Extremely disappointed in Verizon as of late
sarahtindall
Enthusiast - Level 1

I have used multiple wireless companies throughout the years (I was around 16 when I first got a cell phone which was around 21 years ago) for a multitude of reasons, some are no longer in business or have been bought out and absorbed by others, and some due to what was available in the country I was living in at the time. When I moved back to the states permanently in 2010 I chose AT&T for my service simply due to convenience and that I had a friend working for a retail location who would benefit from my starting new service through him. Due to where in Georgia I live ( outside of the 2nd largest city in Georgia by population as of 2019) my friend said I could return the phone and cancel the contract if I found that my phone didn't get any service at my house or even if it did get service but not good service. But thankfully I didn't have that problem. But over time I started to see some differences between my AT&T service when comparing to my now husbands service with Verizon back in 2014 when we were dating. We would go hunting almost every weekend during deer season on land that was even further from Columbus but no closer to any other "large" city and be deep in the wood away from any other person for hours upon hours at a time. I of course would get super bored sitting there and would pull out my iPhone to get on Facebook or anything else that would provide some entertainment to pass the time. But due to the truly cruddy service with AT&T where we were and many other similar areas 9 times out of 10 nothing would load at all and if I got that 1 out of 10 time lucky it would load so slow that it was reminiscent of using dial up to get on AOL when I was a young teen and then being booted because someone got on the house phone and having to start all over again. But I could get on my now husbands phone with his Verizon service and speed was no different out in the boonies than it was in the middle of Columbus or even Atlanta. So of course, once we got married back in 2015 I dropped AT&T like a bad habit and joined his account with Verizon. Up until a few months ago I have been a very happy customer and even though I see advertisements from other largely known providers and the ones like Straight Talk saying how much less we could be paying (we have 4 separate lines on our account and our bill which does include 2 device payments but also a discount due to his employer) I have never even looked in to it or gave it a second thought because I know how great and expansive the coverage is and I'm willing to pay a premium for that. 

Fast forward to roughly 3 months ago. I started noticing that no matter where in the area around my home (the furthest I travel is about 40 miles away) I was not getting that great coverage anymore and in fact was seeing that my phone was almost always displaying that I was on 3G service rather than 4G. My bars indicating signal strength weren’t going higher than 3 out of 5 on a good day and anything and everything I did that used data took a painfully long time. So I started comparing my phone to my husband’s (we both had the same phone up until a few weeks ago) to see if he was having the same issues and he was. Then I compared mine to our daughters who both have an iPhone and they too were struggling like I was. So I played around with the settings on my phone to see if anything would make a difference and after every change made sure to restart my phone. I made sure my phone wasn’t missing an available download, that all the apps were up to date and all to no avail. 

So I called in to Verizon Support and spoke with a super nice guy who had me reset my network settings and said that should fix my problem but if not to call back to see what else could be tried before resulting to a warranty replacement (which I didnt want to do cause I felt like having to pay the $199 deductible for my phone to be replaced by another used phone was not the wisest choice). Well after doing all he said and giving it a little bit to test it out in different locations my problems were still there. I didn't call back in for further troubleshooting because I simply didn't want to hear that I needed to file a warranty claim so I decided to just deal with it for as long as I could. The issues started to become more bothersome in that group messages were not coming through like they should. Say a group of 15 people, which is roughly the number of people in my work group text that the boss uses almost exclusively for all communication to us as a whole, my boss will send out a text at 2:00p.m. and then within minutes people in the group start responding and from the time the initial text was sent to about 4 hours later there have been 18 or so separate texts in the group by 9 people. Well sometime around another 3 hours later for a total of roughly 7 hours after my boss sent his text my phone will start going off indicating multiple texts and when I go to look it shows as a separate text from each of the 10 people who have texted as if they are each sending a text that they and I are the only participants of but yet when I open the text it just says "Downloading". It will take another hour or so for it to "Download" at which point it will move itself to the group text and the individual text will disappear. So I started reading through this community forum looking for answers and hopefully solutions. The only possible solution I found was to purchase a "Network Extender" which to get one compatible with the Galaxy Note 8 I had at the time would have run me $249.99 but one compatible with the Galaxy Note 10 I have now would be $2,499.99 and both of those figures are the device only so I'm sure I would have to spend more for the other items necessary for the device to function. So basically I have a phone that I paid around $1,000 for plus the cost of service with Verizon and now to hopefully return to the quality dependable service I have come to know and expect from Verizon I would need to fork over a couple grand more and not even have a guarantee for my issues to be fixed? That's insane!! 

