Verizon Wireless' cellular phone service fully exploits barbaric fascist business practices in a free enterprise system based on democracy in the 21st century

Mt. Clemens, MI March 16, 2004--Michelle Vernier initially signed up for Verizon Wireless' cellular phone service in August of 1992. Since she is a film producer, she read over the entire contract and its terms and conditions with all the fine print with a fine-toothed comb. She was not about to enter into a legal and binding contract with a company that didn't provide the services she desired at the rate she was willing to pay, along with their customer service policies.She had just left what she perceived as a negative contract arrangement, Telephone Recorders Products, with Cingular Wireless and therefore was extra careful to not be in a similar position.



Her complaint with Cingular was that as a customer you cannot change your minutes plan either from more to less without being heavily penalized financially. Verizon Wireless was the only company which allotted her the freedom to change her plan's minutes by utilizing a prorating system, so if one month she used the 400 minute plan the next month she could utilize the 900 minute plan and it would be prorated. This is the feature about this Company that appealed to her and made her a customer.



She was cognizant of the differences she noticed between Cingular's and Verizon's billing statements. Cingular's listed all calls made and all calls received, as she believes is standard practice within the cellular phone industry. Verizon only listed the calls made by her. But for a very long time this did not affect her, because of the precedence of the prorating of the monthly plan, although it bothered her.It was not until the summer of 2003 that this issue of not having incoming call numbers listed on her statement became a problem.



At which time she phoned customer service to find out if she could gain access to those particular telephone transactions/incoming calls if she needed to in the future. She was told by Verizon's customer service representative that there would be no problem in obtaining the records and that they were stored for a few years. This answer was sufficient and she did not question why the incoming calls where not listed or press the issue further. She was merely pleased to be certain she could obtain the records if needed in the future.



This failure to not list incoming phone calls on her bill, which she'd never once had a late payment on, became a colossal problem on January 27th, 2004 at 6 PM EST. She'd received a paramount business call from a significant film production company employee at this time exactly. Somehow the information that she'd written down for their request from her Company became lost and she then had no way to re-contact that particular employee. She proceeded to contact Verizon Wireless' customer service personnel on three separate occasions at this number: 1-800-922-0204 and asked to speak with their supervisors.



Each supervisor parroted the same reply which was that she would need a subpoena in order to obtain these records. She explained exactly which billing statement the call was received on, the 1/9/04 โ€" 2/9/04 billing, Telephone Recorders Products, statement. She requested that they just touch a key on a keyboard and give her her own phone records which she's paying to receive and is entitled to as a customer. They all refused stating it was policy. Yet, ironically, the Company claims their whole marketing strategy is now based on primarily maintaining the customers they now have signed agreements with and not winning over new customers, which is considered merely secondary.



What a winning way to achieve their goals.She thoroughly re-read the user's guide booklet, the customer agreement pamphlet, along with the customer information overview that she was given when she signed the contract. No where does it state such policy in any of their written materials supplied with the signing of the agreement. Hence, a new customer would be oblivious to the way in which Verizon operates the dictatorship of telephone records that are rightfully the customers who are paying for them as part of their service.



She did come across an accessibility statement put out by Verizon, โ€œWe are committed to providing wireless products and services that are accessible to all people. We work with suppliers to encourage them to develop and offer solutions that will enable Verizon Wireless' products and services to be more accessible to allโ€. So they can release private information about their customers to third party โ€œaffiliatesโ€ for the purpose of promoting their goods and services and do so but refuse to release their customers' incoming calls.



She turned this matter over to her corporate attorney to see if he could retrieve the received calls records. Verizon had the same reply for her prominent attorney which was the only way to obtain the incoming calls was through a subpoena and/or a court order. Her attorney informed her the only way to get a subpoena is after filing a lawsuit and that the Freedom of Information Act Request only applies to government entitities. In this case she thought the Freedom of Information Act Request would be the appropriate course of action since she believes their special interest group money owns a large portion of the FCC.



After all, Verizon Wireless claims to be the nation's largest provider of wireless communications, boasting the largest voice and data network of 37.5 million customers. They employee 40,000 people and had annual revenue in 2003 of $ 22.5 billion dollars. So does the acronym FCC now mean files completely concealed by Verizon?Verizon Wireless sites a class action lawsuit: Campbell vs. AirTouch Cellular which was settled and according to their PR machine the settlement required Verizon to make certain changes to its Customer Agreements which purports to now offer new and greater benefits before the settlement.



In the United States of America, run by a democratic government and based on the free enterprise system this is the only solution Michelle Vernier can find as a resolution to receiving her incoming calls, along with all 37.5 million customers, is the filing of a class action lawsuit against Verizon Wireless.Dinosaurs with old paradigm business practices that are purely fascist do not work in this country in the 21st century and she counts the days until my agreement with Verizon is expired since she would not pay a cent to buy out of it.



Any one of the 37.5 million Verizon customers would have to spend hundreds of dollars in court filing and in the acquirement of a subpoena to receive information that belongs to each individual customer freely as part of the service. Consider all the possible scenarios: people being stalked, being called over and over yet they do not have the phone number of the caller to stop this action and the ramifications of such occurences.With an annual revenue in 2003 of over $ 22.5 billion dollars is it too much to ask for Verizon to supply their 37.



5 million customers with their own incoming calls? Why are they keeping customer information in which the customer is entitled to legally concealed and so incredibly difficult to receive?She's requesting that an attorney who wants to make a very prominent name for him or herself come forward to file this class action lawsuit along with one other Verizon Wireless customer to stop this impediment on our rights, our entitlement as customers, and freedom itself from beyond greedy, selfish corporate "power".