Hello Duke, thanks for sharing this. I want to thank you because you inspired me to register for purposes of responding to this post. I can confirm that not only what you are saying is 100% acc...
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Hello Duke, thanks for sharing this. I want to thank you because you inspired me to register for purposes of responding to this post. I can confirm that not only what you are saying is 100% accurate, but based on my experiences as well as those of my friends and family who are Verizon customers, I can take it further and confirm this is a systemic Verizon issue that has been (perhaps unintentionally) seriously downplayed on this forum. To understand, as is the case sometimes in life, you have to think in the most evil and nefarious manner possible to get to the bottom of what is going on. Let's examine this specific issue from 3 perspectives: Criminal's, Carrier's (Verizon's), and Customer's (Ours): Criminal perspective: - We want to discover some extremely valuable information to sell on the illegal markets - real, active, valid, working, mobile phone numbers. These are a hot commodity - especially getting those numbers that are private and protected, that have not been provided anywhere we can access them. So here is what we criminals will do - we will gain access to Verizon customers by using a little trick. We will purchase prepaid cell phone numbers, or a similar anonymous method, to enter the Verizon "family". We will then take note of the prefix on the number we get, i.e., if my new number is (415) 555-1234, my prefix is "555", and most likely, this is a Verizon wireless prefix, which means any numbers that start with this prefix are likely Verizon wireless numbers. So, let's exploit this! My goal is to discover new cell numbers, that's it. I am not trying to sell anything to the owners of these numbers (yet); I just need to discover real Verizon numbers. So, I set up an auto dialer, and I have it dial every single number within my prefix. If the call goes to voicemail, or if someone picks up the phone, I know this is a real number. So, my dialer calls 415-555-0000, then 415-555-0001, then 415-555-0002, etc., until I get flagged and blocked. To give me enough time to hit all possible numbers, the process should start early in the week, on a weekday, so that by the time Verizon goes through their lengthy process of flagging it, I will have hopefully gone through the whole prefix, and when I am flagged, my prepaid account can be thrown away as I move on to the next one "anonymously". When it's all said and done, I will have a valuable list of active Verizon cell phone numbers, which I can turn around and sell on the illegal market. The cycle repeats. I am just a criminal trying to make it in this world - who needs to troll Craiglist when I can just discover cell numbers using this method? Verizon makes it so easy. Carrier (Verizon) perspective: This is a very tough one for us to tackle because we make a lot of money on our anonymous/prepaid program. Revenue and profit are everything, and we have a system in place to stop these robocallers a few days after they strike, but not sooner; we cannot (at present) prevent them - this is not a priority for us. So, it is in our best interest to downplay the significance of how bothersome this is, and to turn attention to other types of robocallers and scammers where we can place partial blame on costumers who provide their phone number to other channels - it's all about controlling the "narrative" - folks need to be smarter! We want to ensure, as Verizon, that we do not publicly acknowledge our awareness of this prefix robocaller phenomena, as it would put more pressure on our company to come up with a viable solution - that is a burden and expense that we don't need to deal with, we're verizon, we have a slightly better signal, and that’s more important to people than being harassed. We certainly do not want to appear behind other carriers, such as AT&T, who are likely more willing to tackle these nuisances, so it's best to just keep it hush hush. So, to accomplish this, it's best to keep our ground staff ignorant of what's really happening, and ask them to stick to the script. This is a business, and until robocallers hurt our bottom line, our prepaid program is more valuable than the harassment of our monthly subscribers. (We would never say that so bluntly by the way.) Customer perspective: This is clearly an intentional and systemic issue. It does not take rocket science to realize this since I get these calls several times a week, from numbers that look very similar to mine (same prefix), and since it happens to my family and friends who are on Verizon. After doing a quick Google lookup, I realize that the robo phone calls coming are also from Verizon numbers. I visited Verizon's complaint site and report the numbers, but it doesn't seem to help. I come on the forums, and I see customers are saying what I am saying, but Verizon reps are either completely ignoring the strange pattern, or somehow turning the blame on customers for giving out their phone numbers to people. Something just doesn't add up - I am stressed out of my mind seeing these calls come so often and interrupt my life, at work, school, whether I am conducting business or taking personal calls, this pattern is quite disturbing. If Verizon could just acknowledge the issue, at the very least, and let me know this is an ongoing widespread issue, I would feel a little better, I wouldn't feel so personally "targeted". I may not want to immediately jump ship or consider another carrier, honestly and transparency goes a long way. However, it's the intentional manipulation of these threads, of withholding information, of trying to spin a narrative and blame me, my elderly parents, my siblings, my friends, as if we did something, as if it wasn't the Verizon prepaid program that caused this - it's this unethical attitude and behavior that is now pushing me to switch carriers. Final Thoughts: I hope my breakdown helps others dealing with this torture. I hope Verizon takes note - you're better than this. At least you should be. God bless. DukeHazzard dwt12777 jav6 jaysteag Icetub rupunzlkim MiltonHotard