IF THEY FIND THE GUY THEN HE CAN PAY HIS BILL.

Come on. Really?

Perhaps this can be part two of the Daily Show's "Be A F@cking Person" reports...

Cops should've just paid the $20, would've been cheaper...ha.

The state of customer service these days is truly sad. Does anyone even remember when customer service meant "doing what was necessary to make the customer happy"?

They can turn your phone on remotely?

That is very wrong. didn't Verizon do that a year or two ago with someone else? a teenager that had gone missing and they refused to turn on the Cell so the police could track her and find her? i want to say they found her a few days later dead, but that may be my dramatic imagination, but i know something bad happened, kidnapping or some such. what jerks.

The ethics here seem complicated. What responsibility do companies that just happen to have location information have to assist law enforcement in these cases? Should we even be going down this sort of road to begin with? I'm aware that the man's potential suicide makes it seem barbaric, but I'm much more comfortable in a more private (I guess?) world where police must rely on observable data instead of conscripting telecom corporations.

@Ron00: yes.

Wow, that is awful. I've always been a fan of Verizon. They generally seem to be the lesser of the evils as far as phone companies go. But dang. This is just terrible.

Verizon is an evil crap company.... but they have great cell coverage... sigh.......

@Ben Popken:

I think the more important question is "should they?" $20 notwithstanding.

Unless our cell phones are also destined to become some sort of national tracking mechanism for the police force and private telecom corporations must now act as essential law enforcement partners.

::::::::BREAKING NEWS HEADLINE::::::::

Cops arrive at Verizon headquarters on reports of a shooting. They are negotiating with Verizon to expedite their mail in phone rebates before agreeing to enter the building.

I wouldn't think a guy who has issues with medication and with suspended cell phone service would have his phone turned on and/or his battery charged. Nevertheless....

@Ben Popken: that's kind of a frightening idea. i had no idea they could do that. but i guess it's useful for this very purpose.

@bender123: I was thinking the exact same thing.

@jfielder23: The lesser? Intentional typo? :P

@Ron00: I think they mean connect the service, not actually power up the phone.

I think.

@R3PUBLIC0N: There are pictures of cats and cute things gracing a lot of stories here, so maybe just try and calm down a bit. Typos happen.

Methinks you need some Midol.

@Skankingmike: All Cell Phone companies are evil, but you are right, Verizon is more so than most.

@Ben Popken:

Depends on what the LEO was asking and to who. I'm thinking they were talking with customer care and trying to just un-suspend the phone.

Kinda torn on this one. On the one hand, this is really just the flip side of non-plan cell phones being able to dial 911. On the other hand, I can see the authorities abusing this as a means to track people (criminals, deadbeat parents, etc.) at the expense of the cell companies.

@R3PUBLIC0N: It depends. Were you this pedantic back then? And did you not read the Consumerist Coments Code?

@Skankingmike: Seriously...they have better cell coverage than AT&T, which I'm now on, but their customer service was terrible. I had to call at least three times to get anything done. The first time to make the request which was never carried out, the second time to confirm the original request and to fix the mistakes, and a third time to confirm that what was supposed to be done during the first call was fixed in the second call.

I've called AT&T twice with questions and have spent a total of 4 minutes on hold. Perhaps they can detect my number and recognize that I'm a new customer, and that's why.

@rpm773: Well obviously he's not in the most lucid or stable frame of mind.

@Daniel Parmelee:

This isn't really a "customer service" story, since the Sheriff isn't a customer.

Also, "customer service" means doing right by *all* of your customers, not simply the one in front of you. If you're doing something special for a customer at your business, you should think "What if I did this for *all* of my customers?" - if you give one person something for free, or give them a discount, and you don't give it to the next customer, you could be setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

REI has the concept of "customer service" down to a T. They provide the same (good) service to everyone equally, and ask those who abuse their service to leave, on the premise that allowing people to abuse the service just ruins it for everyone.

When I was reading the article, I was much more concerned for the citizens around this guy than I was for the guy himself...obviously he's a danger to himself, but with his violent tendencies of smashing windows and disappearing with a lot of medication which probably shouldn't be mixed, I was more worried for people he might encounter while out in the world than I was for him.

I have a question: do the cops have a special line to call when they need the cell phone companies to do stuff like this? If not, they should.

I just wonder if maybe the CSR thought that, based on previous notes that the guy was crazy and liked to make stuff up, maybe he was trying to get his phone turned on.

The reason why I ask this is that, when I was a CSR/tech at a major computer company, I got a call from a cop who wanted information about a serial number because it was reported stolen. Nothing I told him was, in my opinion, of any incriminating importance (nor was it a life-or-death situation), but you can bet your SA that I asked him a lot of questions (badge number, full name, contact number, etc.).

Would Verizon be in trouble in terms of impeding a police investigation?

::Face-palm::

@pecan 3.14159265: Hence the need to find him.

@newdeepdan: Thats what I thought.

But it'd be one thing if they withheld info, but they were asking to turn on his service. He didn't pay his bill, so per their contract they could shut the services. I don't know if refusing to offer a service when the bill isn't paid would be considered impeding. It may, but I can kinda see the grey area.

@RvLeshrac: It's called humanity. It's called being socially responsible. It's called, as someone else stated above, being a F@cking Person.