Well as luck would have it, one morning I was running late and in a huge hurry to get out and get my son to school on time and then head to work I was so distracted in thought that I sat my phone on the hood of my car to have free hands so I could help my son get in and buckle up. I went around the rear of my car to get to the drivers side and get in and in that short period of time completely forgot about my phone. I got out of our neighborhood and going about 45 mph down the road when I saw something pop up from the hood of my car and fly by my window and it hit me that what I saw was my phone. So I stop and back up and honestly wasn’t the least bit worried about my phone being damaged because of the Otter Box (which I have wholehearted faith in after an incident involving a rollercoaster type ride and my husband and his crazy brother trying to record the ride from the riders viewpoint but weren’t allowed to have the phone on the ride, long story meat for another time) so I opened my door to get it off the street and saw the screen did have a crack in it now but still no biggie. I am continuing on my merry way when sitting in the passenger seat my phone starts ringing. I pick it up to answer and see that the screen is completely black and no amount of button pressing or screen swiping changes that but the phone continues to ring. Now I am realizing I have to replace my phone, ugh but OK I needed to anyway so all in all no big deal. I go to the Verizon store in town and see what my options are (warranty or upgrade) and decide on paying off the phones balance and upgrading to the Note 10. I'm happy and my boss will be too since I work from my home office exclusively when not out making house calls and this is the only way he can reach me. But after getting my phone set up and all apps installed and stuff transferred and settings how I prefer I see the same issues as before have followed me. OMG, if a brand-spanking new phone doesn’t change anything then what will?????

Well now I know the answer to that. Verizon updating/repairing their towers in my area that my phone uses will fix all my previous problems. How do I know this you may ask... because yesterday was the absolute worst day of service I have ever had with Verizon or any other wireless provider for that matter. Yesterday I sent my husband a very important text that I needed him to act on ASAP but my phone never did show my text was delivered but rather just showed "sent" and my husband didn’t act on it nor even respond an acknowledgement of receiving it. So I then called him to see if he got my text but his phone went straight to voicemail as if it were shut off. Thankfully he also has a company provided cell phone that I can reach him on and he answered. He had not received my initial text or any of the subsequent texts asking him if he got the first. His phone was also not turned off nor set to "Do not disturb" or anything else that would send calls straight to voicemail. So he restarted his phone and still no text came through. Throughout the day while out and needing to access the internet I found my phone telling me that it was "offline" and would notify me when the page loaded and on random calls I made some would go through fine others would take forever to finally begin ringing and once connected and speaking with the other party the call would just drop for no reason and my phone would show I had absolutely no service. Last night while out with my husband, I dropped yet another call and was beyond frustrated. He told me he heard that the towers were down and everyone in our area with Verizon was having the same issues all day. He joked that rumor was it would be a few weeks before fixed and service returned to normal. I laughed and said yeah right they'll end up sued when someone has an emergency situation and suffers loss of life or limb because they couldn’t call 911 for help due to Verizon's lack of service. 

Well here it is 8:38 a.m. the next day and while my service is back it is still at only 3 out of 5 bars for signal strength and when I use the internet (Chrome is the browser) some pages load and respond with no issues and then all the sudden it is super slow again. So, still not fixed. But I can deal with it but what I am having a hard time dealing with is the fact that Verizon is either updating/upgrading/repairing the towers in this area and I'm sure for a reason but yet they failed to let the public know so that people could prepare accordingly and while there is no indication of an abrupt problem causing the needed updating/upgrading/repairing to the towers that tells me this has been needed for a while which would explain the severely lacking service compared to before but they have not acknowledged the lower service provided and even the service reps make no mention and act as though the only solution is to replace a phone that turns out was probably perfectly fine the whole time. 

Verizon needs to get on the ball and be forthcoming with service issues as soon as they are known and confirmed and then keep the effected customers updated with the status of resolving said issues rather than leave us to our own devices for determining the problem and possibly spending large amounts of money unnecessarily. This is neither the service, coverage nor customer service I have come to know and expect from Verizon and I hope it is not the new norm cause shopping for a new provider is not something I want to do. 

I hope someone from Verizon made it this far and if so I would love to hear back from Verizon in reference to my post. Thanks!! 

Sarah T. in Georgia
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Re: Extremely disappointed in Verizon as of late
mama23dogs
Legend

Are you using WiFi calling at home?  
'Just an FYI, the responses from Verizon don't indicate to me they really read the posts.  So writing a 20 year saga has no chance.  
'Boil it down to your zip code, how long service has been poor, and how poor it is (text, call and data don't work).  You know, relevant and useful information 

Re: Extremely disappointed in Verizon as of late
Piscestg
Specialist - Level 1

I really don't mean to be ignorant, but can you just list the facts pertaining to your cell service issue? I honestly stopped reading after the second paragraph.

Re: Extremely disappointed in Verizon as of late
Donn2
Newbie

Diddo...  Keep it short.

No one can now communicate with Verizon at their stores or over the phone....  I have been on hold for 45 min. (still waiting) and it keeps playing the same song over and over and over.  But if you are one day late on your bill you will hear from them in seconds!!!!!

Customer care is gone and only their money flow is king. 

Also beware of extras being added to you bill.  We were on auto billing which saved $5 a phone and all of a sudden we were taken off and the bill went up. Now $5 a phone is not huge unless you multiply it times a million phones!

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Re: Extremely disappointed in Verizon as of late
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

I realize that this is now 2 days from your post, Donn2. A wait that long would not sit well with me either. Were we able to look into the discount falling off? 

DavidH_VZW

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