REHOBOTH BEACH, DE — Once upon a time immigrants to the United States found their last names non-consensually changed to something more supposedly acceptable – and less foreign sounding. While simple racism and ethnic insensitivity can be blamed for that bit of social intolerance, Verizon’s bigotry against perfectly respectable names that might potentially offend the easily offended is more difficult to explain – especially to customers being denied service because of it.Case in point comes from Philly.com, where the sad story of 69-year-old retired radiologist Dr. Herman I. Libshitz highlights the madness that has become outsourced customer service and corporate policies mandating morality above and beyond the call of logic.

When Dr. Libshitz and his wife, Alison, decided that they were tired of using their dial-up account to access the internet from their summer home in Reboboth Beach, DE, they turned to Verizon for high speed DSL service.

Signing up for nearly any new technology or service is more complex than expected, but Dr. Libshitz found the process of entering a preferred username and email address not merely frustrating – but impossible. The online forms refused to allow him to complete the process. Having learned patience during his years as a physician, Dr. Libshitz called customer service.

“We called their help line,” he explained to Philly.com, “and got a wonderful man in the Phillippines who told us ‘We can’t install it because your name has ‘shit’ in it.’”

Dr. Libshitz had grown up in West Philadelphia during the 1940s, so he was more than familiar with the need to stand up for his family name – and as an Air Force veteran from the Vietnam era, chances are good he took a certain amount of ribbing later in life. Nonetheless, it had followed him in its entirety throughout his years of service, his time in college, while providing medical care to the ill, and while publishing 200 academic papers.

Yet somehow, in 2008, his last name was too profane to be allowed a DSL account.

A supervisor proposed that the Libshitzes consider misspelling their name so that it wouldn’t be so offensive. Given that the couple’s Prodigy account of many years proudly proclaimed them to be of the Libshitz family, the idea of a forced name change not only sounded personally insulting, but didn’t seem logically necessary.

Frustrated, but not yet discouraged, Dr. Libshitz called the Verizon billing dispute number and spoke with three different individuals, including a supervisor, who all proclaimed the situation “outrageous” and insisted that they had never heard of the cited policy. Alas, only a single individual in Tampa, FL could resolve the issue – and it would require a call to India, where the company’s computer code is crunched.

Whether that Tampa employee ever called India is unknown, since no one from Verizon ever called Dr. Libshitz back.

But, he did receive a letter several days later. A letter from the company’s Everett, WA office confirming that his name was far too dirty to be allowed as a username.

“If I can’t use my own name, I’m going to stay with my AT&T dial-up. The hell with them,” Libshitz concluded – and returned his Verizon DSL kit.

Fortunately for the good doctor, his tale of woe made it to the desk of a Philly.com writer, who was somehow able to jump past the endless buffer of telephone support to an actual Verizon representative. After hearing the couple’s nightmare story of attempted customerhood, Sharon B. Schaffer observed that although the company does have a policy against allowing “questionable language in e-mail addresses,” it can also “ make exceptions based on reasonable requests.”

Having a name like Libshitz is, in Schaffer’s opinion, “reasonable.”

More to the point, as Schaffer admits, “Your name is your identity. He’s had this his entire life.”

By now doctor Libshitz and his wife may have Verizon DSL, as well – but not without a few grumbles on their part.

“These people have no trouble putting me in their phone book. They send me mail with that name, they send me a bill routinely, and they cash my checks with Libshitz on it. They have offended me.”

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to actually talk to an official company representative these days – especially one who speaks English as their native language.