And, in fact, if I were lost, mentally unstable, I'd want Verizon to do the exact same thing for me, and anyone else out there that needed help in their darkest hour.

@Ben Popken: Wait. WHAT?!
So my phone is turned off. They can turn it on again? Visibly, or will it be stealthy?
Either way, how is that possible?

And, I know landlines can be activated on the sly so that each phone becomes (poor quality) area microphone. Can they activate cell phones to do the same thing (same as above: in a way that doesn't make everything light up on the phone)?

That illegal NSA spying thing suddenly looks a LOT worse than I previously knew...

@unobservant: That's a good question. I'd also think there would be special channels that law enforcement could use to have something like this done immediately. Wading through standard customer service seems a little inefficient, particularly if the CSR has to verify the he's actually speaking with law enforcement.

Also, I'm not defending Verizon, but the cop rattling off to the media about Verizon's behavior afterwards seems kind of pointless and pedantic. I'd think there'd be more efficient ways for the cop to make sure he didn't have this problem in the future.

@Matt Sherlock:
It costs the cell company NOTHING(!!!) to turn a phone on and triangulate someone's location.

And if they're unwilling to hunt for, say, a lost teenager or elderly person, WTF???

And I'd assume they would need a warrant to track a criminal in this manner- and anyone running from the law would be stupid to bring their cell phone.

@Matt Sherlock:

The police are normally billed for these activities anyways, so they aren't out any money.

The fact that they wouldn't allow the police to do emergency work just because of an overdue bill is ridiculous. Wait until this happens with those cars that stop running if you are late on your lease payments--are they going to refuse to start it if the police commandeer one?

There is such a thing as civic responsibility.

@ThinkerTDM: I'm sure the article was somewhat reduced to soundbytes, but there was never any mention about the safety of people who might encounter the man who was obviously unstable...the sheriff spoke only of the man himself. I'm working off the article, and have no doubt that the sheriff was concerned for other citizens as well.

At what point would this play into obstruction of justice? Or would the police have to have a court order ignored first?

@Matt Sherlock: Uhh. Err.
It's much more than criminals & deadbeats. Most of the major telecoms enabled the Federal government to illegally spy on millions of Americans, with no warrant, in direct violation of the FISA laws.

@UrIt: I believe it was the kid who was restricted from his xbox or something, so he ran away. Yes he ended up dead.

@R3PUBLIC0N: Perhaps you should get back to waiting under your bridge for unsuspecting travelers.

@unobservant:

While watching the First 48 one night they had a cop call into a cell provider, and they had part of the audio. It sounded to me that they called the normal customer service number, and the rep from their escalated the matter.

You do think they would have standard protocol for dealing with such matters though (both the police and the provider).

@RvLeshrac: I'm not quite sure what your point was. Hopefully you weren't arguing that Verizon should uniformly refuse to activate phones with outstanding balances even when:
a)The customers life is in potential danger.
AND
b)The POLICE are asking them to do so.

But regardless of that, while this may not TECHNICALLY be a customer service issue, it's definitely reflective of one of the major reasons that customer service is generally so horrible. Most companies force their CSRs to implement company policy mindlessly to the exclusion of reason and basic human decency. If the Verizon employee the police spoke to was able to display either of those virtues he would have assisted the police without delay and without concern over a mere 20 dollars.

@RvLeshrac:

if you give one person something for free, or give them a discount, and you don't give it to the next customer, you could be setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

OH COME ON, what hyperbolic bullshit. HOW many times do companies refund people money? A LOT. How many times do companies give discounts to some, but not everyone? A LOT. How many times do they offer free shit to people, but not to everyone? A LOT.

I just got my overdraft fee refunded from BofA (it was my fault, too, and I wasn't expecting them to refund it, but they did). Do they do that for everyone? NO.

So tell me, where are all these lawsuits?

@flamincheney: I don't know if it's obstruction of justice if the case being investigated isn't a crime. As far as I can determine from the article, the man they were seeking had not committed a crime.

@R3PUBLIC0N: Oh, no, typos! End.of.the.world!

@JGKojak:

It costs in time. And I'm not saying I disagree with the police asking for the help, but what if they actually came to the office and asked the Verizon Wireless folks to join in the search? Should they be required to do so? That being said, the fact that the guy owed money to Verizon Wireless should have made no difference and the VW employee was a jerk.

Finally if the police would need a warrant to track a criminal via the GPS in their phone, wouldn't they have needed something similar to find the victim in this case?

@rpm773: After dealing with so many types of customers in so many types of industries, I'm afraid that I would likely waste valuable minutes by pullng the old trick of saying, "Look. I'm going to call you back through the listed number for the Ohio police so I can verify your identity." They need to ask Horatio Caine for his Rolodex.

@flamincheney: I saw that one as well, but I couldn't remember if they had gone through customer service or not.

Verizon pulled the same crap a few years ago when an 18 year old girl was abducted, on camera, from a Target Parking lot. Verizon refused to provide triangulation information for 3 days. Kansas recently passed a law requiring better cooperation from wireless companies - legislation pushed by the girls family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kelsey_Smith#Search

I thought these companies were big on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)... I didn't know complying with the law qualified you for being a good CSR participant...