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It's 7 o'clock.
You're listening to WBAI-New York.
Coming up in the next hour, a special documentary, Verizon, What Went Wrong?
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
It's a very special episode of Off The Hook.
Good evening, everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
We're joined tonight by Mike Redhack, DotRet.
Hello.
Are we waking you up there?
All right, Jim.
Hello.
And Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And joining us also tonight, all the way from where?
Well, Amsterdam.
Okay.
Bicycle mark.
Well, you come from so many different places sometimes.
I know.
It's second only to Mitch.
But welcome, everybody.
And I'm back.
I was touring around the country, driving cars and taking trains
and airplanes and things like that.
But nothing compares to the excitement that I've been having over the past week,
starting with basically moments after the show ended last week.
Wow.
I don't know.
I'm not one to be paranoid.
You know that.
I'm not.
I don't believe you.
Why are you scoffing, Redhack?
Never.
Never.
No, that's definitely scoffing.
I'm not.
You think I'm paranoid?
Emmanuel.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I've gotten Dr. Johnny Fever's infamous statement that,
when everybody's out to get you, paranoia is just good thinking.
That's right.
That's right.
And Kurt Cobain said something like that, too.
He stole it.
Yeah.
The point is, it's not just one target here.
It's a lot of us.
It's a lot of us that are kind of in the spotlight, I guess,
people that are being watched all the time.
We talk about this.
We talk about this week after week, and we see it happen.
We see it happen to people we know.
We see it happen to people we don't know.
And Off the Hook has sort of become a focal point for that.
And over the last few weeks, and actually the last couple of years,
with the whole WikiLeaks thing
and various other controversial incidents that have been going on,
kind of the hacker world has been in the crosshairs of the mainstream.
So it's not entirely surprising that somebody with power
would take it upon themselves to do something about it,
to maybe silence the voices that are a bit controversial,
a bit annoying to them.
Bernadette, I think you know what I'm talking about.
We've had incidents like this in the past
where our efforts have been stymied by somebody
who has maybe just a little bit too much power.
And it just sometimes seems to go beyond the realm of coincidence.
Yeah.
Well, exactly, especially if you don't believe
that there are any such things as coincidences,
which I do, actually.
I do believe that there are sometimes coincidences, but not always.
But I don't know if we want to get specific
about some of the things that you're referring to
or that you're remembering.
No, that's okay.
We'll talk about the current conspiracy theories.
Yeah, because we're still afraid of the people that did it to us that time.
It would be hard, Emanuel, to get more vague.
It would be hard to get more vague,
but we also don't need any more trouble.
We don't.
But let's just say that when you have people
sitting on lots of bandwidth
that have control over many, many machines,
communications networks,
and lots of times they're people we know,
people that we hang out with,
a lot of damage can be done,
a lot of revenge can be sought.
In fact, sometimes we see these wars waged on IRC
where you think it's just a bunch of kids,
but actually sometimes it's people in their 30s and 40s
going around shutting down domains and countries
and things like that.
It's the nature of the Internet,
something that we have to accept, I suppose.
Are you telling me, Emanuel,
that ISPs should be engaging in network-neutral practices?
Well, it would be nice.
It would be nice.
I was speaking to more than just you, though,
but yeah, I'm glad you got the message.
We should definitely be encouraging that kind of thing.
Anyway, to get to the point,
I'd like to just open up the hour to our listeners mostly
because I'm sure they have a lot of stories.
It's not just all about us,
but basically right after the show last week
something happened to our connection.
Not our website.
Our website was never affected by this
because it's hosted completely differently,
but our communications,
our way of speaking to each other,
email, things like that,
that was effectively shut down
by just simply having the connection severed.
We reported this immediately as soon as it happened.
Basically, for the last seven days,
we've just been going back and forth with Verizon,
and they keep coming up with different,
different explanations,
quote-unquote explanations as to what was happening.
Well, some kind of cable cut.
All right, now it's a trunk line that's out.
Now it's the weekend.
We don't do anything on the weekend.
Hey, we came to your facility, but you weren't there.
We didn't tell you we were coming,
and then when we were there,
they didn't come when they said they were going to come
or call or anything like that.
Well, there was a problem with the central office.
And this is a quote from a tech.
It was wired all wrong.
Central office was wired all wrong.
And it was wired wrong,
and because it was wired wrong,
it was giving the wrong information.
Maybe a telephone tech could tell me if this is true.
If a central office is wired wrong,
does that mean it's going to tell the techs
that there's a cable outage
700 feet out in the street?
I mean, that's creative wiring, I think.
That's creative wiring, I think.
I'm sure it's possible
there's some wrong configuration of wiring
that could cause it.
Interestingly enough,
I was in the Museum of Communications in Seattle
when I got this amazing phone call.
It was a perfect place to talk to this guy.
I said, really?
I think he really didn't want to stay on the phone
for much longer because I was asking too many probing questions.
And basically, he just said,
I have nothing to do with that.
He really wanted to get it over with
as quickly as possible.
But even that wasn't enough to get the problem fixed
until sometime today.
I actually had to set foot in the city
as soon as I did that.
It's like high noon or something.
Hey, Emmanuel's back in town.
You better get that connection back.
I know I strike fear into people sometimes,
but usually not powerful people,
just the non-powerful people.
But wow, yes, a week without service.
Now, that's something.
And what everyone says is,
we've gotten so many letters.
And by the way, I want to thank everybody.
Everybody for tweeting about this.
And Twitter does come in handy for things like this.
Everybody from the folks at LulzSec
to Will Wheaton, to all kinds of people
that just stepped in and spread the word around.
Millions of people knew about this.
I was walking down the street before
and a total stranger came up to me and said,
hey, how's the thing with Verizon going?
I mean, this is incredible.
New York City, you just walk down the street
and people are aware of what's going on.
It's been severed for a week, but it is cool
when you can get the word out despite that.
Now, I know things have happened to listeners
regarding the phone company,
regarding Verizon over the years.
Bernie, you used to work for Verizon, didn't you?
Well, no, I actually used to work for 9X.
You used to work for 9X.
9X became Bell Atlantic.
Bell Atlantic became Verizon.
Read your Bible.
