i, quaid

Pardon this off-topic post (for my Fedora category, anyway), but a large body of might-be Verizon text message users are reading this, and I’m interested in finding out if my situation is unique, typical, or endemic.

For the last few months I’ve been receiving from one to several incorrectly routed text messages a week. I’ve gone through all the thinking — someone sent them by accident to me, they are spam testing to see if this is a live address, etc. But after multiple interactions with the senders, who in all cases did not mean to send messages such as, “Don’t call im in the shower for a while” and “Does he think yr cute?” In one case, I received more than six misrouted messages from one person over a two day period. In all cases, no one has said the messages did not go to their intended recipient, so I don’ t know if the message was misrouted and lost to the other person, or split and routed to two of us.

Has this ever happened to you? Let me know in the comments of this post if:

• You’ve received misrouted messages
• Someone has sent you a text message that they received a misrouted message from you
• You’ve heard of this problem occurring to other people

Aside from the hassle and potential embarrassment, there is the matter of the cost of the messages. Every time I consider getting on the phone to protest, I consider how much time it will be for me compared to the $0.25 in mistakes. But then I think, if Verizon is doing this across their entire network, they are potentially charging lots of money for misrouted messages. Why, that is starting to sound like a mistake they have no vested interest in fixing. If I can show, even for myself, that this is a wider problem, I’ll call Verizon and start lodging my complaints up the chain.

Remember your empowering mantra when speaking with customer service: “Let me speak with our supervisor, please.”