Privacy Rights Violated - FRCA Rights Violated - Basic Human Rights Violated...

I don't think credit scoring and missed payments have much to do with
"basic human rights".

Does your credit score being lowered by 60 points prohibit your from
buying a house? It doesn't. I'm sure there are a lot of other credit
issues going on in your life than the missing phone bill. And....if
you get it every month and then all of a sudden it stops coming in the
mail, wouldn't you notice something like that? Most of us would. Did
you think the bill paying fairy paid it for you? I'm really sorry
about the loss of the American dream of owning your own home to better
the quality of your family, but there is more to that task than owning
a home. It's basic principles and you don't seem to have much of
those. I think this letter is a hoax. Too hard to believe.

I recall a really long dealing I had with T-Mobile right before I
decided I'd rather not have a phone than deal with them any further
(T-Mobile has the only plan I've found yet that meets my needs).

Someone would come on the line and ask me for my phone number and
social security number and so on and then we'd talk for a few minutes
and I'd get transferred and put on hold, and after awhile someone else
would come on the line and ask me for my information and so on and
then we'd talk for a few minutes and .... Well, you get the picture.

Eventually someone asked for my social security number and I asked why
I had to repeat it over and over again.

She told me it was "for [my] protection". After all, she said, I
wouldn't want any unauthorized people phoning up to make changes to my
account.

I told her I agreed with that, and that's why I had answered the
questions the first four (or whatever) times, but since I kept getting
transferred from person to person I would have thought that my
identity was established.

Yes, she said, but I wouldn't want any unauthorized people phoning up
to make changes to my account.

I asked her whether she could tell that I had been transferred from a
different CSR and that she wasn't the first T-Mobile employee I'd
spoken to on that phone call.

Yes, she could.

Well, I asked her, did she have any doubt that whoever I'd already
talked to had validated my identity.

The information, she said, would have to have been gotten.

Then why did I have to answer the question again?

So unauthorized people couldn't change my account.

I asked her what she thought the odds were that someone had broken
into my apartment while I was on hold, incapacitated me, and gotten on
the phone but had been unable to find my wallet, which is where I keep
my social security card.

Looooong pause.

I recited my social security number.

While I've never dealt with Verizon, I find it quite credible that
Verizon got your personally identifying information from the other
person before making any changes. I do think it's a problem that the
people closest to us are likely to have access to information
sufficient to steal our identities simply by being close to us. But I
also think a lot of us are pretty careless with information that the
people around us don't actually need and which should be kept a
secret. (There's an ex-boss who gave me her unbelievably obvious AOL
password years ago, and I always wonder whether, when I left the
company pretty angry with her, she bothered to change it. I'm not
going to go try logging in with her old password, but I'm very curious
to know whether I could if I were inclined to.)

If the other party was in fact able to "look" exactly like you to the
Verizon CSRs, then I fail to see what they could have done without
risking the opposite problem: you calling in to make changes to your
account and finding out that you weren't allowed to.

I agree with a previous poster - one bad mark on your credit report
will NOT bar you from getting a mortgage! And a 60 point lowering?
That's noticeable, but it's not the end of the world. Let's put it
this way: I have a Chapter 7 bankruptcy on my record, and I can STILL
obtain a mortgage albeit at higher interest rates, but it IS
possible!

Question: did this other person know your info (address, name, SSN,
etc.)? If so, they could have changed your info simply by calling
Verizon and claiming to be you. If they gave Verizon all the correct
info, how would Verizon know it wasn't really you? They wouldn't -
and if that is what happened, the only person violating your rights is
this other person who apparently doesn't know how to pay on time.

Just a note: the fact that you wanted both bills to go to you rather
than to have the other person receive his/her own suggests that you
already knew this person wasn't the most responsible human being
around. If you went ahead and got a phone line for this person
anyway, you have to simply chalk it up to bad judgment and move on.

Yollette, I work for Verizon IN CUSTOMER SERVICE, CSR's are REQUIRED
to validate the identity of EVERY caller, this is done several ways,
MOSTLY by asking for a piece of information that can only be found on
the bill, such as the last payment made or more often the customer
code. So, if as you say the bills were coming to you, how did this
"unauthorized" person obtained that information??