In fact, many of us might have worked for Verizon
at some point without realizing it, too.
If you worked for GTE ever,
you know, because they merged with them.
And I'm not sure who else, but they're huge.
They're everywhere.
And it's, you know,
they've got a lot of power.
They've got too much power.
And we intend to sever all contacts with them
because this kind of thing just doesn't fly
and we hope other people do the same.
But mostly we want to find out what happened.
We want to find out. We want to not forget about this.
We want to get answers.
But it's very hard to get those kinds of answers.
You just hit a wall of bureaucracy.
So we're open to suggestion.
If anyone wants to help us file legal papers,
we'll be happy to do that, too,
because this kind of thing certainly demands
some kind of response.
A lot was lost.
A lot of email was lost.
A lot of activity.
We've fallen way behind on a bunch of things.
Articles that were sent to us, we didn't get them.
People have been trying to
talk to our ordering department.
Can't get through to them either.
It's a real distraction,
moving around the country,
doing all kinds of other things.
It definitely gets in the way.
But we're back now.
Just got back today and it's
a lot of catching up to do.
But anyway, that's what we've been up to.
And we like to take phone calls.
Another result of this,
we don't have very much material
because we couldn't get access to the server.
Oh, that's the other thing I wanted to mention
is that the reason, you might ask,
Emmanuel, why in God's name would they even care?
We know,
it's pretty much well known,
it's been known since
a while, years,
that we have somewhat controversial people on our site
that communicate securely on our site
because when you're
talking from one account to another,
when you're sending email from one place to another
on a machine, it doesn't have to leave the machine.
It doesn't have to go out to the internet
and clear text or anything like that.
When you have a chat session
going from one person to another
and it's not on IRC or something insecure,
it's very hard
for the authorities to listen in.
We have had people like Adrian Lamo,
we have people from LulzSec,
yes we do, on our machine,
people communicating and it's secure
and there's no way people can listen in.
And that's really, really good.
And with things that have been going on in the news lately,
that's a real
pain for the authorities.
So I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not saying that
this is all the result of
some kind of a plan to
make things difficult, but
it definitely isn't right. It definitely
isn't normal. And something should be done
about it. So that's
pretty much everything that I have.
Now we have another 50
minutes to fill. I mean, I can
talk about other things. Yeah.
I want to give our phone number out. 212-209-2900
if people have anything else
they'd like to add. I know we do have
updates regarding the whole LulzSec
story and all that.
These guys even disbanded to try and
help us out. They said, look, guys,
if it'll get your account back, we'll
just stop this. We'll stop this and
maybe Verizon will
forgive us and give...
They're such nice people. They really are.
And
they sacrificed a life of glory
and movies and things like that. They could have had
it all, but to get our connection back
they said, we'll just cave. We'll cave.
We won't do this anymore. We know and we've met our
match. Someone's going to take you seriously
one of these days. A lot of trouble for the results.
It hasn't happened yet.
But, no, seriously,
one thing I learned from this, actually,
I knew this already, but when it comes down to
it, the people that you want to trust,
hackers, corporations,
I'll go with the hackers, you know.
I mean, the things that LulzSec has done
over the years, over the months,
the 50 days that they've been around,
pales in comparison to the kind of
overwhelming power that if you
piss off some major corporation, what they can do to
you and what they have done. This is just one
small example. There are all kinds of things we could get into.
Yeah, I will say, like,
just things like what LulzSec
did do,
in my opinion, I've already seen some benefit of
it, just like looking at a lot of the
stories coming across CNN
on the American
network as opposed to the international.
You're seeing lots of
reporters on there talking about
customers actually taking
care of their own security,
and I've heard mention of things like the companies
which have had the data that have been
leaked, you know,
or broken into, that, you know, some of the
burden actually falls on them.
That's true. Bernie, you had something.
Is your goal, Emmanuel,
to find out what really happened,
who was really responsible for this outage?
Well, if I can take the truth, yes.
I'm going to try. I'm going to try until it gets so
scary that I have to turn away.
I can't imagine that if
there were shenanigans
behind the scenes, which is
entirely possible, that whoever
has asked about it,
they're going to actually tell the truth and say
they did that. But you could really
make some people sweat, but it would have cost some
money to file
a lawsuit and subpoena
people and have them deposed under
oath and force them to commit the felony
of perjury
to deny what they've done.
But you know they're going to deny it anyway.
Well, we just need a lawyer to do all this for us, and hopefully
somebody will step up. Unfortunately, the average person
can't afford this, and neither can you, I'm sure.
Well, neither can any of us.
But that's the point.
The point is that if this were to happen to Amazon
or Yahoo or somebody like that,
there certainly would be ramifications.
Even if it went out for 15 minutes,
it would be headlines everywhere.
Small businesses, regular people,
this happens to them,
and not just because they're controversial.
People have said to me,
Emmanuel's got nothing to do with
the magazine, with the radio show,
anything. This is just sheer Verizon
incompetence. Well, God help us all if
that is something that we are supposed to get used
to, because to have
something just go out for an entire
week, have people expediting
trouble tickets and all that,
and still not be able to figure it out
when the problem is definitely somewhere on their
end. This is the phone
company. This is what they're supposed to be doing.
I could understand it if Mr. Softee
or something couldn't figure out where the cable
was, but this is Verizon.
They should know.
If it were the police department,
it was the NYPD's internet connection.
Let's not get them on us, too.
I can imagine it would be fixed a whole lot
faster.
The phone company has a lot of
really sophisticated test equipment
to find out where something is
miswired. They have what are called
time-domain reflectometers that can echo
back almost exactly where, to see
where things are
connected wrong, where they should have been.
All that stuff is back at the central office, and they have
portable stuff. They didn't need to
make the excuse that they couldn't
meet up with you at the building
sort of thing, because obviously
it was either a
central office issue or an outside issue.
We determined very quickly that the problem was not
at our facility, but even
so, if you want to walk around
yourself and look it over, go right ahead. Be our
guest, but you've got to let us know you're coming
in the first place, and you also have to show up when you say
you're going to show up, or at least call
or something like that, and they did none of that. So that just tells
me they weren't really all that interested in it.
