Verizon cell phone ???

[pmanton]

My Verizon cell phone is going TU. It will eat its battery sometimes in minutes. I switched batteries with my wife so it's definitely the phone. Going through the Verizon Web site looking for a replacement phone is like going through a mine field. You either get stuck with a new contract, or pay 3 times what the phone is worth for a phone without contract.

So I ordered a replacement phone through Ebay. The same model keyed to Verizon. (Lg Chocolate 3).

So how do I get the phone up and running with Verizon when it arrives. Can I do this myself with software that will copy my existing phone over to the new?

BitPim seems to only address stuff like address books.

Thanks in advance

Paul
N1431A
2AZ1

 

[TangoWhiskey]

My Verizon cell phone is going TU. It will eat its battery sometimes in minutes. I switched batteries with my wife so it's definitely the phone. Going through the Verizon Web site looking for a replacement phone is like going through a mine field. You either get stuck with a new contract, or pay 3 times what the phone is worth for a phone without contract.

So I ordered a replacement phone through Ebay. The same model keyed to Verizon. (Lg Chocolate 3).

So how do I get the phone up and running with Verizon when it arrives. Can I do this myself with software that will copy my existing phone over to the new?

BitPim seems to only address stuff like address books.

Thanks in advance

Paul
N1431A
2AZ1

Just walk into any Verizon store with your new phone and they can do it for you. Bring your old phone if you have it.

 

[Steve Foley]

My Verizon cell phone is going TU. It will eat its battery sometimes in minutes. I switched batteries with my wife so it's definitely the phone. Going through the Verizon Web site looking for a replacement phone is like going through a mine field. You either get stuck with a new contract, or pay 3 times what the phone is worth for a phone without contract.

So I ordered a replacement phone through Ebay. The same model keyed to Verizon. (Lg Chocolate 3).

So how do I get the phone up and running with Verizon when it arrives. Can I do this myself with software that will copy my existing phone over to the new?

BitPim seems to only address stuff like address books.

Thanks in advance

Paul
N1431A
2AZ1

You can activate the phone through the verizon website. You log in, select that phone number, and enter the new ein. Power up the phone, dial *228, and press 1. Phone will reboot and work. I did this twice last week, when my wife lost, then found her phone. With five phones on the plan (3 kids) I end up re-using the old phones before my 2 years is up.

On another note, I'm pretty sure Verizon will swap your broken phone and $50 for a working one.

 

[ScottM]

You either get stuck with a new contract, or pay 3 times what the phone is worth for a phone without contract.

Funny you say it that way. Almost without exception what you pay for a cellphone in the US is a subsidized price. IOW you are not even paying close to what the carrier is paying for it. They sell it to you for less and then earn back the money and some by charging you air time. It has been that way for a long time here.

 

[pmanton]

You can activate the phone through the verizon website. You log in, select that phone number, and enter the new ein. Power up the phone, dial *228, and press 1. Phone will reboot and work. I did this twice last week, when my wife lost, then found her phone. With five phones on the plan (3 kids) I end up re-using the old phones before my 2 years is up.

On another note, I'm pretty sure Verizon will swap your broken phone and $50 for a working one.

That did it THANKS I'm on an airpark in AZ 75 miles from the nearest Verizon store.

Paul
N1431A
2AZ1

 

[wsuffa]

You can activate the phone through the verizon website. You log in, select that phone number, and enter the new ein. Power up the phone, dial *228, and press 1. Phone will reboot and work. I did this twice last week, when my wife lost, then found her phone. With five phones on the plan (3 kids) I end up re-using the old phones before my 2 years is up.

I've done that several times. Works well (unless you move from a standard phone to something that requires a mandatory data plan).

 

[Steve Foley]

I've done that several times. Works well (unless you move from a standard phone to something that requires a mandatory data plan).

I had a Treo that I picked up used. Any time I did anything, they added a $45/month data plan. I had to call back and take the 'pay per usage' plan. I never used it for internet.