Several other people have also responded, and I have to 100% agree, if
you were not receiving the bill WHY then did you not call and ask what
was going on?? You KNOW you should be receiving a bill every month.
Perhaps it was because youi were trying to pull something over on
Verizon? thinking that perhaps THEY screwed up and just happened to
forget to bill you?? You obviously have access to the internet, why
did you not try to access your bills online?? It takes almost a YEAR
for Verizon to send a bill over to a collection agency. From the date
the service is disconnected, you would then receive your next bill,
then a month after that you would receive your final bill, then if
unpaid months three and four, you would receive reminder bills. By
month five after the service is disconnected, your account goes into a
"written-off" status, and if at that point it is still unpaid it goes
to the verizon internal final bills department, where they try to
investigate, and see what is going on, and get the bill paid. ONLY
after several months there will it go to a collection agency!!!

Also just an FYI for you and anyone else.... if you have THAT many
concerns about someone else accessing your information, such as maybe
a child who may have access to the bill, you can always call customer
service and set up a VERBAL PASSWORD, anytime you would call into the
office the CSR will ask for that password, and no infor will be given
without it... JUST make sure it is something only you will know, and
you will REMEMBER it!! If I only had a $1.00 for every customer that
got angry with me because I could not give them the info they wanted
because they did not remember the password THEY chose!!

So when "Mr Mistery" called and closed the one account, the phone
service had to have been turned off, and you didn't notice this? Who
was the other party using the service, if any? Would they have
notified you? That would be clue number one.

My right as a human being to not be annoyed by other human beings has
been violated. Somebody get Amnesty International on the phone.

"Ok, I blame American Idol and those other sensless reality shows for
America's high rate of dumb people. "

Just so you know... and I know everyone was running out this weekend
to research it... it FCRA - Fair Credit Reporting Act.... not FRCA.
Unless, of course, you were attempting to reference the Fair
Resolution Collision Algorithm or the Fire Retardant Chemicals
Association.

If the person who closed your account had access to your personal
information and provided answers to all the security questions, then,
as a commercial attorney, I fail to see how FCRA was violated.

Read Jeffrey's post below. Read it twice in fact. It's 100% spot
on.

Don't you need to be human to have basic human rights?

I was going to defend Yolette, at least a bit. But then I saw how
offensive her posts were and I reconsidered.

OK, that's not fair. I won't stoop to Yolette's level. So, here
goes...

While the point many have made about how Yolette is responsible for
paying the bill, even if the bill doesn't arrive, is true... I find it
a side issue.

The thing in this letter that struck me was that someone, not Yolette,
called and had the address changed. Now, I have to wonder, how did
this happen?

From what I can tell, it was a relative. Right? Therefore, it's
certainly possible that this person had sufficient information to
claim to be Yolette. As with the woman who lost her IRA to her
husband's "gambling" with the account, there is relatively little a
company can do to stop an "in-the-know" person from accessing
someone's account. For example, the most common security question has
been "what is your mother's maiden name." I'm sure that there are are
many people that know this. My wife, my sister, my mother, my uncle,
my cousin (who's currently under some serious criminal charges), and
several others would know this. My criminal cousin can also answer
where I grew up, my maternal grandfather's middle name, and several
other questions about me. Really, the only commonly used "security"
question she doesn't have is my SSN.

But my wife knows my SSN. Should we ever get divorced, she's got the
ability to mascarade as me, because she knows the answer to EVERY
security question that'd ever throw at her. Sure, I could start using
fake ones to throw her off, but...

So, what I want to know is... did Verizon not follow minimal security
procedures. If this person called and said "pssst... I'm not Yolette,
but please let me access her account," it's one thing. It's quite
another if Verizon asked for a couple pieces of information, for which
the person got it right.

And that point, Verizon was acting responsibility. What more could
they have done, really?

Which brings up to the point many of the others are making: when
Yolette stopped receiving the bills, this should have been a tip-off
to her that something was amiss.

Yolette, I have to say that I find your responses to people here to be
very rude. But you DID choose to share your letter. In doing so, you
AGREED to allow others to comment. If you want to comment in a rude
way, that's your choice. However, don't pretend that you didn't know
that people would comment. You manually checked the box that said you
wanted to share. And there IS text to the effect that people can
comment, right there.

Hi Yolette,
When, exactly, did the fact that you weren't getting bills from
Verizon (a "Fixed" expense YOU should have been looking for) and just
how many unpaid bills does one let "fly by" before picking up a phone
and calling a company?

The predicament you find yourself in is your OWN fault. Please find me
the law that says I'm entitled to homeownership.... I've been paying a
mortgage for over 20 years and if this is true, the bank owes ME big
time!!!

And why did you not call them when you were not receiving bills to
find out what was going on? Bills for the most part arrive at around
the same time every month. If you don't receive one when you're
supposed to, CALL THE COMPANY!!!! Just because you don't receive a
bill does not mean that you do not owe them the money!