Voltaire, you're here. Welcome.
Trouble with the MTA?
Well, it's
been a crazy week.
It's been a crazy week, but it's over now.
All right. 212-209-2900
is our telephone number.
Mike, do you have some updates on other stories?
Something really shocking happened
this week, and that is that the Supreme Court issued
a sane decision.
There was a law in California
that said that you may not
sell certain video games
to people under the age of 18,
and the Supreme Court
said that that law is unconstitutional,
and among the reasons
they gave are such
crazy ideas
that video games
are a form of speech,
and are thus protected by the First
Amendment, and they also said that
parents do not have the right
to control everything their children
see, and
it's just, you know, there's nothing
in this, really, that I read the decision
and there was almost nothing I disagreed with,
which is highly unusual.
That's highly unusual for almost anything, actually,
not just the Supreme Court. Especially the Supreme
Court, though.
Can we say it's good news, then? Can we do that?
If you like video games, especially good news.
Yeah, I suppose. All right, well, that's something.
That's pretty cool.
Anything else? Scalia wrote it, too.
Wow, okay.
I'm going to
take a look at some listener mail. This actually
is from last week. I haven't had a chance
to get online because of all the chaos,
so we'll have some more
catching up to do, and then let's take some phone calls.
I want to hear other people's problems with Verizon.
I think it's fair that we open up the phones to our listeners
to see if
what we have is something unusual.
Maybe it's just run-of-the-mill. Maybe it's something that
affects a lot of people. Hey, guys, I was listening
to this show this morning, couldn't help but laugh,
and you all mentioned that he was getting random emails
from people thinking that they own his
Gmail address just because they share the first
initial and last name. I have that same problem.
In fact, I got a few emails from Travelocity
giving me some lady's itinerary for a trip
to Florida. Then several minutes later, I got
another email giving me her username and password.
If I was a real jerk, I guess I could have
canceled her trip. Boy, that would have been messed up.
Sergio, thank you for not doing that,
and thanks for sharing that with us.
Yeah, be careful
what you use as your Gmail address.
It might not actually be yours. You might just think
that it's yours. I wonder if we got her
e-tickets, too. There's all
kinds of things you can get if you just give out
an email address. Maybe if the TSA people
weren't paying enough attention, you could just
go on the flight. Yeah,
that's true, too.
Let's see what else.
Why does everyone keep
saying Emmanuel is the one who said one in four
hackers are informants? I could have
sworn he just reported that someone else said that
when I listened to this show.
Yeah, that's
true. That became
fact when the Guardian
reported that story, and it was something that
we quoted on a panel
last July at the
Next Hope conference.
It's kind of strange. Walter?
I thought it was from a special Guardian investigation.
It was a special Guardian investigation?
I don't know. They confirmed
it.
I did say it, but I was
simply reiterating what was already said.
I didn't come up with the phrase.
All right, you know what? Let's take some phone calls.
It's very hard to balance
a Mac on this console. It keeps
threatening to fall on the ground, and I don't want
that on top of everything else we've been through this week.
All right, 212-209-2900.
Let's see what Verizon
issues other people have. Good evening, Yaron.
Off the hook. Hello. Hi, what's up?
I came yesterday. I've been
having a lovely day outside.
I opened the mail. I got out of the mailbox.
I got a nice thing from Verizon,
and they raised my bill
about $21, right?
And I've got a special
closed deal
that they sent and offered me this thing
where I get the DSL online,
and I get the
unlimited phone calls all over the
continental United States, including Alaska.
So I've
already received two bills at
maybe $66.
I think it's 90-something cents. I have
to believe them.
One time, everything was cool.
But this bill comes.
It's inexplicably
$87. Now, they said
this was a simple thing. It was going to be a
simple consistency all the way through.
I mean, there was not going to be anything
raised. It was just going to be one
cost for this service,
which they locked me in for two years. I agree.
Now, all of a sudden, everything,
you know, it's like I'm suddenly going from
Verizon to Cheerio and Dunkin'.
And it's ridiculous.
I haven't called them yet, because I'm so pissed off.
I've got to calm down so I can make sense out of it.
I've looked over my bills. There seems to be no reason.
And the worst part about this, I haven't even used
the service. I've had this thing for too much.
I haven't even used the goddamn, excuse me,
the
internet thing or anything. I haven't even called
anybody, really.
I'm charged $20-something dollars.
I think they've got something going. I don't know what's the problem with them.
Two things.
Firstly, I mean, obviously, you should call them and find out
what the situation is, but
if you signed a contract or something
with a certain rate and they change it,
basically, they're not,
you know, you can tell them that
this has adversely affected you, which it sounds like it has.
And they can't hold you to the
contract if they change the rate.
So, you know,
I would definitely communicate with them. And the same is true
with cell phone companies. If they change certain
rates, you can get out of your contract, because
they've changed something.
And all you have to do is claim that it
has adversely affected you.
All right. I appreciate that.
I just needed somebody...
I mean, it just freaked me out completely.
I was really trying to...
One thing I think is important also to point out,
and this is something that we've
held to throughout this whole crisis of ours,
the people you speak to on the phone,
they're not the ones who did it.
You just sort of have to...
It's really hard. That's why TVs
were invented, so you could yell at them.
But when you get the people on the
phone, I think you get a lot further
if you're clear, polite,
somewhat
whimsical as far as telling
your story. Get them on your side.
And when you get somebody in the corporation on your side,
there's a lot more you can find out.
That's why I didn't call them right away. You can see how I am
right now. I'm freaked out.
Now, I know I've got to calm down. I know I've got to
be more circumspect about this.
But I appreciate your help anyway.
I just wanted to tell you something, because when it came, I said,
perfect. My boys are in there.
You take it easy now.
Good luck in your thing, too.
Thanks very much. I'm sure there are a lot of stories like this out there.
212-209-2900.
What has Verizon done to you today? We'd like to know.
It's really something. Of course,
other phone companies, too, I'm sure do all kinds
of crazy things. Bernie, I know you have stories
with all kinds of phone companies.
I think that most of them suck to varying
degrees, but some suck more
than others, and I think Verizon is
among the worst.
We're not a Verizon customer.
People say, why don't you just switch?
