Know English When On The Phone

For John, BLUF:  Or, we could change the dictionaries.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

The electric company was late sending out the bills and my wife called them.  Unfortunately, my name is on the account and I have to confirm that I agreed to her talking for us.

The woman from the electric company asked me to "verify my name". So, I waited for her to tell me my name, so I could "verify" it.  You know, as in this definition:

make sure or demonstrate that (something) is true, accurate, or justified: his conclusions have been verified by later experiments | [with clause] : “Can you verify that the guns are licensed?”

Why can't these folks just ask me to give my name and address.  I would be reasonably happy to do so in order to get some service.

I ended up getting unceremoniously dumped onto the Spanish translation line.

However, I am happy to put up with this kind of problem as long as the electric company has built in a lot of redundancy, so I keep getting my electricity notwithstanding problems of earthquakes, weather and sabotage.

Regards  —  Cliff