Gone Wireless!

Dan Gonzales

Member
Messages
511
Location
Whittier, CA, USA
The wife and I decided to go 100% wireless for our phones. So two cell phones, Verizon FIOS (fiber) internet/television for the house.

Any heads up on possible issues from family members here?

Cheers.
 
I would like to go wireless but wife won't agree.
Verizon just took over our previous provider and, as of today, I am very unhappy with them. :mad: Their advertising and words are double-talk. e.g. a "free phone upgrade" does not mean a free phone, it means a free upgrade but the salesman could not explain what, if anything, I got with the 'upgrade'. :huh: I had to buy my new phone. Stand with your back to a wall when dealing with them.
 
I would like to go wireless but wife won't agree.
Verizon just took over our previous provider and, as of today, I am very unhappy with them. :mad: Their advertising and words are double-talk. e.g. a "free phone upgrade" does not mean a free phone, it means a free upgrade but the salesman could not explain what, if anything, I got with the 'upgrade'. :huh: I had to buy my new phone. Stand with your back to a wall when dealing with them.
I've had billing issues with Verizon many times over the years. We have three lines on the account, and for some reason, one line will all of a sudden 'change' plans and start accruing roaming or 'overage' minutes. This has happened several times, usually around the time we replace a phone. They also can't seem to keep track of which line is the 'primary' line on the account, so when I call to complain I feel like an idiot because I'm not sure which line they've decided is the right answer this time. To their credit, they've always fixed the billing errors right away, including one time that I didn't catch the 'change' for several months because Jean was just paying the bill and not reading it. As I recall, the overcharge(s) added up to more than a regular months billing.

Verizon was the only one that had a reliable signal when we were out in the boonies... but now we're city folks, so we can 'shop' when the current contract expires. :thumb:
 
Before her death my MIL had wireless service with them. Her opinion: the only thing worse than their service was their customer service. Too bad I can't ask her what she was unhappy about.
 
I've had wireless Sprint, ATT and Verizon in New England and Southern California. My overall experience has been Verizon coverage and call quality has been significantly better than the other two. All of their customer support has been mediocre, but they eventually resolved any problems I had.

The FIOS telephone/internet/cable service quality has been exemplary.
 
I had pretty good luck with Verizon Wireless a few years ago before I switched to Cingular (now AT&T). Our landlines and DSL connection are currently through Verizon, and my only issue has been with DirecTV billing that's done in conjunction with the Verizon bill.

My main concern about going full wireless here in SoCal is earthquakes. I like having the landline as an option in the event the cell system goes down or is overloaded. Just sort of a redundancy thing. ;) After the Northridge quake, I had no power, but I had a phone. My family in New Mexico was watching the news there and giving me the play-by-play over the phone. Their info was more up-to-date than the local radio (which I could get in my car).
 
My Daughters are on Verizon and about a year and a half ago Verizon installed the Fibre Optics system in their area, but they have sure had a lot of Glitches in it since that time. This weekend they went home to find No Phone, No Computer and No TV, but they somehow got a # to call (on their cell phone) and it said the system was being repaired, or "Some equipment" was being changed or Something and could possibly be out of svc for up to 72 hours, BUT early Monday morning it WAS all back working again. They're still not sure of what was going on, AND apparently there was no advance notification of the planned outage, (IF it was planned for an upgrade or something).:(

Hopefully your area has a more reliable system than where they are.
 
About a year ago we told Verizon land line where to go, but kept cell phones... our only problem is that my stepsons like to chat a lot... one in particular.. so we're at a pretty steep minutes plan at the moment. That will be scaled back soon. Possibly all the way back to 'not going to have them' for awhile. If that happens for the family, my new business might just start up, and I'll be getting the new Pre with a sprint line to replace my Treo.

I have to have broadband for my job, so we went with Vonage for the house phone.
 
I recently got rid of our land line. We just never used it and local service with a basic long distance plan was $45 a month. I still needed to be able to send fax from time to time so I purchased a Magic Jack for voice over IP service. It is amazing how well it works and for $20 a year pretty hard to beat. Every once in a while there is a little static or a beep, but overall very happy for the money spent.