Here's the thing. We're customers of a company
called Hurricane Electric. They provide
DSL service.
They, in turn,
get service from a company called
Megapath, which interacts
with Verizon. Already, you're dealing with
three different companies, but it always
comes down to Verizon, in the end, doing
something in the street, cutting a cable,
or miswiring something.
These poor people
from these other companies are on the phone,
on hold for an hour and a half,
with Verizon waiting to get answers.
They're as
frustrated as we are, and that
is the way the whole system is set
up. That's what happens when
one group controls the infrastructure.
People think there's competition. There really
isn't. Try getting an
SDSL or a T1
line without using Verizon somewhere
along the way, or without having them
be able to mess things up for you.
There are a few wireless services
in big cities, but you need
line-of-sight to certain tall buildings.
Sometimes you can get
business-grade
service over the cable,
but it's not always possible.
Didn't we use a company called Rainbow a couple
years ago for one of the HOPE conferences?
Maybe more than one, even. There's no
Verizon involvement with them.
That's just, you point to a building
or something like that, and you get...
You have a thing, and you point it at their antenna,
and magic happens.
Verizon tries to block the signal by
throwing things in the way, but they really can't do it effectively.
They could release a storm of pigeons or something.
Look at that switchboard. That's a full switchboard.
A lot of angry Verizon
customers out there. All right, let's get to
them. 212-209-2900. Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up. Go ahead.
You've got to speak up, though. That's the deal.
Hello?
Are you speaking on a Verizon phone?
Yes, you're on the air.
Okay, thank you so much for taking my call.
No problem. I'll be as quick as
possible.
My Verizon contract is going to expire
on August 3rd.
I feel like I'm having a celebration or something,
but I want from you
guys to suggest
anything
after that I want to get out of them. I just want
a simple phone. I don't
care about internet on the phone. I don't care about any
other stuff. I know I see all this. Yeah, good luck.
Good luck not getting internet,
not getting a camera, not getting all these
bells and whistles on your damn phone.
It's almost impossible to get just a phone
service now. Get a landline,
you know, and a long cord.
I have a suggestion. Go ahead, Bernie.
Bernie has a suggestion for you.
Thanks for calling in. You say
you have Verizon
wireless service now, but your contract is
up soon? Yeah, in August 3rd.
You don't
have to renew your contract.
You can just keep the phone
you have and continue with them on
a month-to-month basis, or do you want
to get rid of Verizon altogether?
Well, I want to lower
my bill, and I feel all these other companies
out there... Bernie, he wants to get rid
of Verizon altogether. Everybody calling in, everybody
I've seen today wants to get rid of Verizon altogether.
That's a given.
The next
worst thing to being on a Verizon contract is
to be a Verizon customer on a month-to-month basis,
but at least you're not locked into them for the
next few years if you stay with them
until you decide what you want to do.
You don't have to jump ship
immediately. Take your time.
Do your research. There are a lot of
wireless phone companies out there, but
you need to find out for sure whether their
service works well where you need to use it.
What you can do,
especially if you're not looking to get a smartphone,
because a lot of the hooks in terms of
getting you to sign another contract is that
the cell phone provider subsidizes
your smartphones. They give it to you
for $100 when retail it would cost $600
or something. But since you're not
looking for that kind of phone, you could just go
and buy a phone retail.
I don't think that
plain old telephones are that expensive.
Or you could find...
There are lots of places to get phones, right?
Online, etc.
And once you have a phone
and you go to
a cell phone provider, provided
the phone works with their network,
then you can just sign up
for a month-to-month
plan with them. It doesn't have to
be Verizon. It could be anybody. Also,
you could go to the
carrier store and ask them,
I don't want to sign a contract. I just
want a simple phone. What do you have?
And I'm sure they'll have it. Again, the phone
will probably cost more money than it would
if you got it
without a contract. But if it's not a smartphone, it's not
going to be that expensive.
You can buy a used phone on eBay.
It'll work with any network.
Well, it has to work...
There are different technologies.
You can find a phone that was
on, you know,
whatever, and just buy it used
for very cheap on eBay
and just use that without having to
pay a huge price.
But what if I want to keep the number that I have
even though I switch to another company?
If you go to a different company,
first of all,
don't cancel your Verizon
account. What you want to do is you want to go to
the other phone company first. Tell them
that you have a number
that you want to port to them,
and then they'll initiate it. And at that
point, you know, if it's after your
Verizon contract has expired,
what will happen is that the new phone
company will set up your number and
cancel your Verizon thing. So Verizon,
that will automatically happen. But do not
cancel your service with Verizon first.
Go to the other phone company first.
Tell them you want to port the number, and it's very simple from there.
Okay, we do have other customers on the line. We do have
to get to them in the order that they called us.
So let's... Well, you're doing more
than they would do. That's for damn sure.
Thanks for that call. Good luck with
all your problems.
Let me just ask, since this has come
up, does anyone in the room have Verizon as
a carrier? All right, because... I do.
I'm sorry, Mike. You're going to have to leave.
We're making
it a rule that people who listen to the show have to
cut Verizon from their lives, all right?
It's for your own good. It's going to be
hard. We'll be there with you.
We'll hold your hand in the room while you get
cut off from them and all that kind of thing,
but it's going to have to happen.
This includes Verizon Wireless, which is what I have. Of course.
Anything with the word Verizon in it.
Verizon Wireless is only half owned by Verizon.
It's very confusing. That doesn't matter. Then
call something else wireless, using
that word. What's the other half
that owns them? Vodafone. Vodafone Wireless.
Nothing says Vodafone in this country, right?
Vodafone is Dutch, right?
I am a Vodafone customer.
There you go. It's all over Europe.
It rolls off the tongue. It's so nice. Vodafone. Vodafone.
You mentioned the other strategy you can take.
It's a bit more extreme, but I did it years ago.
I never told you guys why I left the United States,
but if you leave the country, no Verizon.
That's why you left the United States? Because of Verizon?
Really? It actually depends on the company
now. Certain companies' policies
are that they won't... I know that
for example, T-Mobile, if you have a contract
with them, they will only let you out of it
if you move out of the country, if you're in the military.
