Hello Mikecap-ga,
I am excited to be able to answer this question. I worked for a
telecom company for a while in my other jobs, and this was actually a
very frequently asked question by both home phone (POTS, or Plain Ol?
Telephone Service) and wireless customers alike. I had a good idea
what to be looking for, so I dove right in. Let me give you some
information about this.
First, let us cover some ground about Verizon and their privacy policy
just to get that out of the way. I found some things that relate to
your situation, and wanted to make you aware of them.
?Verizon has strict policies governing employee access to customer
records. We access customer accounts, records or reports for
authorized business purposes only. We educate our employees about
their obligation to safeguard customer information and telephone
calls, and we hold them accountable for their actions.?
?Verizon must disclose information, as necessary, to comply with court
orders or subpoenas. Verizon also will share information to protect
its rights or property and to protect users of its services and other
carriers from fraudulent, abusive or unlawful use of services.?
http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/genpriv/
http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/customer/
Verizon?s Customer Privacy and General Privacy web pages
Now, let us dig a little deeper. We will talk about home or POTS
telephone service first.
There are two kinds of POTS service. There is measured, and unlimited.
Most people have unlimited local service. This is where can make as
many local calls as you want in a month, incoming and outgoing for a
flat rate per month. Measured service is where you pay by the call. My
grandparents had measured service most of my life growing up. Since
they never talked on the phone, they paid per call, and their phone
bill was only about $10.00 per month for their small amount of usage.
Verizon does not keep local call detail for every phone number they
have for unlimited service, the records would just be too many.
Therefore, the only accessible records with call detail for POTS
service is for a measured home phone line.
For long distance service, if the carrier were Verizon, they would
have the call detail for all long distance calls you made. However,
since you have the right to choose any carrier you would like as a
long distance carrier, even though your service was through Verizon,
and you may have gotten your local and long distance charges on one
bill through them, your long distance carrier may have been another
carrier. They refer to your local long distance and long distance
carriers as PIC and LPIC. If your PIC and LPIC carriers were someone
other than Verizon, they would not have access to your call detail.
You would have to get that information from that carrier.
So, on to the subpoena issue if we are talking about POTS service. As
I had mentioned before, they cannot keep record of every call that
every customer makes on unlimited service, and may not even have
access to the long distance call detail if you have/had another long
distance carrier. This is where the subpoena comes in. Most telecom
companies are required to keep the call information for a certain
amount of time. It may not be available to customer service, but they
do hold onto it in some form or another. However, it takes a lot of
work to find out all of that information and get it in a form easily
readable by the customer.
That is why the subpoena is required. They cannot be spending that
amount of time searching and compiling for every Tom, Dick, and Harry
that wants to see if they called their Mom on Christmas 6 years ago to
settle a family argument. Therefore, they require you to get a legal
subpoena for the records. That way, if they are needed for a legal
matter, or it is THAT SERIOUS, you will go to all that work to get
them. If it is not, most people will not, so it cuts down on the
requests for information that is so hard to compile.
Same for long distance service. They cannot be calling other PIC and
LPIC carriers, getting all this information. First, it once again is a
LOT of work, and secondly, with so much of the telephone market being
governmentally regulated, it may be protected under confidentiality
laws. Therefore, once again, either a legal subpoena is needed for
Verizon to be able to go to all that work to find out the call detail,
or, so that Verizon can go to the other carrier and say?I need to have
this information about your customer, and I have a legal document to
prove it.
The other reason a legal subpoena could be needed to access your call
detail for POTS service with Verizon is because of an outstanding
balance on the account, or any other reason the account is not
entirely satisfactorily settled. When I tried to get Verizon to
explain in more detail about this to me, they stated they would have
to look at the specific account to do so. If this is the reason for
needing the subpoena, you can contact their ?collections? department
directly at 1-800-698-3545
Another department you may want to try to speak with is the
resolutions team at 1-212-890-1350 who can also give you further
account specific information on why a subpoena is needed.
Now, onto wireless service. Once again, the records would be massive
if they held onto everyone?s incoming and outgoing call detail for
eternity, or even 1 year. Therefore, it is the same labor-intensive
process to hunt down this information for a customer after it has went
out of the main system. Usually most companies hold onto this
information for 6 months or so in the main system, then it is off to
the depths of the company. As, I mentioned with the POTS service, a
legal subpoena would be needed to extract this information so that
they?re not going to all of that work for reasons that aren?t that
pressing, as opposed to a legal matter.
Verizon states that if the information is easily accessible they can
get it for you. In an email conversation with their customer support,
they told me this.
?You may request a Local Usage Detail list to obtain detail of all
local calls made from your telephone number. There is no charge for
the first Local Usage Detail list, however future lists will be billed
at $1.56 per copy. You also have the option to request such a list on
a regular monthly basis. (The Local Usage Detail list is not available
on line. You will receive your copy via United States Mail.)
If you are interested in placing an order for a one-time list or for a
regular list, please reply to this email with your 3-digit customer
code or 12-digit account number (located at the top of your telephone
bill) when you reply.
Once we receive this information, we will be happy to process your request.?
However, if they have stated to you that you need a subpoena, it is
about 95% certain that you will have to get the subpoena to access
that information. It is unlikely that there is another way about this.
With telecom being so heavily regulated, it does require a lot of red
tape and legal reasons to access certain information or release it.
You can contact Verizon?s customer service either at 1-212-890-7100 in
NY, or you can email them at ecenter@verizon.com.
I hope this explains why the subpoena is needed, and the reasons
behind it. I wish you the best of luck in your search. I recommend
(and was told to tell you?) calling Verizon at the 1-212-890-1350 or
1-800-890-1350 number, giving them your old phone number, explaining
your situation, and they can give you the exact reason a subpoena is
needed, and the ways you can go about getting one for your needs. You
may also want to contact your lawyer if this is for an existing legal
matter, or finding a lawyer if you need the subpoena for whatever
reason.
You may also want to read this PR release about another situation with
Verizon and a subpoena being needed to access information.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/3/prweb111244.htm
If this answer requires further explanation, please request
clarification before rating it, and I will be happy to look into this
further.
Nenna-GA
Google Answers Researcher
Google Search Used:
Verizon Phone Records
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&c2coff=1&safe=off&q=verizon+phone+records&spell=1 |
