I've made several rants about my Internet in the past, and Verizon is giving us one problem after another.
Timeline of events:
- We left AT&T for Verizon a couple years ago with hopes of better signal, as well as a mobile hotspot device to replace our ground cable that my dad broke.
- All went well for longer than a year, and then the mobile hotspot device malfunctioned and eventually quit working entirely.
First issue: Verizon refused to replace the device, and on top of the $50 price for a new one, they'd also charge us for adding a new device to the plan. That's when I became limited to my parents' smartphone tethering (which I'm using now), except that my dad docked the data limit by more than half.
- Second issue: The outrageous prices for what little we have ranges between $250 and $300 for only 14 measly gigabytes per month.
- Third issue: My mom's smartphones are always defective in some way. In just the past couple months, she has had her phone replaced four separate times (with the most recent being last week, and it's still defective).
The current phone my mom has now will frequently not send texts and keeps knocking itself off Internet signal, even 3G. This affects not only the phone, but also anything tethered to the phone. Since she is the parent who is usually home, that kind of presents a problem when it comes to anyone (including me) using the Internet at home.
A couple days ago, we took the phone in to a Verizon store to see if they'd say anything about it. The assistant manager refused to do anything about it and shooed my parents right out the door. My mom of course, had to give the entire store location a one star rating, reported the bad customer service, got the manager in trouble, and then let it ruin her day.
Yesterday, we took her current phone to a different Verizon store to have them fix the issue. Someone put a new SIM card in it and gave it back, and it is still doing the same thing.
Well, my dad has been searching for a different provider now. Not very many reach my rural, hilly area and when they do, the service is very bad. Sprint might work though, and they will charge only about $150 for 20GB/month (cheaper AND more data than Verizon) as part of a discount until 2016. This also means I can get a new phone (I hate my current one) if it works out.
My dad is bringing one of his friend's Sprint phones home later today to see how well the service works. If it goes through, we may kick Verizon and start up Sprint.
Helpful tl;dr - /title