Or if you're dead, if you
die, and someone
calls and says, by the way, this person is no longer
alive, that's one way to do it.
They may ask for proof.
I do want to...
I do want to get to the calls.
You're calling in now, and you're getting
disconnected after ringing for about 20 times.
You know who's doing that to you? Verizon.
Verizon is disconnecting you after 20.
Just so that the hate boils up in your blood.
Does WBAI have Verizon?
We don't. We have something else.
Verizon routes to us,
and they're the ones cutting off.
T-Mobile's policy is that they won't
let someone out if they move out of the country.
But what about AT&T's policy?
I don't know about... I just happen to know for a fact
that T-Mobile's policy is changing.
Because T-Mobile is going away.
AT&T's going to buy T-Mobile or something like that.
They'll probably follow up with the same thing.
Again, there are other ways to get out of contracts ahead of time.
If they change your rates, even if they change...
You know those little fees on there that are like, so-and-so,
this tax, that tax?
What it is is the phone company
passing the tax on to you.
So technically, they're setting that rate,
and if they change it, you can get out of your contract.
I've heard that if you don't get service
in your place of residence,
if they don't cover your place of residence,
that's reason to get out of a contract.
That's generally the reasoning for if you move out of the country, right?
Because they can't provide you service anymore.
So actually, I don't know if
the T-Mobile policy has ever been tested.
I haven't had any reason to get rid of them.
So which are the non-sucky phone companies?
We've talked a lot about
how to get rid of a phone company,
but unless you wish to live without telephony,
which is looking like a better and better option,
you'll have to just sign up with another company.
Which is the non-sucky one?
The noise of crickets.
I remember the good old days of Ma Bell,
but of course, I guess that's technically Verizon now anyways.
Yeah, all right.
I don't have a time machine.
I have a little bit of money that I can spend.
But if you did have a time machine,
it would sound so much better.
And I just wanted to say again,
every school kid in the world should go to
the Museum of Communications in Seattle
and look at all the systems
and panel switches and crossbars
and things like that.
And you can actually use them and talk on the phone
and you realize how clear it all was
and how it actually worked.
And wow, what a system that was
and how bad it sounds today.
What if we just make our own network
of strings and tin can?
You might be better off.
We'll be doing that this summer in August.
Do you want to tell us something about that?
Well, this summer it's coming around again,
and we'll have our own GSM network.
I say we, I actually have nothing to do with it.
But if they ever needed me to push buttons,
I'd go there.
At HAR, there were two phone networks.
There was a GSM network and there was a DEC phone system.
Two different phone networks in the same hacker camp.
Are they just going to have the GSM one?
Both will continue.
I'm pretty sure the supporters wouldn't let them go away.
Okay, we have so many calls.
We have so many calls.
We really should get to these people
who are very angry and want to tell their story.
Let's get through as many as we can.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, my email is out on Yahoo, and also...
You're a regular call to every single calling show
that exists on this station for the last 30 years.
So I'm sure your email address can get out somewhere else.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Hi, I think you'll be interested
that I'm 85 years old,
and Verizon gave me a story you had
only in three weeks.
It took them three weeks to fix
what they kept saying with the cable.
I got to tell you, I don't think they fixed it.
Listen to that noise.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Well, that's the sound of Verizon,
just for people who don't believe us.
I called them to tell them
I'm not going to pay the bill.
They said, oh, well, you have to pay the bill.
I said, well, I'm not going to.
So after several discussions with the supervisor,
they said, okay, we'll waive the bill for this month.
Yeah, but then they'll be back next month
with their hands out.
We have to find alternatives
One thing people can do, obviously,
is threaten to go to their state's
public utilities commission,
public service commission, whatever it happens to be called,
and expedite it as much as possible.
We're certainly going down that road.
But it does result in something.
It doesn't solve the problem.
It doesn't keep it from happening again.
But if everybody did that,
every time there was some kind of a problem
that could have been avoided,
I think they'd be held accountable a lot more.
And I think companies should be held accountable
when they're serving the public.
This is a perfect example of how you need regulation
of certain things like this.
I mean, this is an industry, right,
where there's no real alternatives in general.
I mean, they have a monopoly
because they have the infrastructure.
You can get service through other companies,
but it's all traveling through the same infrastructure.
So, I mean, it's good that it's regulated,
but, you know, how far does that go?
All right.
212-209-2900. Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Can I ask a quick question on the subject?
Please, go ahead.
Yes.
How much is the grace period
on the MetroCard transfer?
Above 2 hours.
You're asking us about a MetroCard?
What do you need to know?
MetroCard transfer.
How much is the grace period?
Oh, what's the grace period of a MetroCard?
I think it's about 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Thanks a lot.
But it varies.
The timekeeping isn't accurate to the minute.
He's out the door.
Let's hope he makes it.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hopefully sticking to the topic. Good evening.
Yes.
My issue is not actually Verizon,
but it is a similar problem
that I've been having with Vonage,
a voice over IP provider.
The problem that I've been experiencing
over the past four weeks
is my outgoing calls,
they can't hear me,
or I can't hear the incoming feedback audio,
but the outgoing audio does work fine.
Incoming calls are perfect.
And I've been working with them for four weeks.
Every time I talk to somebody,
they hang up on me.
They come up with some excuse to get me off the phone
saying they'll call me back and never do.
They've escalated IT tickets.
The IT tickets, they acknowledge
that they're getting my responses by email,
but they're not doing anything with.
So it's basically the same thing.
You're not an unpopular person, right?
Because everything you've said points to someone
who people are just trying to avoid.
Yeah.
I think it's just a little too much
of a technical problem on their end
that they can't figure out how to take care of,
and they're trying to avoid the situation because of it.
You think?
I mean, I don't use Vonage.
I did many years ago,
but maybe other people have had similar instances.
Are you calling us on the Vonage now?
No, I'm actually on a cell phone.
All right, that explains why it sounds terrible, I guess.
No, I think that might be a bad line on our system.
Oh, we have a bad line.
It's true.
This cable, if I touch it, the lights go off.
See that noise?
I blame that on Verizon.
See, I'm willing to say when I'm wrong.
I think maybe this isn't Verizon now
if he's calling on something else.
