I misted up when I read this, as I have a voice recording from someone I loved dearly that I lost to cancer last year. Hearing it brings him back to me every time, if even for a minute.....

@EBone: That was in no way creepy and thank you for sharing a really good idea.

Curves

Good on ya Verizon!!!

MONSTERGOC

Very touching. Thanks for posting this/sharing it. It's the small acts that can make a big difference in people's lives.

Glamdering

Thanks for making me cry Gizmodo. If I see you on the streets, I'm going to kick you in the Nads!

MagnoliaBoy

@swoehl:

Why Have verizon quit? they have the best network around...
I was thinking att, t-mobile or sprint should give up... wait noone signs up for sprint anymore anyways

nitefire77

@lafond66: I strongly agree, they should work give him a CD or a digital recording of that. That's something as significant as memory of your deceased love one, and its something more deserving than dialing a number and PIN number and a very lengthy menu to listen to it every time.

keehun

@Hiphopopotamus: now that you mention it...
if they do... they could put it to good use...
(check message file size in order to determine if it's a phone spam) ... things like that...
or ... to bad bad bad use...

but again... he never deleted it... I would hope that when you delete a message... it actually gets deleted?!!!
any techies can answer?

madlogik

@92BuickLeSabre: DAMMIT! That's what I get for proofreading

Hiphopopotamus

Sadly... this opens up a whole new can of worms...

Verizon has an archive of every voice recording we receive going back to 2005?!?

Hiphopopotamus

@EBone: That's like the sweetest story ever.

Just like Mr. Whiting's heart-warming story; the only creepy part is that the phone companies keep archives of all of our old voicemail messages.

92BuickLeSabre

@voyage2k: yeah same... I would be in tears if I were to dial the usual number on my brand new phone, turn the speaker on... only to hear: hello, please setup your voicemail.

With all respects, I'm starting a R.I.P. "Catherine Whiting." Thread!

R.I.P. xxxx-2005
"Catherine Whiting."

madlogik

Verizon Guy Laying in a Casket: "Can you hear me now?"

Lstormy10

@lafond66: If anything, it seems that maybe part of what the old guy liked was being able to "call" his wife. Touching story, makes me despise Verizon a little less.

TheTragonDragon

@lafond66: or record, or cassette, or 8-track. what do 80 year olds listen to these days?

jbhitter24

This is a little creepy as well, but here goes. Both my parents passed away from cancer about ten years ago (seven months apart). I was really close to them, and I used to go to the cemetery to visit their grave site once a month or so. I don't go so often any more.

But I realized a few months ago the I could use the Google Maps satellite view function on my iPhone to "look" in on them when I missed them from time to time. I can pretty much pick out their headstone at the maximum zoom. Takes away a little of the sadness.

See, I told you it was creepy. Sorry.

EBone

New Service! $4.99/mo ($19.99 activation fee) Verizon will now archive the messages of any deceased individual.

DucatiGuy

That's pretty cool. Verizon just got some points in my book.

digodemais

They should do one better and burn it to a disk for him.

lafond66

Maybe they should start a "talk to your dead loved one" service and give up on the whole mobile services thing which they suck @. A kiosk at the mall should work out great!

swoehl

I don't find it creepy at all...I find it rather touching and quite sad. But kudos to Verizon for giving that elderly man that memento of his wife back to him.

voyage2k

I actually did something similar when I worked for Cingular. This lady lost her husband to an accident the previous month and was about to get her phone shut off for non-payment.

Apparently she was having money issues(understandably)and my asshole of a manager was unwilling to work with her. So when I got off work, I called her, got her VM password, called it, recorded it, burnt it to a CD and sent it to her. I have never seen someone so happy.

Dook_In_The_Urinal

Wasn't this on comsumerist/gizmodo two weeks ago?

mcjake

@Curves

Same thing here, i lost a voice mail message from my dad who passed away from Cancer just over a year ago...

But luckily my Gmail never fails me. I still have some webcam video's he used to send me archived away..

arsenic0

Verizon, you're still a megalomaniacal, sadistic, greedy corporation that's only out to increase profit at the expense of the expendable consumer, but I love you!

martini1179

@92BuickLeSabre:
Good call. "Heard" is much more appropriate.

Dook_In_The_Urinal

I guess it's good that he got his recording back, but jeez. You're eighty years old, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on life. Loved ones die, and it's appropriate to mourn, but eventually you have to move on with your life.

I think it's a sad story, but more because it's a portrait of a lonely, grieving guy caught in an unending pattern of heartbreak, unable to move on.

Pender

GAY.. jk... you're all really swell and I enjoyed your messages of hope. Or whatever they are messages of.

jiggaman

@Dook_In_The_Urinal: Never seen someone so happy? Is there more to this story?

92BuickLeSabre

awwwww. that was really sweet

Simpsons-Movie-ruled

From the Consumerist 3 weeks ago:

[consumerist.com]

Guy made two calls, one was an hour long and was hung up on, the other was 90 minutes that ended in "Sorry dude, you're boned."

Only after the bad press begin did Verizon figure out how to 'fix' their 'upgrade'.

