Verizon s*cks
The old American phone-company monopoly under a new name. Switched to a pre-paid phone two months ago to save money and raised hell twice at the store where I tried to do it, after the company charged me again this month. What strikes me is everything about their approach is designed to wear you down (so of course they hand out fewer refunds), from making you wait, including the foot-dragging, to the condescending veneer of politeness to even the Muzak. The second time, after about two hours of their games and my yelling in a couple of faces (one belonging to someone who could have flattened me), I managed to get a call-centre person to cough up the promise of a refund with a delivery date and tracking number. Now if the fake-nice staff really wanted to help, they would have placed the call immediately, the first time. (One of their weapons to wear you down: getting you stuck in the maze of their call menus.) Some things today are better: once this pre-paid is up I’ll switch to T-Mobile and good riddance. (Phones used to be a natural monopoly because of the wires they used to need. Hooray for the market.)

And:

In December 2010 Verizon continued moderating its network by removing access to some IRC servers related to Wikileaks “Operation Payback”.

Labels: Pennsylvania