I think it's the cable going in.
It could be the cable going in.
All right, don't touch that cable, Mike.
I didn't touch it.
There's not a whole lot of options
other than replace the service.
Threaten to leave them.
I mean, that generally seems to get people
to start paying attention.
I'm paying for service, which is not being provided.
You know?
Well, set up an alternative
so that you know exactly what you're going to do
if they continue to be nonresponsive.
Find the relevant regulators
and threaten to go to them, like you said.
Right, see, in our case, it's a little bit more difficult
because of all the different things,
you know, that are always involved
as far as getting service in the first place.
You can't just leave.
Even if you're not a customer of Verizon,
you have to use Verizon sometimes.
So that's the problem that we're trying to deal with.
I also don't think that this falls
under any kind of regulation
because it's not a public utility.
And that's a problem with cell phones.
Cell phones not being regulated
the same way that landlines are.
So a lot more can be gotten away with
and void companies, too.
There are problems.
And none of this is a coincidence.
It's the result of heavy lobbying efforts
by these large companies.
They promise that with less regulation
there'll be more freedom of choice,
more competition, and service will get better.
And, well, it's not working.
Yeah, this is definitely an indication of this.
Look at this switchboard, completely full.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Yes, go ahead.
Hey, it's Patty. How you doing?
Yeah, I know, long time.
Hey, I got the Verizon question here.
I'm talking about landline and DSL.
You know, you always look on the...
you get an advertisement
or something comes and it's like
half the price as a good customer
of 20 years is paying.
Is there any way to get that cheap price?
Change your name?
Do you have a trick, Mike?
Well, sometimes if you call them and say
you sent me this offer, I want to take advantage of it.
It doesn't always work, but sometimes it works.
They send you the damn offer, you know.
You should definitely throw that in their face.
I mean, I keep getting offers for
Fios to the home, and whenever I ask about it,
they say, well, it's not available in your area yet.
So why are they sending me advertisements
for it to the address where it's not available?
They continue doing this. If nothing else,
it's a waste of paper.
There's a way to do this.
There's a way to do this, Patty.
You can find a
competitive local exchange carrier,
a so-called SELEC, like another
wireline phone company,
and you can dump Verizon
and move over to the other company.
Just make sure you don't sign a contract with them.
Just say you want to make sure
that it works before you sign any contract.
And then you can go back
to Verizon and get the deal.
Uh-huh.
And then they are required...
The FCC, in one of their better moves,
has required number portability.
So you can take your phone number
from Verizon, who is the local exchange carrier,
to a competitive local exchange carrier.
There's probably several in Manhattan.
But I would try calling Verizon first
because that's definitely the easier route.
Sure. And it's a great way to spend a day,
too, just to run hold with Verizon.
I mean, it's funny. You're a good customer
for 20 years. Do you get the deal?
No. Somebody else. And the other thing
is that they want you to
call them to, you know...
I remember I was paying, like,
$30 more than I am now, and I
called them and I said, hey, what's going on?
Why don't you tell me these things?
This is what you're supposed to call.
It's like, who wants people calling all the time?
You know, it's the opposite.
You think they don't want to hear from people.
But here, Verizon wants you
to call them to get a better deal.
Yeah. Or not.
All right. Listen, we're going to move on.
But great hearing from you again, Patty.
Thank you. Bye.
All right. Take care.
Let's move over here. Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
In fact, I think that you're much too trusting
if you don't think somebody spent the week
putting monitoring devices on those lines.
Well, thanks for that.
I'm not sure how I feel, but okay.
If that's the case, it doesn't speak
very highly of them that it takes them a whole week
to put monitoring devices.
I mean, it's just a computer these days.
They should be able to flip a bit, do it instantly.
Well, I mean, we can assume it might have been
under some kind of court order, and then there were
the legal machinations and whatnot.
And, you know, just as a matter of record,
any other phone company would have sold you down the river
just as fast.
Well, this is the kind of thing that happens
when there is no court order, when someone wants to do
something despite the fact that it's not legal
and they have the access.
Oh, what if I trip over this wire?
Well, they're going to be disconnected,
and they're not going to be able to figure this out for a week.
People do things like this. It does happen.
And maybe it's not a corporate policy.
It probably isn't a corporate policy.
It could be some rogue element within.
Whatever it is, it's not normal.
Yes.
Okay.
Well, that sounds good to me. Thanks.
212-209-2900.
And, again, if you have sent mail to anybody
at 2600.com, including OTH
at 2600.com over the last week,
please send it again. We probably haven't gotten it
because Verizon cut us for
an entire week.
Yeah, what an amazing time that was.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, Emmanuel? Yes, go ahead.
Hi.
I had a big problem with Verizon. First of all, you know,
to get through to them is crazy, right?
For a month, I had problems with my phone
and my internet. The only thing that finally
got them to come and really fix it
was my brother works for a big
soda company, wrote him a letter
and mentioned shareholders, and I had
five guys at my house, and I was fixing the day.
Wow.
And that's what they listen to.
That's okay. Well, you know, we'll mention that
we have Club Mate, and we
I don't think they're going to care.
All right. Thanks. Thanks for the advice.
And good evening. You're on
Off The Hook.
Hello. Yes, go ahead.
Regarding calling
WBAI, first off, I'm
calling long distance, and I probably paid
a dollar at least because
when Verizon cuts you off
at 20 minutes, at 20 rings,
they charge you
as if it was a completed call.
They charge you?
I've actually taken this to the Public Service
Commission, and the Public Service Commission
says they're legitimate in doing it.
I don't believe that.
The Public Service Commission in New York said this?
Yes. Yes, absolutely. I couldn't believe it.
I have the documentation on paper
from the Public Service Commission, because I've got
these lines when I try to
call WBAI, and I get cut off
after 20 minutes. And you're sure
that no one has picked up? No.
No, it's when you get the fast busy, when you
get timed out after 20 rings.
I get like a whole row of one-minute charges
on my bill
to 209-2900.
You should hang up after 20 rings.
Now, the funny, you know, I think I've done that,
and it actually still charges
if it completes to the ring.
The Public Service Commission said to me
then they have the right to charge
even if you hang up
if it's a long distance charge.
