Is there anywhere on the Verizon Wireless website where you can report poor coverage? I followed every path I could find through the navigation structure, but there was no obvious "report poor coverage" link. (In fact, the only support options seem to be live chat or calling in—seems crazy that there is no option to send an email or file a trouble ticket.)
Since others seem to have this same issue and occasionally get responses in the discussion board, here is my situation:
My primary use case for LTE data is at work, since at home I am on WiFi. One reason I switched to Verizon was to get better coverage at work since AT&T had poor coverage at the time and my co-workers with Verizon seemed to fare much better. At first, that appeared to be the case. But over the last few months, the usability of the LTE signal has degraded. There are times I will step outside to use my phone and see an LTE signal, but then suddenly it will drop to 3G or even 1X. This switchover is horrible since network operations tend to time out when switching between bands so the user experience is that an app will seem to "freeze" mid-action. (And, of course, dropping to 1X is functionally equivalent to having no service.)
The other penalty for the poor signal is that ever since the iOS 7 upgrade, my iPhone 5 loses a ton of battery life when forced to use a weak cellular data connection. I understand that some loss of battery life is expected in these cases since a phone will transmit at a higher power level trying to find a tower. But something about the combo of the iPhone 5, iOS 7, and whatever Verizon software came bundled with it made the problem much, much worse. If I go outside and use my phone for 15 minutes in the scenario above (appears LTE but drops to 3G/1X and then tries to switch back), I can lose ~10% of my battery life. When I'm in a strong coverage area, battery performance is excellent as it has always been.
Finally, reception inside my building has always been terrible. I hate not being able to use my cellphone at my desk, but always assumed that this was caused by the building and there was nothing that could be done. Well, I have to rethink that assumption since a recent AT&T tower upgrade in the area now provides a 4- or 5-bar LTE signal inside the building, as well as outside.
Intersection of Nash St and El Segundo Blvd in ZIP 90245
Google Maps reports the lat/lon as 33.930562, -118.386689
Device is an iPhone 5 running iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a) with carrier settings Verizon 15.5 and modem firmware 5.02.00
If anyone has any idea how to report this info to Verizon—or any other ideas on how to improve the situation—I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance for your help.