Have they done away with the pay per usage plan for some phones? I know my son's Droid requires a $30/month data plan, but I ass-u-med that was part of the subsidy and didn't apply to used phones.

 

[silver-eagle]

I had a Treo that I picked up used. Any time I did anything, they added a $45/month data plan. I had to call back and take the 'pay per usage' plan. I never used it for internet.

Have they done away with the pay per usage plan for some phones? I know my son's Droid requires a $30/month data plan, but I ass-u-med that was part of the subsidy and didn't apply to used phones.

With verizon, their smartphone deals are tied to a monthly data plan. You get a discount only because you buy the data plan to go with it. An example is their two for one which requires a data plan on both phones.
If I had the money, I'd open a bank, a credit card company, an insurance company, or a cellphone company. It's a license to print money.

 

[rotorhead1026]

Funny you say it that way. Almost without exception what you pay for a cellphone in the US is a subsidized price. IOW you are not even paying close to what the carrier is paying for it. They sell it to you for less and then earn back the money and some by charging you air time. It has been that way for a long time here.

I just went the eBay route to replace my son's phone. You can get a cheap phone from Verizon - but you have to re-up the contract (another two years).

On another note, I'm pretty sure Verizon will swap your broken phone and $50 for a working one.

I never saw this deal (and I asked). It may be tied to contract renewal as well. The store I use is up front and honest, so I don't think they were withholding information. Whatever ...

Instructions given in this thread regarding the way to activate a replacement phone are spot on.

 

[ScottM]

I just went the eBay route to replace my son's phone. You can get a cheap phone from Verizon - but you have to re-up the contract (another two years).
.

If they are requiring a contract extension then it is very likely that the reason the phone is cheap is that it is subsidized by the carrier.

 

[RJM62]

A pox on all those plans and contracts!

Two summers ago, I ditched Verizon because of an experience involving one of my goddaughters. She was staying with me for the summer, and I'd confiscated her cheap MetroPCS phone to punish her for losing it three times in a week. So she used my Verizon Voyager to call her mother, to occupy herself while we were driving, etc. I had, I think, a 900-minute voice plan and the bare minimum data plan on the phone, which was usually enough for me. I figured I might go over a bit with her using it and texting her sister and her friends, but I was prepared for that.

What I wasn't prepared for was a bill for more than $400.00. It was usually around $100.00.

I called VZW to ask what happened, and they told me that Kimberly had been using the phone to do everything short of repositioning the Hubble. Watching movies and cartoons, playing games, downloading music, maybe aiming missiles for all I know. She did things I didn't even know the phone was capable of doing.

"B-b-but I don't subscribe to any of those services," I said. No matter. Once she used them, VZW started billing me -- by the nanosecond, I think. The excess voice minutes and text messages only accounted for about forty bucks. All the rest was for services I didn't subscribe to, and that I maintained shouldn't have been provided if I wasn't subscribing to them.

Of course, I lost that argument. Somewhere in the microscopic print on the seven hundred and sixty-third page of the thirty-sixth revision of the eighteenth version of the contract I'd signed ten years prior, I gave them the right to do what they did.

Long story short, I dumped Verizon. My contract had expired a month or two prior, so there was no penalty. I paid the last bill and told them that would be the last of my money they ever got.

I walked down the street and "temporarily" bought a cheap Boost Mobile phone from a friend of mine who owns a cell phone store, and then I upgraded to a Boost BlackBerry when I found that Boost's coverage was actually better than Verizon's in the areas I commonly travel to. Now I pay $60.00 a month for unlimited everything on the BBerry, and under some new "shrinkage" thing they've come up with, it goes down $5.00 a month every six months (or something like that) as long as I keep paying the bill on time.

Since then, VZW has called me umpteen times apologizing for the "misunderstanding." Apparently the CSR should have referred me to "Customer Retention," who would have worked out something to keep me as a "valued customer." What can they do, they ask, to get me back as a customer?

At this point, I answer, nothing. I'm getting unlimited everything for sixty bucks a month on a network that works at least as well as theirs, in the areas where I need it to work.

