No Service For 8 Days

[OneAngryHombre]

On Wednesday, November 30th, both lines on my account lost service in and around my house.  The devices are iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro.  Service is restored if I go approximately 1-2 miles away from my house.  I have had Verizon for two years and never had any issues at my house until the 30th.  I have spent multiple hours with chat support and gotten nowhere.  I opened a ticket (NRB000011079086) and was told that it would be escalated to Engineering, but my ticket was closed with a non-answer of "There is no service outage in your area, it's probably with your phone or the building material of your house."  That is 100% inaccurate.

I did not change devices, nor did I change the building materials in my house.  Everything was working just fine until 11/30/22 when Verizon service dropped completely for both of my devices.  That is NOT a device issue.  My devices work just fine when I am outside of my neighborhood.  This issue is either with my account or with the nearest cell tower to my home.  I am absolutely certain that something changed on Verizon's back end but either no one knows what happened or no one wants to admit to what happened.  What do I have to do to get Verizon to take my issue seriously?

[vzw_customer_support]

OneAngryHombre,

Thanks for all the details. As consumers ourselves that rely on our phones, we understand the importance of signal while at home. Help is here. How are services just outside of your home address without WiFi?

-Arya

[OneAngryHombre]

I have no service outside of my home.  Both iPhones are in SOS mode.  I need to drive 1-2 miles away before service is restored.

[vzw_customer_support]

Thank you for offering these helpful details. I will send a Private Note so we can offer more personalized support. 

-Yale

[OneAngryHombre]

After spending another 2 hours online with chat support, I was finally told that this outage is related to the CDMA tower sunset project.  Unfortunately there is nothing Verizon can do to fix it.  I am now stuck paying $180/mo. for service that I can't even use.  Totally unacceptable.

[vzw_customer_support]

It's important to receive resolution regarding service. We are here to help! Send us a DM so we can review the details of your service together. 

*Terean

[OneAngryHombre]

I am posting as much information as possible because I know that a lot of you out there are dealing with similar issues:

• Switched from AT&T to Verizon ~2 years ago
• Had perfectly fine Verizon service in my home (standard suburban house, no crazy build materials)
• Both lines on my account lost service while at home/in my neighborhood at the same time on the same day, 11/30/22
  • If I drove 1-2 miles away from my house I would regain service.  This issue is localized to my neighborhood
• iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 12 both became bricks while at home
  • Service indicator switches between SOS and zero bars.
  • Sometimes it shows full LTE bars but I don't actually have service, it's like when you are connected to your home WiFi but your internet service is down (connected but no internet)
• A sudden disconnect like that usually indicates a billing issue, I checked and there were no issues
• I opened a chat support session.  They had me run through the usual troubleshooting steps (enable/disable airplane mode, reset network settings, switch eSIM settings, etc.).  No difference
• iPhone 12 had its SIM card replaced at a Verizon store, no difference
• I opened another support chat session and went through the usual nonsense
• Support could still not understand why I don't have service.  They offered to send me an LTE extender to add to my house, which I accepted but told them that this would be a temporary fix and to still investigate the root cause of my issue
  • I also asked that a support ticket be opened and escalated to Engineering
• I began putting together an outage timeline
  • I found the CDMA network sunset notification which states, "Starting the day before your December 2022 bill period begins, if you are a Verizon customer using a 3G CDMA or 4G phone device that does not support HD Voice (Non-VoLTE), your line will be suspended without billing, and the device will no longer make/receive calls, send/receive text messages, or use data services."
  • I understand that neither phone on my account should be affected by CDMA going away, but my service stopped working the day before the start of the December billing period, just like the notification said
  • This could be pure coincidence, but I work in IT so I know that planned changes can always have some unintended consequences.  The timing is suspicious, if nothing else
• My ticket was open for 2 days before being closed with a resolution of "We detected no outages in your area.  The issue is with your house or device."
  • There is no way that is true, but I was unable to get ahold of anyone who would actually listen to me
• I opened another chat session this morning asking why my ticket was closed with a non-resolution
• I finally got ahold of someone who would speak to me like a human and not a robot reading a script
• After 2 hours of chat support, the tech confirmed that he sees that I am "definitely having issues" in my area, and that he would run some more tests
• I brought up my CDMA sunset theory and he found it plausible.  When asked why CDMA being decommissioned would affect my non-CMDA devices, the tech replied that the answer was "business and politics".  I appreciated his candor with that last response
• The tech said he would make some changes, asked me to reboot my phone, and wanted me to test my service when I get home from work.  I will update this thread when I am able to

tl;dr - On 11/30/22 Verizon made a change to the tower nearest my neighborhood which resulted in both of my devices having zero signal, or at least that is my working theory as Verizon support has offered no other explanation in the 8 days it has been since I lost service.  Verizon has no plans of fixing this issue.  I am now stuck with a 36 month contract for service that I can't even use in my own home.

I attempted to post this information in other threads with similar issues so that people can be aware of what is going on, but all of my posts were deleted by a moderator for "violating the ToS".  Hopefully some of you with recent service issues will see this and understand that the reason you are having issues might be as simple as "we made changes, you no longer have service where you used to, deal with it", or at least that is the only explanation that Verizon has cared to give me.

To the Verizon reps who may be reading this - enabling WiFi calling is not an acceptable answer.  Claiming there is no service outage in my area while I have been experiencing an outage for over one week, and brought it up to support multiple times, is not an acceptable answer.  Having no explanation for why I had perfectly fine service one day and zero service the next day, which coincided with the sunset of CDMA in my area, is not acceptable.  Also, please do not say that you are going to send me a PM about this issue because that does not help the numerous other people affected by it.  Post your reply out in the open for all of us to read.

[vzw_customer_support]

Hey there! We're so sorry to hear about the experience that you've been receiving. Help is here ready to help! To continue, please send us a Private Note, so we can obtain more info about this today. *Kris

[OneAngryHombre]

Tell me you didn't read what I wrote without actually telling me that you didn't read what I wrote.

[aalicee14]

Thank you for your super thorough response, and I sincerely hope you’re able to find a resolution with Verizon. The information you provided makes a lot of sense, and is helping me work through a hypothesis for why the SIM card on my Verizon purchased  iPad 10.2 stopped working after my recent data cycle ended on 12/21/2022 (no available data network effective 12/22/2022).  I wasn’t aware of the CDMA sunset until you mentioned it, and while the device is 5G enabled, the data plan is for LTE only, and have no intention of staying married to V for 2 more years. I’ve been a Verizon customer since 2006, but your story and many others are enough to convince me to go elsewhere. I want to do more research on the towers in my area (Rhode Island) but I appreciate you sharing your findings! 

[vzw_customer_support]

Please reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, so we can troubleshoot this for you and assist.

*Harley