VZ Navigator and GPS Not working in East Texas

This is getting ridiculous, GPS and navigation have been out for over a month and we have to prove to Verizon there is a problem. I am getting really fed up of this.

I have always thought this was a GPS issue.. but i only use the free apps.. i complained enough to get 2 months credit for VZ Navigator.. guess what.. it uses the same gps chip in the phone and it doesn't work either. supprise supprise supprise.

How many weeks does it take?

As for Google updating a database.. in airplane mode, GPS still works... or used to.. ... i have done it many times.

Why does Google have to update something that works in airplane mode when all the transmitters in the phone are turned off? makes no sense at all..

fix your service or credit me something for the services you are not providing till you get them fixed!!!

It's been weeks and weeks and weeks guys.. COME ON!!!!

Carthaginian

This is now a well documented issue. It is limited to East Texas (and possibly northwest Louisiana), and it is not limited to the HTC ThunderBolt (also reported on Droid X and Droid 2). We have numerous reports from people who have travelled in and out of East Texas and their GPS worked outside of the area and stopped working inside the area without them making any changes to their phones.

We have even started keeping a map of the problem area: http://bit.ly/etxgps

We need someone from Verizon to acknowledge this is a problem. Get your store employees to check with their phones and you will see what we have been seeing for weeks.

I just got a call from the Verizon Executive offices in response to the email I sent to the regional president on Friday. She said that they were not aware of the issue so I filled her in on what I knew. She apologized and said they would get to the bottom of it and she promised she would keep my apprised of the situation.

Ok, just got a call back from Latoya at the regional Verizon office. Once more I got the “it’s a Google problem and we don’t support third party apps” line. She talked me into trying VZ navigator and gave me a $10 credit to try it out. Here is the result. VZ navigator found my location with GPS when I went outside. I closed it and opened Google maps and it found me to the spot. When I came back inside where there is no GPS signal, it lost me and is putting me at a tower location. I really despise Apple and AT&T has poor coverage here, but I never had this lack of customer care when I was with them.

vzwTravis

Update on issue near and around Henderson TX,

From ticket created April 26th

VZW performed network integration work in this area on 4/6/11. the issue the customer is experiencing is due to the delay of Google updating their database with our new SID/BID/NID for the area. Google states that this issue normally clears up within 2-4 weeks once VZW network changes occur. please advise customer of the timeframe for resolution.

I could only see 2 satellites the whole trip trio work

has doing a factory reset fixed anyones problem here in east texas?

my gut and my brain tell me no, but it's hard to get help when you tell tech support over the phone you don't want to follow their instructions.

my wife took her droid2 to new jersey.. before she left she had nothing.. once there all was great.. when she got back she had nothing.. that tells me a factory reset will do nothing but requre me to reinstall and resetup all my apps.. it's alot of trouble to prove an i told you so point.

has this helpled anyone?

I don’t see how anything on the phone end will solve the problem. The fact that all is good when you get out ofEast Texasshows that it is not the phone or an app that is to blame. I think you are right in that it will only cause you to have to reinstall your apps.

i'm on the phone with CS for the 3rd or 4th time.. i just can't seem to get any traction..

zertsman wrote:
has doing a factory reset fixed anyones problem here in east texas?
has this helpled anyone?

I don't think so. thewayne01 and I have both tried a couple of different ROMs on our Thunderbolts, as well as flashing the update that they had last week. Nothing seemed to make a difference. I wouldn't do it for the purpose of trying to fix the GPS.

I have had intermittent GPS in Marshall today. About twenty minutes this morning and again this afternoon. I hope this a good sign.

I'm in Tyler and having this same issue. I've had very little luck getting Verizon to even acknowledge that there is a problem. The guys at the local store have been downright rude about owning the issue.

Maybe the best course will be to overload their executive support department by emailing the CEO and Regional President here: http://aboutus.vzw.com/leadership/executive/index.html

By the way, interfering with the function of the GPS network is illegal. Everyone should go here and file an FCC complaint: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm .
If enough complaint get filed, they will be investigated and forced to fix the issue. I think the best tack on reporting this is how it disables our ability to place e911 location assisted calls...

My model is the Droid X. I hope by now the Verizon people have figured out this affects all models.

Anyone else dumping their contract with Verizon? I know I'm not going to forget this....

scoats

I received a response from the Verizon Solutions Consultant I spoke with on Monday morning. This is the same gentleman that added our issue to the Verizon regional meeting that happened yesterday.

Here's his response:

"There is some lively discussion going on. One recommendation is making sure your device has the latest firmware update.

I will send a more comprehensive response later today, but again, wheels are in motion. We have the right team in
place isolate the problem and provide the solution."

I will post his comprehensive response later today.

Sounds promising

Firmware does not seem to be the problem and even if it is, we are at the mercy of Verizon for the updates. Sounds like just another excuses to me.

I love how they keep calling Google Maps a "third party" application. Point in fact is that Google Maps is a FirstParty application. It's all the Verizon bloatware and VZ Naviagator that are the third party apps.

The person who said update your firmware won't be able to help. They obviously don't know what is going on. This problem is ALL on Verizon's side with the towers.

I posted it before, but here it is again. We all need to go file FCC complaints. Disabling GPS on devices is illegal. Verizon is only going to fix this if they get fined: FCC Consumer Complaints .

Tech support just called.... They are sending engineers to the area as they have seen lots of tickets.

Everyone hold your breath....

zertsman wrote:
Tech support just called.... They are sending engineers to the area as they have seen lots of tickets.