And you know what? Even if they could match that deal, I wouldn't change. Their chance to keep me as a "valued customer" ran out two summers ago.

-Rich

 

[weilke]

Instructions given in this thread regarding the way to activate a replacement phone are spot on.

....which mainly serves to support the market for stolen cellphones. Every stolen phone is another sale for verizon and an opportunity to sell airtime to the thief.

 

[weilke]

A pox on all those plans and contracts!
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At this point, I answer, nothing. I'm getting unlimited everything for sixty bucks a month on a network that works at least as well as theirs, in the areas where I need it to work.

And you know what? Even if they could match that deal, I wouldn't change. Their chance to keep me as a "valued customer" ran out two summers ago.

-Rich

Based on a similar experience with them, I consider Verizon to be part of organized crime.

 

[mikea]

.. I had, I think, a 900-minute voice plan and the bare minimum data plan on the phone, which was usually enough for me. I figured I might go over a bit with her using it and texting her sister and her friends, but I was prepared for that.

What I wasn't prepared for was a bill for more than $400.00. It was usually around $100.00.

I called VZW to ask what happened, and they told me that Kimberly had been using the phone to do everything short of repositioning the Hubble. Watching movies and cartoons, playing games, downloading music, maybe aiming missiles for all I know. She did things I didn't even know the phone was capable of doing.

"B-b-but I don't subscribe to any of those services," I said. No matter. Once she used them, VZW started billing me -- by the nanosecond, I think. The excess voice minutes and text messages only accounted for about forty bucks. All the rest was for services I didn't subscribe to, and that I maintained shouldn't have been provided if I wasn't subscribing to them.

Of course, I lost that argument. Somewhere in the microscopic print on the seven hundred and sixty-third page of the thirty-sixth revision of the eighteenth version of the contract I'd signed ten years prior, I gave them the right to do what they did.

Based on a similar experience with them, I consider Verizon to be part of organized crime.

The scam:

“Virtually every bill I get has a couple of erroneous data charges at $1.99 each—yet we download no data.

“Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done. ...Because if you get 87 million customers to pay $1.99, why stop this revenue? Customer Service might credit you if you call and complain, but this practice is just not right.

“Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it’s blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/verizon-how-much-do-you-charge-now/

...which was fun while it lasted. Like all blatant con enterprises you ride it high for the 2-3 years it takes teh feds to ctach up with you and get the final judgement whiel you're realaxing at your villa in Costa Rica:

The Federal Communications Commission reached a record $25 million settlement on Thursday with Verizon Wireless over false data charges, in a move meant to show that the agency is stepping up scrutiny of consumer billing practices.

The settlement brings the total cost of Verizon's flap over mystery fees to more than $77 million - one of the biggest payouts for consumer protection violations by a telecom service provider.

Verizon Wireless said this month that it would refund $52 million to 15 million subscribers for wrongly charging them for accessing the Web and for other data programs they didn't want. The company said the charges were inadvertent and were caused largely by a software glitch.

The explanation didn't assuage concerns at the FCC, which said wireless and broadband customers are increasingly complaining of surprise fees and growing communications costs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102806478.html

When I had a non-smart phone that had WAP I called Cingular to put a data block on SMS and data use. No surprise charges. For Verizon, this is like when they disabled transferring over bluetooth or a cable so they could sell those unwanted data minutes, "Our customers aren't interested in those features..." They said customers didn't want to not be paying these $2.99 a pop charges until they were called on the carpet to admit that maybe they the customers don't like them.

 

[wsuffa]

Based on a similar experience with them, I consider Verizon to be part of organized crime.

ATT is just as bad. And the coverage is worse. And TMobile is quickly headed that way - their prepaid phones do NOT allow text blocking (meaning you pay for text spam) and they will not provide itemized billing on prepaid (not even on the web site) so you can't challenge the charges.

That's even bigger legalized crime.

 

[weilke]

ATT is just as bad. And the coverage is worse.

I haven't seen any fraudulent charges on my AT&T phones, but that may just be because I do have a data plan with 5GB/month included.