Bernie, didn't Sprint used to do that a long time ago?
Yes. They were doing that
as soon as...
The other wireless carriers
were, but I know Sprint, you know, many years ago
they started saying the call is completed
when you hear the ring back.
Right. Now let me tell you what happened
to me this week, because this is why I was originally
calling. I had to set up a new
phone line for a business.
So I called up Verizon, and I set
up the appointment for after July 4th
because I'm lying here with a broken leg.
And in the next day, the
phone rings, and it's an automated
recording from Verizon saying that
according to FCC rules
that we have to verify
your order to make sure that the
lineman can come out to your house
and complete your order. So please
stay on the line for an operator.
So then it transfers me, I get a
ring, and then the
ring says, I'm sorry
due to volume, we cannot
answer your call now, and it hangs
up on me. Wow.
And I'm lying here with
a broken leg, and I'm supposed to take down
a telephone number to call
when it was all confirmed before.
So I think the whole company is going
mashugana. Yeah, I think
you've presented enough evidence to prove that
in court, but thanks for the
info. Wow. Let's see if
we can take some more calls, Mike. I think to say they
are going crazy maybe
gives them more credit than they might deserve.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 2122.
I cannot believe how many calls we're getting.
This is unbelievable. This is what we should talk about every week.
Really. Thank you, Verizon, for
inspiring us to talk
about this, because apparently there's a lot
of emotion out there. I don't know.
What do you think is going to happen to our line after tonight's
show if we have a cutoff for a week after
last week's show? We'll just have to find
out. Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
All right.
Verizon Stories. I've been waiting for this for so
long. I have, like, years of
Verizon Stories that we could
make a comedy show out of if it
wasn't so frustrating.
Okay. Well, tell
us just the most recent year,
and we'll go with that.
Stupidly, I
had a Verizon cell phone,
my very first one, and
I signed the contract.
After the contract was done, I mean, it had
been done, like, six months,
and I called
to cancel the service,
and they were, I mean,
to say they were rude, I mean,
the girl was, like, threatening, and I was very
nice and appropriate with her,
and I said, you know, yeah, I want
to cancel the service. What was she threatening
exactly? Well,
you can't do that. You can't
you know, this kind of, you
know, very rude, and, you
know, and I said, I can't do that.
My contract is over.
It's been over for six months. I know
exactly when I signed it. I have
paperwork, and I had to
talk to, like, literally,
I had to keep getting a supervisor on
the phone. They wouldn't put a supervisor on the
phone. Other times,
like, I mean, you don't have your service
for three weeks. I was out
home service for, like, three
months because Verizon
owned the lines,
and the phone company that I
was with at the time couldn't
get Verizon to fix the lines
because, I mean,
that's what they told me, anyway,
but I had never experienced
that with that phone company. They were
excellent. I've never
seen the kind of things that I've seen with
Verizon. I think they're on crack.
It's frustrating.
Yeah, it is very frustrating. I know, but
the thing is, when you get a customer service rep
that says all kinds of crazy things,
either stay on for entertainment's sake or
just come up with an excuse
saying, oh, the dog just crashed through the window, and I got to deal with
that. I'll call back, and call back, get somebody else.
Just reset the machine, and I'm sure
it won't go the same way
because, yeah, there are a lot of
weird people out there that
they don't play by the rules.
I've never seen the kind of
if they call that customer service,
I don't know.
I've never seen the kind of
talk or attitude or
just horrendous
customer service that I have seen
with Verizon. Well, then don't call
1-800-VERIZON because
that way you'll
avoid having any more further pain with them.
Thanks for that, Escapade.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Yes, I'd spoken earlier about
Verizon, or I mean about the Vonage issue.
Yeah, we have a thousand people on
the line, but make it quick.
Yeah, I was just given an update that
I did actually threaten an attorney general complaint
as well as also FCC complaint,
and they completely ignored that.
I am just an average customer with actually a little
less than average usage.
They may ignore it to you, but if you get
the attorney general to actually write a letter,
then they won't ignore that.
If that doesn't work, write letters to newspapers.
Do what you're doing now. Call radio shows.
The word will get out, and if nothing else,
you'll get somebody else to do something. Maybe
that'll go through, but thanks for your call.
And getting the attorney general's office
to write a letter is not actually as hard as it sounds.
No, it's not. It really isn't.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
A gay marriage.
Thank you, Monroe. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
All right.
That's nice, too. It's a slight
improvement over Monroe, but good evening. You're on
Off The Hook. Hey, how's it going? I just have something
quick to add. Probably not as bad as something
that some of your callers have experienced, but
you know, when I finally realized, okay, I need
to have email access on my
cell phone, you know, I travel
a lot, and I couldn't miss so many
emails, then I brought my phone
in, my new phone, and I thought, okay, this
does the trick. And
the representative in the store just kind of
chuckled and just said, you know, this is a
phone, this is one of the series of phones
that's made just to compel you
to buy a smartphone.
I said, oh, well, thanks for that, because
it's a real pain in the neck. It's a very, you know,
dysfunctional sort of
pain in the neck sort of little
gadget. So that's all I wanted
to say, that there's a whole series of phones out there
that's just made to frustrate you, to force
you to buy a smartphone.
All right. Thanks. Thanks for that pearl of
wisdom there. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, good evening. I actually had a
problem with Verizon a few years ago.
New York State actually had a web link
that you can go ahead and complain about telcos and
utilities, and actually it was effective.
Okay. Do you have that website?
I guess it was a couple
years ago, but I'm not sure if Google by now can find it.
But the short story of it, since you're running
out of time, is I actually had a Verizon
truck come onto our property, access a pole
to go ahead and do some work, and they just tore up the property.
The tires never asked for access or
anything else. Oh, dear. So I went
to call and complain to
via the web link I found in New York
State, and I have to go ahead and look for it. I'll make a post
on it in the chat or send it to you
as an email. Yes, send it to us.
Within a few months, I actually got contacted
by somebody with a very high-looking title
in Verizon, apologizing
for what happened, saying that it was actually a
contractor that did it. And the one
guy, he was a
contractor and a Verizon
employee, so I told him I want the Verizon employee
to get a letter in his
jacket. And he did, but then again,
he was retiring within the month. But
they actually, within a couple months, I had somebody come over
and actually repair my yard. Mind you, all he did was
put straw and everything else, but that part
of the lawn grew better than the rest of it.
