I want to start by saying I have had Verizon for over 15 years and can honestly say I have NEVER been dissatisfied with any customer service whether remote or in local retail stores. I have never considered switching carriers. My employer has always offered AT&T or Verizon phones, and I have, without hesitancy, always chosen Verizon. I say all this, because I have just become the impulsive/angry customer over the past few months with the hidden secrets of the Go Unlimited Plan we have all discovered, but I still have some clarifying questions I would like answered by the Verizon Community.
Our situation: I recently joined on a plan with my spouse who pulled her personal number from her company when she decided to have two phones. We mostly decided to pull the trigger on this because of this magnificent 'Unlimited' plan that finally resurfaced. She travels for work around the city and state, and is always away from WIFI. (We never considered opening a personal line due to this reason). We found this Unlimited plan would work in our budget, and joined a new plan together.
Our wake up call: We live in Nashville, TN. In case anyone is living under a rock, Nashville is growing at ridiculous exponential speeds with next to 0 economical plans to sustain it. We received our unveiling of the "deprioritizing" stipulations of the "Go Unlimited Plan" when she would be stuck in traffic around the city, traveling, and could NEVER get her maps to work. She travels and has to have maps. Any time in "congestion" her maps/internet/apps were extremely slow. Contacted Verizon (for the first time, probably ever) and they informed us about the congestion parameters. NEWS FLASH! NASHVILLE IS ONE GIANT CONGESTION ALL THE TIME. Reality Check= you are screwed on this plan UNLESS you use Beyond Unlimited, which defeats the whole purpose on even having to worry about ANY data amount (regardless of what that # is).
Our reaction: Touche Verizon; We understand the "business" side of this. At the end of the day, the whole world cannot have unlimited data, fastest speeds, and for X amount of dollars across the board. You would probably go bankrupt. We get it. HOWEVER, we are still angry on some clarifying things that Verizon cannot explain to us and we would like clarified before having to shop elsewhere.....
-We were told, during times of congestion we are deprioritized behind customers who are Beyond Unlimited, and those who are NOT on any kind of unlimited plan (business move). However, no one can tell us how WE AS CUSTOMERS IN A CONGESTED CITY, are able to at least KNOW when we are in a "congested" area/time to at least know we are about to be dropped to the bottom of the barrel for a bit. We live down town, meaning, if there is more than one event downtown nashville (which is like 6 days a week), we are deprioritized sitting in our dang courtyard. How can we at least be able to IDENTIFY when we are being depriortized and to what extreme? We used to be able to change the 4 Count Bar to an actual # instead of 1 bar, 2 bar, etc. (running a field service test would change this for us). However, Verizon does not have this feature on newer IOS updates. Why is that? My spouse should also know when she is entering an area/time her maps are going to completely NOT work.....
- We were also told this "plan" is deprioritzed in times of congestion. I have lately found this hard to believe and need clarification. I work in an office all day. I am rarely off wifi. I use very little GBs a month due to this. My spouse, unfortunately, does not have the local office and work day access to WIFI. Thus, she uses more GB. While we are both home, we are on WIFI. Here is the situation we have been testing lately and would like clarified: We were at multiple local events together in Nashville over the past few weeks definitely in "congested" times. We ran field service tests in the same spot and NEVER had the same numbers and speed. Her apps/internet NEVER worked where mine ....just took awhile. So do you actually depriortize the PLAN TYPE, or do you actually deprioritze people who use more DATA than others as well? My speeds are not even comparable to hers during what are obvious congested times. What type of customer and stipulations are deprioritized? How can this be verified to your customers?
If you are going to provide a plan of deprioritizing during congested times regardless if it is day one of billing cycle , there needs to be notifying or accessible data we can retrieve to tell us about this and how severe it is...