forced to make changes Verizon wireless

Reminds me of my xfinity bundle, I have the 3 way bundle, tv/internet/phone (VoIP) The phone is a landline, strictly a voice phone, no texts email etc.

Everyone wants to be able to send you texts messages. I have had companies tell me they've been texting me and I never get them, because when asked for a number I'd give the no text home number not knowing they would text instead of call, especially since when I was working I didn't want to be bothered with a call.

Landlines are dinosaurs these days and since the above has happened a few times we looked to drop the phone from out bundle. Found out the 3 way bundle was less money then just having cable and internet, so now I have a useless phone I carry. And it is useless, it's Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) so when we lose power, and or the internet, the phone won't work. It's not like the old days of being hooked to BellTel where there was just enough juice running via the telephone line to keep the phone working even if your power was out.

Just reading something this AM that people are spending on average 20 hours per week on stuff like texting, surfing, etc. from phones. I notice that virtually everyone at traffic lights has a need to pickup and check the phone. Then there is a 2 second delay when the light turns green, and the auto start-stop feature restarts the engine.

In that regard I love my “dumb” phone. I get about 2 to 3 texts a week and rarely a phone call…$6 a month through Verizon. It’s a quiet world out there!

….through Brightspeed that costs me $94.00 a month forever. My cell service is through Consumer Cellular. I had Verizon for many, many years, but after checking CC, I found that I could save $25.00 a month while getting more data, texts, etc., while getting the same amount of coverage. I do miss getting all of the stupid spam calls since I bought an AT&T call blocking landline phone. If it’s a spam call, it rings once and then tells the caller that their call is being blocked. My spam calls have dropped from 10-15 a day to 2-3 a day and those never make it through the blocking system.

"Forever?" Maybe at Brightspeed, but Verizon Wireless found a way around that with us.

We bought phones with a "lifetime guaranteed" monthly rate and discount, as long as we didn't change our data plan. Ten GB a month of cellular data is plenty for us, since we're usually at home and on our wi-fi network, and even when we're away, we're not streaming media. You can't get this plan anymore. It was a promotional deal they offered briefly about a decade ago. Well we haven't changed our data plan. We've updated phones, buying them at full price, and Verizon allows us to swap out to new phones on the account with maybe a small one-time fee for their trouble. That's fair.

Apparently they decided their CEO was not making enough yacht money off us. They kept offering new ways to get more data, but it always cost more than what we had. They held to the promotional deal for about six years, and then they started adding a $12 a month "rate adjustment multi[line)" fee." I go back and read the contract. Sure enough, they were allowed to do that. They couldn't increase the base rate or decrease or drop the discount, but they could add new fees, and they could increase those as they please. And that's what they did.

The deck is stacked.

I'm retired now but I drove a truck for a living, I was on the road at least 8 hours a day, my unscientific study shows 80% of the people driving around have something distracting them, for a lot it is just while stopped at a traffic light, but there's also a lot doing it as they go down the road.

Before 'smartphones' most of the time it was the ladies putting on their makeup on the way to work. The best I ever saw when on an interstate highway in Delaware there was a guy with a cafeteria type tray on his lap with food and a drink, a newspaper open to the crossword puzzle while using an electric razor. He was passing me, I was doing 65 mph, the speed limit.

You're right though, in the crowd that has a device going while driving they drift from their lane, sit at a green light, change lanes/turn with no signals etc.

I miss driving for a living, I don't miss being on edge all the time because of the sheer amount of distracted drivers on the road, a half a second mistake in a car could cause a crash for a truck.

A week ago last Tuesday, a coworker said guess what song's playing in my head (trucker's tune).

I said wow, I haven't thought about that since about 1989. I used to see a cover band that played it. And I recall only knowing Tuscon. The other towns are in NM, CA, and NV.

