Then I got a text message from the company, noting that I hadn't visited my "Pix Place" (online repository of my camera phone pictures) in 150 days, and if I didn't log in within 30 days, all my pictures (approximately fifteen, in total) would be deleted.
Cheerful, huh? Because these blurry photos must be taking up about 200 kb on Verizon's servers, and clearly, a competitive company in a cutthroat industry can't afford to give out free memory...
Then, when checking my voicemail a few days later, I heard a disturbing new automated message. Instead of informing me I had my regular three saved messages, I learned I had "three saved messages, whose retention time is about to expire."
A confession: I saved some messages for a long time. One, for instance, dates back to when the Sox beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, and a friend called me up and made some kind of drunken hooting noise that I thought was worthy of repeated listens. Every 21 days, Verizon would play the message to me and ask if I wanted to delete it, and I'd always smile and press no.
Well, I guess they'd had enough, or maybe Verizon is run by a Steinbrenner acolyte, because in a few days those treasured messages were erased.
I think someone at the Onion is also frustrated with this company:
Verizon Introduces New Charge-You-At-Whim Plan
August 21, 2006 | Issue 42•34
NEW YORK—Verizon Communications, Inc. announced a new service package for its wireless and residential customers that would charge them widely varying, but always high, fees every month depending how the communications giant feels at the time. "Our Charge-At-Whim packages offer the same mediocre quality and insufferable level of customer service you’ve come to expect," a Verizon spokesman said Tuesday. "But it adds an unjustified, arbitrary and, if you’ll allow us to boast, frankly unjustifiable method of determining just how much you’ll pay for them." Packages start at "oh, $69.99 a month, let’s say?" and went into effect about three or four months ago.
Feels about right.