It's amazing how the way a story is worded affects the way we reply, isn't it? :)

aphex242

@lafond66: Durp! No duh! Then he wouldn't have to go through 5 minutes of "For ____ press 1 now...For ____ press 2 now..."

shenanigans61

...that is heart wrenching...
...whoever thinks it is creepy should spend some time to love someone for that long of a period of time... and then have it taken away from them...
...that is love....

Solidsky

Nice... but I hope someone records that and gives the man a CD or something... because no one knows when the next upgrade will come.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

How is that in any way creepy? He's 80 years old for Christ's sake... If you spend your life married to someone like that, there is no "moving on with your life" when they pass. You just kinda do the best you can from day just hoping that maybe when you die, you'll maybe, possible, somehow be reunited with your partner.

Josh_Geyer

I think stuff like this is probably a lot more common than we know. I've seen a few MySpace profiles of deceased people, including a good friend who passed away rather suddenly last fall. Still can't decide if it's more touching or creepy. I suppose it makes for a nice little internet shrine to the person, but it still feels a little weird to me.
On the other hand, I suppose it isn't any worse than having photographs of deceased loved ones - just a little more high-tech. It's only unhealthy if you refuse to let go, but a recording or website isn't going to cause that.
It's nice to have a reminder of what a person sounded like, looked like, thought, etc. It helps keep the memories clear.

FredicvsMaximvs

You have to hold onto whatever you got. At 80 years old his memories could be kinda dusty. This was his way of keeping it fresh. Not creepy at all..

Evermore707

@EBone: Why don't you just take a picture of the grave site? That's all the google maps image is. It's not like you're looking at it live or anything.

FLskydiver

Yeah, not creepy at all. And it was the only option he knew how to listen to his deceased wife.

chillywilly

Well, jeez, if they can do that, why the #%^&%@! can't they give me back all the ring tones I downloaded to my old phone that aren't available for sale any more?

infmom

The plus-side to the Patriot Act. All conversations and voicemail messages are now stored and analyzed before deletion.

ninjatales

This doesn't make Verizon (a company) great.

This makes the one, or few people who took note of this and chose to do something nice, great. Great people that just so happened to work for a huge corporation.

Just like when you call customer service you will sometimes get a moody a-hole rep, or you will get a nice person who is actually willing to help you.

Nevertheless, it was a notable act of kindness from whoever was responsible.

digitalexis

old poop

Kinglish

@Pender: sounds like you can't relate at all on any level, but you have an opinion anyway. thanks for sharing

jcy

IN-Grave Messaging ....get it now for an additional $5 a month!

In all seriousness, kudos to Verizon. I speak to their credit and activations department a lot (retailer line) and they are VERY helpful and friendly about 90% of the time. Everyone just loves to hear the bad. It is comforting to see the good that these companies do that get overlooked.

Dan8585

@Pender: When a loved one passes, life does go on, and sometimes it goes on so much that it feels almost as if that person was never there, except for the terrible void in your heart. A voice is real "proof" that they really were here and part of of lives. Maybe its a crutch, but, personally, one I dont have a problem leaning on. I hope you get to experience that kind of love, at least once in your life, but I would not wish the pain of that loss on anyone.

Curves

I had a moment of phone creepiness shortly after my dad passed away. My phone rings and there's my dad's name on the caller ID. Yipes! In less than a second, my forebrain figured out it was my mom calling, but still an alarming moment I wasn't prepared for.

Barcard

nice of them to do that. I wonder what else they have in their "archive".

mtopper

I saw this on "Criminal Minds". Frankie Muniz played a comic book artist whose girlfriend was savagely killed in front of him. He was nearly killed in the assault too. After he recovered, he suffered a psychotic break and hunted down the guys who attacked them, drawing out the scenes in his studio the next day. He listened to his girlfriend's last voicemail to him every morning. I now look forward to a follow-up episode where he hunts down the phone company guys who delete his voicemail.

sumocat

What's really creepy to me is that Verizon is storing voice mails after they've been "deleted".

mofoluck

There are actual human beings working at Verizon?

There are actual human beings working at Verizon!

I feel a Paradox beginning to form....

uberfu

+1 for Verizon Wireless.

Albishor

@ninjatales:

This is a touching story, but the down-side of the Patriot Act is that NOTHING is ever deleted anymore including voicemails, emails, and yes, even phone conversations.

George Orwell had a vision; George Bush made it come true.

dosguy

@Barcard: My youngest brother's name is the same as my dad's, so his name shows up the same on the Caller ID... yes, I got a call from him after our dad died and almost dropped the phone before my brain kicked into gear.

infmom

Reminds me of the poem "Married" by Jack Gilbert. From his collection "Great Fires":

Married

I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife's hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
reporting Michiko's avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.

Jordan Lund

@mtopper: He is probably just young. You have to experience great joy to know great pain.

Curves

@Pender:

you sir, are just a douchebag turd.

mtopper

@EBone: A smidgen creepy, but not so much that I don't think its a great idea. So long as you don't lose all connection to the physical site, I think it is a creative way to handle the situation.

zenpoet

ekimmr

@dosguy: Yea I agree with ya. Was jus being sarcastic there.

ninjatales

Skeptical_Geezer