I also learned Lowell George produced Shakedown St. and learned about his life as a result. What happens when you get old (a thought or memory leads to more like a rabbit hole).

https://youtu.be/RNqv85coyTw?si=Ev_PzCgAuouWehZO

I've been part of a cricket group since ~2017. The bills have fluctuated between $37.50 and $25. I can't recall when the $25 kicked in, but it's been a few years now. There's 4 of us in the group. Started out with unlimited calling/texts and 3 or 5GB of data, then 10GB, and most recently (as of 3 or 4 years ago), unlimited data.

Here in the suburbs of chicago, all 3 (4) providers have reasonably good service. In my immediate area, tmo was weak, not sure how they are today. Cricket uses att towers, so coverage here has always been good. Same for parts of WI we travel to.

While cricket does not offer roaming, I can't recall many experiences where it was an issue. Perhaps in the middle of nowhere.

Hard to go wrong at $25/line for unlimited. I pay the group owner quarterly just to simplify things. If it were a total stranger, I may do monthly, but i've known this person for decades.

Also, I use google voice as my primary number, so the cricket number effectively is irrelevant.

I have no love for the blue deathstar, and I'm sure there are verizon resellers who offer group discounts as well.

I switch my landline to mobile so I can preserve the phone number I used for decades. Wherever I go, I am always "at home".
I used Panasonic cordless phone (4 sets) which pairs my mobile home phone through bluetooth. This way, I can pick up traditional phone as I have been doing when someone call me at home.

$25 is a nice price. Imho there’s a “verizon tax,” ie premium to have Verizon. I am surprised, again, 5G UW is around the corner from our house. I assumed the signal is poor all over our town.

^^Maybe it's because I use my phone so rarely, but what does 5g practically offer over 4g on a phone? That is, I can make calls, texts, and have usable data for media consumption (at full hd over vpn so cricket/att doesn't throttle). Especially at these crazy high frequencies...

The house has symmetric gigabit ftth, so I am spoiled with real high speed. There's even options for 2/5gb.

I was on the entry level 5G plan, I set my phone to for "Voice & Data" to 5G Auto. This meant per the phone, "uses 5G only when needed for performance while optimizing battery life." So it used 4G LTE at least half of the time, which to me, implied 5G was not beneficial by whatever the algorithm is.

Once I had the 5G ultra wideband, it stays 5G since I set it to 5G On. Oddly, the description says uses 5G whenever it is available even when it may reduce battery life or performance.

Practically speaking, I would have to say the benefit is marginal, and likely the marginal cost > marginal benefit.

But perhaps an analogy is what benefit is there to having a car with 420 HP and 460 ft lbs. over a car with 140 HP and 295 ft lbs (a diesel in a 3rd world country)? When both are driving 60 mph and cruising, probably none at all.

One test for me is to backup pics to amazon photos. That requires upload, not download, and on 4G it's often not usable. On 5G, it's usable half the time or a little more.

Also, though hardly noticeable on a small screen, 5G UW gets higher resolution on video.

As mentioned, my house is 100 mbps / 100 mbps and symmetrical, and this bandwidth isn't even offered anymore, yet I can't go up in speed without a higher monthly and an upgrade to the ONT. In 2010, my entire office of 200 people had 9 mpbs / 9 mbps and yes there were times it slowed down even at a corp HQ. That was when our co was a 700 mil. co. Hard to imagine our revenue is 8 times that by 2024. With so much money being made, one would think the healthcare offered would have improved, but quite the opposite (it was good in 2010, terrible in 2022, the last time I had it) lol

I have similar issues.

I belong in a group that night be referred to as a "fossil" as I still use a flip phone. Just a week or two ago I had my asphalt shingle roof replaced with new shingles and today I received a message from the roofing company that showed as a video on my flip phone. The problem is a video cannot play on a flip phone. I see the icon on the display with a triangle that will likely start the video on a modern phone. The only thing my phone can do is delete the video from the phone.

The only thing I use my flip phone for is to make and receive phone calls. Imagine that? I've been thinking about getting a new IPhone but I still use my desktop computer for the things for which many/most people now use telephones.

My Nokia 2720 (Verizon) can view videos and I would be surprised that you can’t. The instructions for the Nokia are at https://www.hmd.com/en_us/support/nokia-2720-user-guide/vide.... Very similar instructions exist for all the Verizon flips.

@pwohlrab You will need to obtain your provider's exact MMS settings then figure out how to configure them on your phone.

I did this sometime back for someone using an att flip. Finding the settings wasn't difficult, but figuring out how to get into the config section was. It was buried deep in the menus - apn settings.

I have a sim with a rolling (renews monthly) free 250min/250texts, no data. Used to use it in a flip as a spare until the whole 3g platform died. Now it's in my smart phone as sim #2.

$15/month + $1.30 taxes for 5GB data. It's way more than I need.

5G with all the abbreviations, unlimited talk and text.

I grew tired of paying verizon $70+ for maybe ten or fewer phone calls each month. I got out when the surcharges started, and I don't miss overpaying one little bit.

--

it's the dog's fault

does the average person need 5G. Verizon just upgraded my plan to 5G, we have 2 phones on the plan. I did nto request it but they said I needed it and the fees went up again.

The Verizon attitude is if you own phones that are 5G capable, then you have to accept the 5G offering. In my case, I pointed out that one phone on the plan was only 4G capable, and the rolled the price back. It was several years ago but I think the saving was about $20/month.

To get a legit 22% discount through work, and a $140/mo stipend for cell phone. It was legit, i.e. 22% less than someone who didn't have any discount.

Today, I get a 0% discount and a $40/mo stipend.

We feel we are so much more savvy than 20 years ago. But in reality? Many arrangements are far worse than they were. And when I log in to Verizon it thanks me for being a customer 15 years lol

I was a Citi customer for 30+ years, and they canceled my credit card for non usage.

Now the opposite is Costco. And why they continue to grow. They won't change the $1.50 hotdog, and they went to great lengths to not raise the rotisserie chicken again and held it to $4.99. The CEO started at the bottom, so I understand a little why they are the way they are. Another co. like that is JB Hunt. CEOs that literally started at the entry level (there are fake stories about ceos who started as a forklift driver or a phone rep, these are two real ones).

You may be paying for something you can't use.

Unless you live in a metro area, or within 3 miles of a 5G enabled cell tower, it is unlikely you will be able to use the expanded bandwidth of 5G.

I find 5G UW walking distance from my house, but not, in my house!

Because I would truly love to cancel Verizon FiOS. On the other hand, how can I, with all the smart devices now connected to the internet...

Where imho consumers do get fooled, is on upload speeds and latency. My bro has Comcast Gig service. His upload is 30 mbps hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Real life example. We have "slow" 100/100 FiOS service at home, an obsolete speed determined by the 2009 ONT in the basement.

It uploads to amazon photos faster than anywhere else--any guest wifi downtown, 5G UW, blah blah blah. This can be seen, and is noticeable. Also, it has the lowest latency, sometimes 8 ms.

But it's no different than HP and torque. HP is sexy and sells. As does the advertised download speed. Nobody today really cares about torque, as they rarely are aware of latency nor upload. I mean after all, that's physics lol

I've yet to come across a site where I can upload at full line speed. Even google drive, bounces between 400 and 700 mbps (940mbps is line speed). Speed test sites don't really count for practical purposes.

From a self hosting perspective, server have to be configured in special ways to handle the buffering needed to upload that fast.

We've had symmetrical gig for 5+ years now. Mainly got it initially because it wasn't subject to bw caps. These days no fiber accounts with the blue star of death have any bw caps anymore. Not so with comcrap who has that in a number of areas.

Lately my only beef with T is their poor peering, blocking dns.adguard.com from my location. I have an fcc complaint in progress, we'll see if they get it fixed.

We had Verizon(mobile) since cell phones came out. They kept on raising the rates and fees. I called them up to see if they could give me a better deal and they actually wanted to increase my rate. Switched to T-Mobile in 2022 and cut my bill for 3 phones and have been saving $80.00 per month since.
Anthony
PS: Service is good.

Most of these companies do not value long term customers. They only rais prices and offer discounts to new customers.