When I finally found a way to contact Verizon through “email” (really a form to fill out), I typed out my complaint. I have separate internet and telephone accounts; for some reason, the payments I try to make to one account are being applied to the other account, so one account is overdue and the other has credits.

I wrote a detailed email, using quotation marks around the menu items I had clicked, punctuating contractions appropriately, and adding a parenthetical aside or two (that’s just the way I write).

I was surprised to get this message when I tried to send the email:

So, I had to go back through my text, removing the offending “special characters.”

How insulting.