I have seen these for a while and was always pretty skeptical and they seem to get mixed reviews. When I noticed you could now purchase them locally I felt comfortable with the purchase because I could take it back if it did not work.

Good Luck

Alan
 
Some time back we considered going wireless, then I spoke with the local police dispatcher. 911 service with a cell is ify at best. They can locate you within a few hundred feet, but that won't do me much good if I'm on the floor of my shop bleeding and can't tell then exactly where I am. We just added phone to our cable (VOIP) and it's cheaper than local only service from Qwest and I know that 911 will be able to get to my house, not just my block.
 
We had Verizon in Houston, and since the wife and I both worked at opposite ends of the city, we both had cells... our computers were on Time-warner, so we went wire-less in the city, but after moving to the boonies in TN, we decided that as a retired couple we didn't need the Cell.... Verizon was willing to let us opt out of our contract for $750... nice of them, considering that the service was a little iffy anyway... it worked about 70% at the house... 3 miles down the road in either direction, no service.. then it worked again after we got closer to town.. town is a little bitty burg of about 800 people and only 7 miles from my house.
We still opted out of the contract, but took some negotiation before they settled for one month's fee instead of their idea of a buy out... we have to stay with a land line here since most cells don't work here. Plus we are on a DSL for the computers and it requires a land line.... we have satelite for TV and that works fine, except for when it rains... if we get much rain, we lose the TV.

My step son is a long haul trucker and uses Sprint... it seems to cover about 90% of the areas he travels in... some intermitten outage, plus they have a good wireless network for his computer. We carry an extra phone on his plan, but can only use it when we get closer to a bigger town... it doesn't work in Tellico Plains. Even Verizon didn't work when we got up in the mountains or up on the river.
 
Rennie raised the issue that always haunts me. The 911 service is not reliable on the cell phones. Its the only reason i keep the land line. Also our contracts up in Canada are not as competitive as yours in the states so local calls are still free with a landline.:thumb:
 
Rennie raised the issue that always haunts me. The 911 service is not reliable on the cell phones. Its the only reason i keep the land line. Also our contracts up in Canada are not as competitive as yours in the states so local calls are still free with a landline.:thumb:

Even with recent improvements in 911 (now called Enhanced or E911) service, from experience, I have learned that reaching the 911 department you want from a cell phone is a very unpredictable venture. If I do have occasion to call 911 from my cell I always ask "where are you located?". Sometimes the response is quite amazing as I have reached dispatchers considerable distance from where I am calling.
 
5 more years

I just renewed my Magic Jack service.
I got a five year renewal with a special offer of $69.00.
That gives me unlimited long distance calls in the U.S. for about $1.17 a month.
Later I will be adding the international service which gives calls at very reasonable prices. My son and his family are going to Australia for a year on a sort of swap deal for doctors. Calling them on the cheap will be nice.
The Magic Jack service has improved greatly from when I first took it. 90% of my calls are clear and trouble free. Puzzling though, some calls to central Missouri are impossible to understand. My non-techie guess is the Internet service there must be incompatible with the service. They have ISPs I haven
't encountered elsewhere.
Enneyhow, I am happy with the service and, especially, the prices.
 
I would like to go wireless but wife won't agree.
Verizon just took over our previous provider and, as of today, I am very unhappy with them. :mad: Their advertising and words are double-talk. e.g. a "free phone upgrade" does not mean a free phone, it means a free upgrade but the salesman could not explain what, if anything, I got with the 'upgrade'. :huh: I had to buy my new phone. Stand with your back to a wall when dealing with them.

We had a Verizon account when we first moved to TN... it's about the only cell services that worked at the house... if you were sitting on the front porch... wouldn't work inside the house.... also stopped working when you got about 1/2 mile from the house, but would start again after you got into town... we had two phones, because this was the account we had in Houston where we needed two phones, but up here we only needed one phone... they wanted us to "buy out" of the contract to shut down one phone...for a mere $700.
After a couple of letters to the president of Verizon, they decided I could close both accounts for what I owed on the last month's billing and call it quits... Don't have good feelings for Verizon.

Also watch their commercials about the maps.... total bogus... I notice they are only picking on AT&T...
 
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