Verizon, can you hear us now? Maybe the 19 pages of comments under Stu Bykofsky's Daily News article will help you get it. Verizon could have chosen to do something good for a change....instead they chose to be, well, themselves...
THE LAST TIME Bill Whiting heard his little brown dog, she was screaming in pain as two miserable bastards tortured her.
Whiting heard this over the phone as the two monsters demanded money to return the Beagle mix.
Her name was Edna, and she was so gentle that Whiting took her to hospitals, where patients cheered up as they petted her. Edna had pointed bunny ears, warm brown eyes and was Whiting's "constant companion" since he adopted her a decade ago. She had never known anything but kindness from human hands....He waited vainly for 10 days, heart-sick and physically sick over Edna. Then, late at night on Nov. 10, the phone rang and he could hardly believe what he heard.
He heard two voices that sounded male and young. The first said he was 16, his brother was 9 and they had his dog. He wanted Whiting, 57, who works for the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, to talk with his brother.
At first, Whiting says he could barely understand the younger boy, speaking in what he described as "American ghetto slang." Whiting slowly realized the boy wanted $600 to ransom Edna.
"I was to bring cash, by myself," at midnight to a location Whiting could not decipher.
Whiting agreed to pay the money but not to a midnight meeting. "They said they wanted the money now, and told me they'd kill the dog, repeating, 'You don't believe me, Mister, let me hurt it so you can hear.' "
Whiting heard Edna yelp in pain. When he heard the jingling of her tags, Whiting knew they had his beloved little brown dog.
"I couldn't believe how evil he was," says Whiting. "He said, 'You know, Mister, I want to kill your dog.' "
Whiting pleaded with them not to hurt Edna, offering to give them even more than $600 if they would keep Edna safe until the morning....Whiting immediately called 911 and Philadelphia police took the complaint seriously, entering it as extortion.
A few hours later, at 3 a.m., Whiting got a second call from one of the monsters. "I've killed your dog, it's dead," he said. The call came in on Whiting's land line, which was listed on Edna's name tag but not on the fliers he had posted everywhere.
Later that morning, Whiting tried to find the phone number the extortionists had used. He called his service provider, Verizon, to tell them to release his phone records to police, but it wasn't that simple.
"I made about five calls and kept getting people who were good at passing the hot potato," Whiting says. He was told police know the procedure.
The detective working the case, who asked me not to use his name, says he got a search warrant and faxed it to Verizon on Nov. 16, but it took 12 days before he got a list of calls made to Whiting. The city was charged $150 for the search....A crime has been committed. Another police source tells me the service is no better for other crimes, such as kidnapping, when time is crucial.
Verizon, as always, when push comes to shove, you just suck.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati