Oakland, CA connection problems

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

Does anyone else in the Bay Area have problems connecting with Verizon
in the Oakland, CA area?

I've had great coverage from Verizon for the previous 10 months but 2
weeks ago service went to hell in parts of Oakland.

Almost all of my calls at my home in the Oakland Hills get dropped,
don't answer or don't connect.

Service picks up again on I-80 east of Emeryville and I-880 south of
downtown Oakland. It's the downtown area and Oakland hills where I'm
having problems.

I've been complaining to Verizon for the past 2 weeks! After a week
and a half of talking with inexperienced people someone at Verizon
finally submitted a trouble ticket!

I'm using a Nokia 3285. I had a new backup 3285 and a local Verizon
store gave me a brand new 3285 as a replacement. So that's 3 identical
phones with the same problems. Today I picked up a brand new 6015i
from Verizon, same problem. Do you know what the probability of 4 bad
phones is?

I use over 4000 minutes a month and travel from Oakland to Benicia and
Vallejo plus Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties. With the exception of
some obvious bad spots Verzion's coverage has been great.

I've had AT&T's TDMA service in addition to Verizon until recently. It
was great throughout much of the country except in parts of the east
coast and most of the west coast. Cingular uses AT&T's old system in
this area so their non-GSM coverage is pretty poor. T-Mobile and SBC
use Cingular's AT&T system also.

I'm heading down to a Sprint (yuk) store to try out one of their
phones in my home to see if the coverage is any better.
--
Chas. verktyg@aol.spamski.com (Drop spamski to E-mail me)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

Sounds like some faulty Nortel or Lucent radio
equipment. Beaten down and outsource
threatened people don't produce products
with top quality.

JG

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

<jgrove24@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1113610174.775031.270960@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Sounds like some faulty Nortel or Lucent radio
> equipment. Beaten down and outsource
> threatened people don't produce products
> with top quality.

Greed at the top also contributes to these problems.

The problem may be due to reprograming their system for new
"features".

AT&T spun off Cellular1 in CA but maintained a silent 50% ownership. A
few years ago they took over the whole operation again. When the big
push for digital came in the mid 1990's AT&T installed a good system
in Seattle but skimped on the systems in Portland, Northern California
and Nevada.

I'd been traveling all over the US and I had AT&T accounts from the
early 90's until several months ago. AT&T TDMA service worked great
throughout much of the US except parts of the East Coast and most of
CA.

I'm based in Northern CA now so I dropped AT&T because I had no
service or bad RF in the areas where I needed it most. Verizon has
been great for 9 1/2 months.

My Verizon problems started about March 21. I traced the problem back
with the help of a friendly Verizon employee. I even found the towers
where I had the most number of dropped calls or no service. It's only
in a small area of town.

After about 5 CS calls I finally got someone to agree to put in a
Service Ticket to check for problems. That was over 2 weeks ago. They
lied because I found out later that nothing was done until last Friday
after my 10th CS call. I received a call mid week from Verizon saying
that there's no coverage in my area and basically - TS!

Every time I called CS they insisted on dancing me through their
troubleshooting routine: "hit *228 then enter to reprogram the phone,
then 1 then 2", "check your NAM", "remove the battery to reboot" and
so on. What am I a %$(^^)& idiot! Check you log, I already did this 10
times before!!!

Last weekend I went into a local Verizon store at the suggestion of
CS. They checked out my Nokia 3285 phones and even exchanged one of
them for a brand new one they had in their stock, still no joy! I even
bought a new Nokia 6015i phone; it worked no better than my older 3285
phones in the problem areas. I spent last Saturday driving around town
checking signal strength and making test calls with 3 different
phones.

This week I was finally able to get CS to move the complaint up to a
higher tech level where they said "Yes, it looks like you do have a
problem!"

In the mean time I made a move to the dark side and signed a pact with
the devil! I signed up with Sprint and got a new Nokia 6016i phone to
try out for 30 days. It works everywhere that I need it!

I do a lot of product engineering and tech support. My cell phone
number is on several web sites. Hundreds of people have it programmed
into their phones. It's on hundreds of business cards that I've handed
out plus Fax forms and letterhead. I need to port my cell number to
Sprint if Verizon can't fix their service problem in my area soon.

I hadn't heard from Verizon for 5 days so I called today to cancel my
account. I make and receive over half of my calls in the areas where
the Verizon service no longer works.

They refused to wave a $175 early termination fee. They say I have 2
1/2 months left on my 1 year Verizon contract. I signed no contract
because because I signed up by phone and I specifically requested
month to month service with no contract obligations. I provided my own
phones and got nothing for free!

They come back with the "we don't guarantee ANY service" and "didn't
you read the contract, it's in the contract" BS!

Yes I READ the ^%^&%^@# contract - after the fact! The other day when
I called CS they told me that I had month to month service and didn't
I want all the freebees with a 2 year contract - NO, I don't think so!

It's the principle not the $175!
--
Chas. verktyg@aol.spamski.com (Drop spamski to E-mail me)