And it's the thought that counts.
They actually listen to you. But that's
something that shows that you can get through
if you reach the right people
and are persistent. Thanks
for that. That's inspirational.
I wanted to ask you something, because
you live in the Netherlands, and I have
this conversation a number of times
with people in regards to organizing conferences
and things like that. You guys over in Europe,
when you organize a conference, you
work with the phone companies. The phone companies
donate bandwidth to you. You actually
come out of there with
all kinds of
interesting
advancements and
collaborative efforts. In this
country, that is seen as
a virtual impossibility. Is there any
advice you can offer us as to how we can bridge
this gap and start changing the playing
field a little bit? Because, you know,
we've spent the hour trashing
Verizon. I know that's probably not going to do much for our
relations with them in the past, but I think that's pretty much
a ship that's sailed. But
I would sure like to see a world where we can work
together and do really cool things.
I mean, in some countries in Europe,
and most of them, as a matter of fact,
companies such as phone companies are required
to do good deeds
as a percentage of,
for example, I think,
using their income and so on. It's kind of
required. So this may qualify doing
events, perhaps non-for-profit events.
So collaborating in that
sense, that may be a reason. I don't know if
Verizon has any such requirement.
I doubt it.
They do their philanthropy, I guess.
There are a number of companies that
could do something like this. But it's
the mindset here that seems
to have an us-versus-them mentality.
And I know, after an hour like this,
I could be the leading culprit
in that particular game.
But I do think that we need to
work together more. The last thing I'll mention
and the other thing that I was thinking about is I
help organize other events, non-hacker-related
events in the Netherlands. And
what I notice is that we have people, our events
that are 10 years old or whatever they are, we have people
that grew up with us,
didn't used to work for these companies, and then
do. And don't forget where they came
from. Don't forget us. Open
lines of communication. And they,
like you said, if you know somebody from within.
So the interesting thing is we haven't heard from anybody
that works for Verizon.
And that's kind of telling.
Well, that might be an interesting cultural
thing, where people wind up working for a company
over there, and they don't forget their roots.
Here, they do forget their roots.
They're told to sever ties,
to stop whatever practices
they were doing in the past, and maybe
they'd be accepted. So
that could be a part of it.
Well, and particularly in Holland and
some other countries as well, the internet
infrastructure has traditionally been owned
by hackers, which is a big difference.
And owned in the good way.
Yeah.
Perhaps property is theft,
but in the traditional way, anyhow.
You know, I just realized I actually
had a story as well, which
has to do with this week.
Calling some Verizon customers,
I've been noticing strange crackling over the noise
of people that live in a certain area in
New York, whereas I don't seem to have this
problem with anyone else. I remember I was talking
about this actually today.
Crackling? Really?
Crackling to complete service
outage for a week?
Anyway, I used to live off of one of the
train lines that was connected to JFK,
and lots of travelers would come through. I've actually
had
people from South America and people from
other places that
Americans consider developing nations
randomly talk to me about how
bad the phone network is here, and
actually had to complain to random strangers
about this. And I just
thought to myself, wow, this is actually very interesting.
I was talking about those people earlier today.
Actually, is there any part of the infrastructure people will
come up to you and start complaining about? I've noticed
that as well. I've had people waving
brick phones that they had bought
to use while they're in the country saying,
the phone system is horrible.
And we've had people waving bricks at Verizon
buildings lately, too.
We're almost out of time, so any closing
comments or remarks? Bernie, any
advice from you down in Philadelphia?
Well, you have a lot of choices besides
Verizon, so do your research. That's all
I suggest. Okay.
We have 2,600 meetings going on
Oh yeah, Jim, give me that
magazine there. Jim brought in a
particular announcement of the
Hackposium taking place
on Saturday, 4pm
on July
2nd, and the
Hackposium is at the
Flux Factory, 3931
29th Street between 39th and 40th
Avenues.
That sounds kind of confusing, I know. Let's try that one more time.
3931 29th Street
between 39th and 40th Avenue
in Long Island City, Queens. And if
you can get there, that's, you are a
hacker, you've figured it out already. Is that
an address or the encryption key
for decoding an address? I don't know, but that's
go to flux
factory.org
and find out more
about this. But it's taking place this Saturday
at 4pm. It's free.
Also, in addition, on Friday, we
have the 2,600 meetings happening all over
the world, and that's something to look forward
to. Bicycle Mark? And since I'll be speaking
there in the beginning of August,
tickets for the Chaos Communication
Camp 2011 are already
on pre-sale or sale, whatever you call it. Go to
events.ccc.de.
And for the record, it's Chaos Communication
Camp, not Chaos Communications
Camp. I like plural communication. There's no
S in it, and that's true of the Congress as well.
It's singular communication, so
just so you don't wind up at the wrong camp. I still get to
speak there. Yes, and it's
well worth seeing that. I've seen that spectacle
many times. Thanks. Thanks everybody
for being here. And write to us,
oth2600.com. If we haven't upset
Verizon too much, you might actually get through to us. We'll see
you next week.
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Your father's yelling, then that drum machine ain't got no soul
You know we never listen, we think we've seen it all
Like everything we're doing, no one's ever done before
Did you hear what they said?
The rock and roll is dead
Yeah, it's like a zombie, it'll dig itself back up again
Not shooting the signal, but it's fading
Oh, some girls drumming, there's kids out on the radio
Singing, glory days are gone, but everything's okay
Cause we still love our sex and drugs just like the good old days
The kids are disco dancing, they're tired of rock and roll
Your father's yelling, then that drum machine ain't got no soul
The kids are disco dancing, they're tired of rock and roll
Your father's yelling, then that drum machine ain't got no soul
Well, I'm a horrible dancer, I ain't gonna lie
But I'll be damned if that means that I ain't gonna try
Well, I'm a shitty romancer, baby, ain't gonna lie
But I'll be damned if that means that I ain't gonna try
Get up, get up, get up and dance
Get up, get up, get up and dance