Can You Fear Me Now?: Verizon Tech Accused of Beating Customer

Suit over a very bad reception

Talk about off the hook.

A Verizon worker reportedly snapped and went berserk on a Queens customer after the man asked for his ID during a house call.

Repairman Robert Benjamin allegedly pummeled Aubrey Isakson, 37, when the Sunnyside man balked at letting the tech inside of his apartment, according to the New York Post, citing a lawsuit filed in Queens Supreme Court.

"You want to know my name? Here's my name!" Benjamin reportedly shouted, pressing his ID card into Isakson's face.

"The guy essentially snapped," Isakson, a limo driver, told the Post of the December 2008 altercation. "He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down."

Isakson told the paper that the phone guy bloodied his face and broke his glasses, then grabbed him around the neck and pressed him up against a wall.

Isakson said all he could think was, "'He's prepared to kill me.'"

Luckily he was able to break free and get help in the lobby, but not before he fractured his ankle running down the stairs.

An off-duty cop neighbor grabbed Benjamin, and the techie was arrested and charged with assault.

Isakson thought that Benjamin was going to do real time, but prosecutors offered to dismiss the case if the phone guy stayed disconnected from trouble for six months.

"According to what I was told, there was an error by the DA's staff," Isakson told the Post. "They're giving this guy carte blanche to do this every six months."

A Verizon spokesman said that they have "zero tolerance for any sort of unethical or illegal behavior" but noted that Benjamin wasn't convicted of any crime.

"In the months since this incident, his conduct ha been blameless," said Verizon's Rich Young. "As a result, we will not take further action."

Adding insult to injury, two days after the beat down Verizon's technical service department later called Isakson to say they  "figured out what the problem was."

"They didn't even need to send this guy," Isakson said.

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