Ah, the joy of two-step verification! I have just spent an hour unsuccessfully trying to log in to my business Amazon account, all because COMMERCE is dependent on a dead cell phone. No use trying to call customer service, for they will insist on sending a text to the dead cell phone. You will not be able to sign in online, because the account does not have a number (well, it does, but it is not used for anything). It does, however, have a cell number. If that cell phone is lost, dead, deleted or no longer employed, you have now successfully exited the economy.

Now, I did speak to a very nice gentleman who understood my problem before putting me on silent hold for 20 minutes. The website shows you how you can update your account information, but only AFTER you have signed in, which means you still need that cell phone. You cannot sign in without it. All of the online customer service is similarly dependent in its entirety on that dead cell phone and the ethereal unrequited beauty of two-step verification.

What happens to the phone that gets flushed? The employee who retires? There was briefly an option to have them call a landline instead of texting a cell, but the algorithm resists that option with a ferocity that would make Longshanks blush. Then, just to make sure you are defeated, they make you wait before sending another code, by which time it is too late. Code by Kafka, I guess.

We shouldn’t be giving Amazon custom anyway, but I did try. And it isn’t just them. Every vendor in the world rests their entire customer relationship on a single cell phone number. That number can only be changed/edited if it is still working! It is like a massive inverted pyramid of relationships and transactions and accounts and credit cards, none of which can function without the dead cell phone being reanimated.

I can’t even turn on my work computer without two-step verification. I need my cell phone. I have used two-step verification for years when teaching at the local Uni, so I know how to do it. The challenge at work is that business accounts are similarly dependent on personal cell phones. You call the Amazon help line – from a landline – and the automated voice asks to send you a text. It does not give you any other option. If that old line is long gone, so is your account. All of the ways to recover the account will require that cell phone.

This seems a strange and fragile way to run an economy.

APRIL UPDATE: I learned this week that when they drain the San Antonio Riverwalk every two years, they find about 500 cell phones. That’s a lot of business not getting paid. Wonder how many cell phones are lying in the Strait of Hormuz rn?

Oh, and just went through this with AT & T – we wanted to make sure the issue – which caused a TWO MONTH ABSENCE OF SERVICE – did not happen again, so we closed the old account and opened a brand new one. We made sure no personal cell phones were involved, so we could prevent this clusterfracas from happening again. No dice. Neither Apple nor AT & T will allow a business to be a business – it needs to be some individual’s phone. And they were willing to lose two months of custom just to maintain this silly, flimsy system. I would say bring back the party line, but Que será, será.