible.
Our current system is a compromise between raw capitalism and socialism. You can argue that it has the strengths of both, or the weaknesses of both, or both. One aspect that has recently hit the headlines is the tendency to privatise profits and nationalise losses, thus giving rich speculators a free run at even greater wealth.
Well, if you were an influential politician, what kind of friends would you have - rich ones or poor ones?
Re:Monopoly (Score:0, Insightful)
WTF does this have ANYTHING to do with being a Monopoly issue?
All ISP's have profanity filters and this guys name got caught up in the middle of it. That is all! He was NOT denied DSL service as the lame title says. He refused DSL service because he didnt want to use an email addy without his surname.
I do agree that Vz should have a better method of working with people that have names that hit on the filter list, but to start making crap up that this is a monopoly issue is just a load of "Libshitz"!
It must be a slow morning if you got a +5 Insightful for this post.
Re:Obviously.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end it doesn't really matter. This person had to go through various levels of management to get his problem resolved. This indicates to me that this is not just a programming problem, but an inherent problem with upper management. People (Managers) need to be fired for this incompetence. It will likely never happen because incompetent (upper Management) is unlikely to fire incompetent lower Management.
Re:This has nothing to do with his name.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Any name but his own. That seems fair, right?
I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.
True. But when you "want" your own name, following the same standard template as 47 million other Verizon customers, it just makes Verizon look like callous monopoly-abusing bastards to say "No".
Don't defend BS like this - Let Verizon (and the rest) know that we won't forsake our own names for their convenience, period.
Re:the name fits here (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for many theories and schools of economics, it turns out that capitalism destroys the market mechanisms supposedly vital for capitalism to work
I took a class in high school called 'social justice', which was ran by a very liberal teacher who said that communism works -- but only on a small scale and only if nobody cheats.
It turns out he was right. But that goes for any theory of economics.
Capitalism, socialism, it doesn't matter what system you use. The fact is that turn out that none of the theories and schools of economics work the way that economists theorize them. In the end, there will always be those who will find out how to abuse the system and those people will abuse it.
In the end, the only way to make any system work is to punish the cheaters.
Re:Obviously.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone with a modicum of command in English grammar should know that "fucking" is a proper name, therefore it should be capitalised.
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
They had a crude obscenity filter because a monopoly doesn't need a better one. There is no economic incentive for them to spend the resources on things like that. They can't lose customers no matter how badly they treat them.
Re:Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, the filter being too strict was an honest mistake. What is less honest is the response he received from the company when he queried it. Suggesting he change his name to better comply with the whims of their computer is offensive, bordering on racist.
In anything but a monopoly he could vote with his wallet and let Verizon know what he really thinks.
Girl Scouts (Score:2, Insightful)
Either they remain entirely free and unregulated, in which case they sooner or later evolve into "robber baron" markets dominated by players like Microsoft and IBM.
See Vanderbilt, Fisk, Hariman, and other 19th century railroad tycoons. Taught Rockefeller everything he knew and they made MS and IBM look like Girl Scouts.
Oh, and thank you for pointing out how economists don't have a clue.
false (Score:5, Insightful)
All markets are regulated.
The free market does not exist and idealistically never has existed.
Somebody enforces and writes the rules by which the markets run; which INCLUDES fundamental things like ownership, law enforcement, a legal system...
Even the most free markets-- the black markets are defined by law (indirectly) and how those laws are enforced.
Re:'Swearwords' outdated (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you think about it, 'nigger' is actually highly offensive and using it is likely going to brand you as a terrible person (unless you are black, in which case you are just ignorant). It's probably one of a few words my potty mouth will never use, it bothers me to type it. Pretty much any racial slur falls in to that category. They're mean spirited words intended to cause hurt. Yet there was a time when they were everyday bad words.
Shit on the other hand is just a "bad" word. Why it's bad has been lost to time. At most using it is impolite and brands the speaker as such...but that's a designation most people can tolerate.
I think all it says is today we're more sensitive to heredity than to social status. Insulting someones background is the most crude thing you can do. Perhaps in the future words like fag/queer/dyke/heshe etc. will also become taboo for the same reason. For the moment they're impolite words, best not used at work, but pretty common.
Re:Monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
Clbuttic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the name fits here (Score:5, Insightful)
I agreed with your entire post, until this line at the end.
You are assuming a correlation that just isn't there.
To get a system to work, you want to reduce crime, and contrary to right wing beliefs, being hard on criminals doesn't deter people noticeably. Making easier available alternatives to crime works. Having meaningful rehabilitation of criminals works to prevent recidivism. But punishment doesn't really help -- it only causes criminals to go to greater lengths not to be caught.
Common sense is thoroughly misnamed. (Score:3, Insightful)
It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change. They wouldn't grant him the address he requested. All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine. I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.
1) He was already using his name in his email address for his dial-up connection. Keeping the same email username and merely switching domains is a good way to help your friends & family remember your email address. User-centered design. Look it up.
2) It's his fucking NAME, dipshit! All Verizon had to do was verify that's the name on his credit card, so they knew it really was his name. Unless the email username they want conflicts with formatting requirements or with another user already using it, yeah, you really ARE entitled to any email address you want when it's your name. You have the letter X (three times!) in your username; you're clearly talking about XXX porn, so we should refuse you the username you want. This is just as smart an idea as that.
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
"Monopoly" is defined in terms of a marketplace. If consumers don't have a practical alternative to a supplier, then that is a monopoly. The presence of impractical alternatives is irrelevant. It only Toyota were allowed to sell cars and small trucks, it would be a monopoly, no matter how many people bought Peterbilt rigs.
Another detail: the landline companies clearly do have a monopoly on the copper "last-mile" networks that all DSL providers use. In theory, these networks are equally available to all ISPs. But by an amazing coincidence, the dominant ISP in any given market is always the one that belongs to the local landline company. that's just not consistent with the idea that the DSL market is "open".
Re:the name fits here (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, but then it's not punishment that is doing something good, but separation.
Punishment's only purpose is slaking people's thirst for vengeance. A harsher punishment doesn't reduce the amount of crime -- that's a false belief. If anything, it causes criminals to take more desperate measures not to get caught. If prison is a horrible place, people will do more to stay out of it, up to and including arson or killing witnesses or police. But not including staying lawful. Getting caught is something that happens to others, not oneself.
Re:How to fix democracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd much rather have a gallows we could drag people to for breaking their campaign promises.
Re:Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
You did not read the article... And neither did the submitter nor the editor...
The argument was not over providing him with service. It was over his choice of the user-name:
See? There was no problem ordering — and getting the "DSL kit" delivered. It was, when he wanted to use something like "hlibshitz" for login, that the problem began — the computer auto-rejected his choice of login.
Not that it is a particularly smart rule either (especially leaving the tech-support unable to overwrite it), but neither his being a Vietnam vet nor Verizon's special monopoly status have anything to do with it.
I think, you owe that guy an apology and a couple of beers... Unless he already had you knocked-out in response, that is.
Check and triple-check your facts next time — especially if the subject is "big business" and the posting editor is kdawson.