I hate when people blame their bills being past-due because they
didn't receive them.

You knew you would be getting a cell phone bill, and when it didn't
come, what did you think? That they weren't going to charge you
anymore? I know when my bills are due, and if they don't come in the
mail, I call and get the balance and payment mailing address so I can
send the payment out. You know, so it will be paid on time and not
affect my credit.

Hey, Yollette (or whatever username of the moment) got an idea for
you! Sue your so-called blood relative on the Judge Joe Brown TV
show. Whenever I wanted to get a few good laughs, I've tuned into
him. Just before he bangs down his gavel on ridiculous cases such as
this, he'll come up with something like 'So Sad--Too Bad!'

I don't suggest Judge Judy, though. You'll get one evil-eye stare, a
swipe of her sharp tongue that cuts you down at the knees,
and--Dismissed!

As far as your 'right to privacy,' you gave it up when you checked the
box that said to make your letter public.

I originally was not going to answer this post because of the tone of
your replies but as a Telecommunications Analyst of 26 years, I feel I
must chime in.

I've worked (placed service orders, closed accounts, etc.) with every
major carrier and some smaller ones in the United States, Canada and
Puerto Rico. I have never been able to make a revenue effecting
change without proving who I am, who I work for and being listed on
the account as an authorized person. I can obtain service calls
without such information but when I want to close accounts or change
service features, I must do so on company e-mail and, if there is any
question, I must provide our federal tax ID. With some carriers, our
billing person is not allowed to dispute a bill without authorization
from me because I placed the order. I currently have over 800 sites
and this has been the case with every single one.

Whoever made these changes must have had some personal information of
yours in order to do it. The record at Verizon would have to show
what rep closed the account and what steps they took to verify the
callers indentity.

It's not clear whether you were getting one bill or two. Your
original post said two bills and a reply said one account with two
numbers. Either way, I don't understand why you didn't notice you
were not getting both bills or that the one bill was much lower than
it usually is. For some reason, I don't get a paper cable bill each
month and I don't have the patience to wait on the phone to correct
this. Each month I go online and find out how much I owe them and pay
it.

As far as your credit score goes, unless you already have poor credit,
one negative should not effect your ability to get a mortgage. I have
one outstanding collection issue on mine which I have not been able to
resolve. All the mortgage company asked for was a letter explaining
the issue and we got the mortgage at a great interest rate.

I don't see how your privacy rights have been violated unless they
gave your personal information to someone without your permission.
From the looks of this, someone already had your information and used
it when they called Verizon. Unfortunately, the Verizon reps are not
psychics and have no way of knowing it's not you calling. I'm als
curious as to how they violated your FRCA rights, please explain. They
had a bill, in your name, that was not paid. They sent it to
collections in order to receive payment. Unless the collection agency
used methods to obtain payment that were against the law, your FRCA
rights were not violated.

If you want to avoid this in the event you do something like this in
the future, I would suggest password protecting the account so no one
but you can make any changes.

You are right Yolette that some people use this website to simply
argue with anyone they can. It is unfortunate, but that is the price
for free speech.

Ultimately, I would agree with the observation that you become
responsible for your own account. It takes a great deal of time, I
believe, before Verizon would have sent your account to a collection
agency. I would think you should have noticed that you were not being
billed and contacted them on your own. If the negative mark on your
credit was because of late payments, it is correct regardless of the
reason.

It is a good lesson learned, as someone else pointed out, that the
time to deal with the negative mark was before paying the debt. Upon
receive the letter from Solomon & Solomon, you would have been better
off to request a signed document stating the confusion and confirming
no negative marks be placed upon your credit report. With such a
document, you might have grounds for removing the negative mark. Now,
however, I'm afraid you'll find it much more difficult, if not
impossible.

I would further point out the benefit to not addressing other posters
as you have done. Many companies that receive letters through this
website read the further dialog which takes place. In this case, that
additional dialog does not bow well for you or your cause.

Work on your credit. Build it up as you can. Make sure to pay your
debts on time and your score should be back up within the year.

Ok, I will post my first unbiased opinion before reading the string of
responses below.

Verizon, in my opinion with the information only as you present it,
was wrong in giving someone else the ability to close the account. I
am very interested to know how this person did this though. I have
never been able to make changes like that with any company without
answering some security questions.
Maybe this relative had your SSN, etc?!