But yes, their network coverage and stability is awful. I am waiting for the big migration of the i-phone crowd towards Verizon to see if ATTs data services improve, but I may just go with a jitterbug and stop worrying about it alltogether

I sometimes miss my first Erickson phone that I had back in 1992. It had buttons, you pushed the buttons and it connected you with another phone. No data, no text, no fuss (and in a pinch, you could have driven nails into concrete with it).

 

[Steve Foley]

Verizon can block all data activity if you ask. I don't know if they'll do that on a smartphone.

I was using a Palm Treo for a few years, mostly because I've carried a Palm Pilot since 1999. Every time I called Verizon for something, they switched me to a $45/month data plan that I would have to call and cancel. I only used the $1.99 data when I hit something by mistake, so my data would be $1.99 or $3.98/month.

I despise the fact that I'm paying $180/month for cell phones (5 lines - and my son had an unlimited data plan that he pays me for), and another $150/month for cable/phone/internet.

 

[ScottM]

And the coverage is worse. ]

Depends on where you live. Around here AT&T is fantastic coverage. T-Mobile and Sprint not so much.

 

[mikea]

Depends on where you live. Around here AT&T is fantastic coverage. T-Mobile and Sprint not so much.

As they said on the threads on Fark, this cannot be! The consensus must match my local experience or you're just a delusional fanboi.

 

[NC Pilot]

Depends on where you live. Around here AT&T is fantastic coverage. T-Mobile and Sprint not so much.

I travel around the world (and a lot in the US) and I can say for a fact that more often than not when an AT&T phone doesn't have coverage my Verizon phone does.

If AT&T would spend less on commercials telling us how great they are and diverted that money into building more cell towers they would be unbeatable.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Verizon can block all data activity if you ask. I don't know if they'll do that on a smartphone.

<SNIP>.

I had them turn off data when I went to India in December- the data rates are awful there if you are roaming. I left voice and texting on as those were reasonably priced (and would have no need for a phone if I turned them off too). I got a Tata 3G USB modem for internet for ~$50 USD for a month (including the modem) for my trip.

Just to show cell phone companies overseas are at least as crooked as ours, I sent a text on 14 Feb to a friend there. This triggered Airtel to put them on a "Friends" plan with unlimited texting and sucked up their money on they pre-paid plan, and locked their phone because they were 8 Rupees short of the plan total. Airtel's explanation was "receiving a text on 14 Feb indicated they would be interested in this plan"

I'm told they all do this over there.

 

[gprellwitz]

On another note, I'm pretty sure Verizon will swap your broken phone and $50 for a working one.

I had a broken phone on Verizon once and it was the insurance company (for which I was paying about $5/mo) that required a $50 copay to replace the phone. Verizon themselves wouldn't do it.

 

[wsuffa]

Depends on where you live. Around here AT&T is fantastic coverage. T-Mobile and Sprint not so much.

I've got a corporate-supplied ATT blackberry & a personal Verizon Android (and a T-Mo Blackberry). Our primary corporate deal is with ATT, so I talk with folks on ATT phones regularly.

I agree: there are places where ATT does great. Some of the Chicago 'burbs are good. Cincinnati is good (primarly because the hometown carrier is Cincinnati Bell, which it tied-in with ATT for cellphone service). DC - meh. NYC - meh. Los Angeles - awful. Dallas - very good (but it's also corporate headquarters for ATT....), likewise San Antonio (former corporate headquarters).

T-Mobile is inferior most everywhere, though it is pretty good in LA & better than ATT in the DC area.

I travel around the world (and a lot in the US) and I can say for a fact that more often than not when an AT&T phone doesn't have coverage my Verizon phone does.

I agree with Mark, but would qualify his statement about VZ working in more places than ATT, though globally ATT's roaming partners are very good (and VZ's CDMA doesn't work at all). Outside the US, TMobile is far superior, and they're the only ones that still have a flat-rate international blackberry plan (which is why I still have a VZ phone). Granted there are technical problems with building more cell towers....