Everyone hold your breath....

I sure hope so. And I wish they would READ what we've already been saying. Look at my screenshots. Check out the map.

I hope Travis hasn't disappeared, but I am certainly discouraged by his total lack of response. Just to know they are aware of the details would be big for me.

I emailed the CEO about this issue from that executive contact link that was floating around and this was picked up by the "Executive Support" team. Got an update today that they are "sending out engineers" to check on this since there are so many tickets filed about this now.

That seems to match with what others are getting from support now, so maybe something is finally moving. I find it hard to believe that the engineers in this area aren't aware of the issue already though...

Yes, I received two calls from Verizon yester day. They are looking at our discussions on here and the other forums and they are sending network and GPS engineers in to the area to get this resolved.

things worked pretty well this morning... but I'm not that supprised.. we all get a few good hours out of the day usually.

lets see how it goes after work.

I have had to install VZ navagator to check gps since Verizon will not support the other apps they put on my phone and i paid for.. ie google maps and navagator.

VZ Navigator did the job on the way to my daughters school this morning... too bad I'm only interested in the other GPS apps.

It’s been my experience that when VZ Nav works, so does everything else. It is very frustrating that Verizon would not acknowledge there was a problem until we all installed VZ Nav. This is especially so since all the store managers in the area were aware there was an issue. Verizon showed a complete lack of customer care on this one and the local managers showed that they really have no regard for existing customers and focus solely on new business.

Free Google Navigation was the whole reason I moved from AT&T to Verizon. I should haven just gotten an Iphone 4. AT least AT&T would never dream of pulling this kind of stunt with their Iphones.

This is also a real shock about what the local Verizon store's actually are. Since the warrant replacement restructuring, the local stores are totally worthless. Has anyone else noticed how rude they are to you about this. Once we get locked into a contract, we're trash to them.

BTW Verizon, if someone is reading this. I'm telling everone I know about this {word filter avoidance} and warnign them away from your network. You should be ashamed of your customer service structure. Also, you really should take your name off of the local stores if they are not capable of supporting your products.

You force people ionto two year contracts and then you don't bother to support your product? Verizon is the epitomy of the souless corporation. If it wasn't for you're outrageous ETFs, I'd be gone already. At least I'll have motivation to tell everyone I run into for the next year to stay with AT&T...

Is GPS back up just about everywhere tonight? Mine has had a lock all night in Tyler. How is everyone else fairing?

Mine has been pretty good.. haven't checked the wife's..

I did talk to the VZ Tech guy.. he has been gathering all this information and has several tickets.. doesn't say how many.. anyway the interesting thing he asked was did i come over from Alltel? well as a matter of fact we did. He then said he has noticed that many of the people having problems were former Alltel customers. He hasn't done the formal research but just quickly looking that was something taht jumped out at him.

so my question is.. Is it just former Alltel people having problems? Alltel was pretty big around here.. it would kinda make sense. If it proves to be the case, this is a hard piece of data that will help the narrow the search and get to the root of the problem. It also makes sense that this all started about the time they switched the Alltel towers over to Verizon. 2 and 2 kinda adds up.. at least with a quick look.

He is watching this forum and the other one over at VZW.. We need to know.. are you having gps problems and are a former Alltel customer!!!

I'll post over at VZW as well.

good luck!!!

I also have to mention.. the Tech guy is calling me every day to see how it's going.. Makes me feel great and goes a long way to makign me feel better towards Verizon.. not perfect, but neither are the others. 4 weeks in and i can truly give the cudos.. not done or fixed just yet, but cudos all the same.

I'm not an Alltel customer. I switched over straight to verizon from AT&T middle of last year.

Not an Alltel customer either... switched from AT&T when Thunderbolt came out in March. GPS was working for me this afternoon as well.

I'm a bit concerned that they are saying "many of the people". It has been my impression that all android users were knocked out by this. How could they not have confirmed this already? They can't possibly think that the demo phones that don't work in the Verizon stores were Alltell customers...

Been working all night for me, so maybe this is a moot point now.....

I have been with Verizon for two years and all the phones on my account were out. I have also seen posts that BB running VZ Nav were out also.

Still working for me this morning. By the way, my brother switched from AT&T when Droid X came out, and his worked fine until this April thing happened. So the thing about being previous Alltel customers is clearly not the issue.

If it is fixed--and I almost hope it's not at this point--then I still want to know what the problem was and how we can know that it's not going to happen again. I don't like it just magically starting to work again with no explanation and the last thing we've heard from Verizon is some invalid theory that it has to do with customers previously being on Alltel.

And also to address the issue with VZ Nav, I'm not using VZ Nav and have never used it. But for those who say once VZ Nav starts working, all the other apps start working, I would note that the same thing happens for me if I get it working in the GPS Status app. Once it works there, it works in Google Maps, Google Nav, the web browser, etc.

That's yet another reason why I think it is a hardware issue and not software-related.

I was out of town all weekend so of course it was workig great.. got in last afternoon, late. This morning all was well. I don't think it's been enough time to call it fixed, but things look promising.

let's give it a few days and see if it holds....

It sure seems to be fixed. I have been able to get a practically instant fix all weekend and continuing into today. My brother came in from Ft. Worth and had no issues like he usually has seen. I wonder what those engineers did once they finally sent them down here?

BANDAI

Same problem in Austin, TX since early July. The Verizon wireless staff keeps telling me it's the app problem. But I have been using google navigation for half year, everything is working fine until last month.