Now, you are responsible for your credit. What you did, in essence,
was even more risky than co-signing.
You used your credit as the primary and sole account holder, your
personal information, etc to open this phone up. Yes, it was for a
relative. However, you should have known something was odd when you
started not getting the bills. For all you knew, someone was stealing
out of your mailbox. At that point, you should have been all over
Verizon, trying to track down what happened.

In the end, I think you are a very mean spirited person - at least
that is how you are coming across on here. However, if the facts are
as presented by you, then I do think Verizon should try and help
figure out what went wrong in their security system.
However, in the end, you are still responsible for your credit.

Oh my dear God in Heaven. You know, while I was reading your letter,
I actually, for a bit, felt bad for you. Yes, you got screwed over.
It sounds like the person for whom you activated the phone line
somehow pretended to be you and duped Verizon into allowing them to
change your accout specifications. That sucks. That should
definitely be brought to their attention. That person definitely
needs to be removed from your personal Rolodex (as my mom used to
say).
That being said, I have never and I mean NEVER seen a person spew such
vile and hateful vitriol in my life! Wow. You really really really
outdid yourself.
You also nailed, right on the head, my personal favorite PFB pet
peeve. Not all of us that use this site are "fat" and "eat" and
"dookie" in front of our computers. Some of us actually enjoy reading
feedback sent to companies so we can take the information provided by
others into account when choosing whether or not to patronize a
specific company. Not everyone replies to posts with venom and hate.
There are very few out there that do so and they are generally
ignored. Most on this site provide what can only be called
constructive criticism. If you don't like what they say, either don't
share your letter, or ignore it. I hate to tell you, Cupcake, that
not everyone is going to agree with you. That is life.
Peace to you.

This was interesting for the first 30 seconds. However, it turned
into a gift that kept giving and giving. This is a pefect example or
someone who makes a post, gets a few common sense replies that they
don't like, and proceeds to shoot their mouth and feet off and calls
people names. Then the OP can't stump his way out of here without
those feet. Does the fact that not one person supports your postion
give you a hint?

I suppose you think this a conspiracy of some sort. Everybody is
taking advantage of you. Well, it didn't start that way, but your
attitude has created a huge bullseye. No, we won't stand around and
take your crap without saying something. Sadly, a lot of effort has
been wasted on you, and I don't believe you are worth it.

Take your credit score, divide by 10, and you'll find your IQ.

Basic human rights? A little over the top.
I worked at Verizon way back when and every day I got belittled and
yelled at because I would not give out info to people not on the
account.
A friend of mine was challenged to a fight over this issue. If anyone
wonders why no one in retail cares about the customer, this is why.
They are usually strict about not giving out info if someone is not on
the account, but ever day husbands will go into Verizon screaming and
trying to get employees fired because they cannot get details on their
wives accounts for which they, "pay all the bills every month", but
are not authorized.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

try to exchange a Christmas gift at the store where it was bought, get
turned away for not having a receipt, and subsequently get someone at
Target to let you switch?

In any event, since you clearly didn't take the time to see what kind
of responses letters like yours get on this site before you clicked on
the little button to make your letter public, and since you don't care
what other people's opinions of you are, why are you electing to
pursue this argument? Please, for your own sake, get a life. You
will be happier, I promise.

I watch American Idol, and I'm not dumb.

Psycho OP week??

First Phyllis returns, then the paranoid Mystery Shopper & now this
one.

Wow, I need some Tylenol!

When I responded, I hadn't scrolled down to read other responses.
What a delightful, charming person she is!

Let's all keep the mortgage brokers and loan officers and real estate
agents who are in the OPs area in our thoughts and prayers. They're
going to need all the help they can get.

You said:

Yes, my privacy rights has been violated, and I have been denied
mortgages because of this discrepency that lowered my score by 60
points.


How many points did it lower your IQ by?

Listen to me. That friend of yours is not your friend and I hope you
are reconsidering the terms of that friendship. Why is it that she
needed this phone in the first place? Did she not have the money or
did she lose another phone due to similar circumstances of screwing
others over that she didn't tell you about? Did she make you feel
sorry for her and tell you how the world has left her helpless? Is
this a long time friend or a new one? I'm only asking this because you
did a kind deed for someone who apparently not only "forgot" to pay
the bill but actually had the audacity to deal with Verizon and chance
things in their system on you behind your back.

My advice to you is to pay your bill off and write to the mtg company
your explanation. Never give anything to a friend that will ever
jeopardize your credit again. If you want to help them out, give them
the independance to stand on their own two feet. There are many phone
companies that are private who will allow her to use a phone for
either emergencies and set it up for her so she won't make long
distance calls and not run up a bill. Research them if you want to
stay her friend and give the information to her if she can't do it on
her own. Let her make that choice. See if she does or if she whines
about it. That will tell you her charachter. Or she can use a pay
phone or buy a cell phone cheap with limited use. If she isn't able
to, it might be because HER credit is already messed up. And now she
shared the wealth with you unfortunately.

Good luck with this.

Instead of being such a jerk and taking out your anger on everyone
here, take it out on your blood relative who screwed you over.

What a joke. Home ownership is NOT a basic human right.

And if this is the only black mark on your credit report, it won't
keep you from own a home. I guarantee that. This is your own fault
(you had to notice for a few months that bills weren't arriving) -- or
the fault of the person you set up with a phone at your expense.

Verizon isn't at fault in any here. Stop being so overdramatic -- it
shows how little you really know about the world to claim that your
basic human rights were violated.

You trusted an untrustworthy person then didn't pay attention to your
accounts. Don't blame anyone but yourself.

if you are soooo unaffected, why are you trying so hard to cut
everyone else down?

i don't understand. in half of your very rude and "i'm so smart and
your not" responses, you claim that:

"This wasn't a case of two separate accounts. It was one account with
TWO phone numbers, therefore only I had (supposedly) access to it."

and:

"If you care to know, my bills are paid every month, and my account is
still open. It is the OTHER phone I opened for someone else that
wasn't being paid"

if it is one account with 2 numbers, then like you said, it is just
one bill. but then you claim that you paid your line, not the other
line. how can that be, when the 2 lines are supposed to come in one
bill. if your bills are paid every month you should have realized
there was one bill missing. if the other person screwed you over, then
he must have had the proper info to make changes to your account. it
doesn't matter if it is you blood relative or a stranger. you are
responsible to protect your information.

all of your nasty remarks about how you are supposedly more
intelligent than all of the people posting their opinion TO THE LETTER
YOU MADE PUBLIC, do not help your cause. you made this letter public,
obviously you wanted other people to read it and post their opinions.
since you don't like our opinions because well they are not the same
as yours then you fire away.

oh and please if you must find a way to insult me, try a new thing.
the you didn't go to school, or you don't know how to read is getting
old.

You yourself state that "both bills were being sent to me for a
while," you did not notice you were suddenly getting only one? When
did you notice the other party was not paying you? This was within
your power to rectify long before your account was sent to collections
and it was your free choice to give a phone to an obviously
untrustworthy person.

You are right, they should not have changed the billing address
without your permission. However, unless they showed this other
person all your information while doing the changeover your privacy
rights were not violated. As for your basic human rights, you should
really reread the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, before you
start slamming the other commenters for lack of education.

Having a family member who works for one of the major credit-reporting
agencies, I can assure you (and everyone else reading, damn, there
goes that privacy again) that 60 points would not effect your ability
to obtain a mortgage unless your credit already s#cks to start with.
Have a wonderful day.

Wow, first of all, congratulations of showing everyone your true
character in less time than it takes to read your post. Your replies
to the comments below prove you to be a nasty, foul-tempered person
with no ability to converse like an adult. If I were Verizon, I'd
refuse to help you too. What a jerk. And Brenda's somment was DEAD on.
I don't care if YOUR phone was still functioning, the fact is that you
knew you were supposed to pay 2 bills to Verizon every month. If one
just stopped showing up and you didn't notice, then this is all yoru
fault. The account being closed is a completely seperate issue. You
chose to be negligent in keeping up with your own bills. THAT'S why it
went to collections. If you had called up Verizon and said "hey,
where's my bill?", you could have paid off the amount right then,
saved yourself from collections and dealt with the supposed privacy
invasion seperately. But no, it was working out in your favor, so why
speak up, right?

The fact that you jump to conclusions and make nasty assumptions about
people just because they asked you a valid and appropriate question
shows that you probably did not speak to the Verizon people
respectfully to begin with. How dare you decide that someone doesn't
work hard for a living or is uneducated because they call you out on
YOUR irresponsibility? Don't make your letter public if you can't
handle your shortcomings being pointed out to you. MAYBE Verizon
shouldn't have let the other person close the account (and that's a
MAYBE because I'm not convinced they did anything wrong. If the person
lied to them, that's your friend's fault, not theirs) but the fact
that it went to collections and that you can't buy your home is your
OWN FAULT.

The only human rights being violated are ours by being subjective to
your childish whining and attacks.

This is your own fault for lending your credit to someone else...
Sorry...

Umm, how long did it take for you to realize you weren't paying your
bill that you are supposed to pay every month?