JetPack Service and Data Usage; Were We Told the Truth?

[swimboywilly]

I wanted faster speed than I was experiencing  with the incredibly slow AT&T DSL service costing me about $28/mo.  Ok, so it was going to cost me $40/mo. according to my Verizon salesman in Torrance, CA. I gave myself a gift for Thanksgiving and went JetPack.  Though limited in distance from the router compared to before, the speed makes me happy.

I soon learn that maybe there is or was a 2 Gb plan for $20/mo (plus the monthly $20 access), but any less than 4 Gb is a joke, and $10 more (now $50/mo) gets you that 4 Gb.  Frankly, I'm not sure if there ever was a 2 Gb plan at $40 total/month! There goes "Surprise No. 1".  Ok, so I'm paying $20 more a month for better, more versatile service.  Oh oh ... my daughter and grandson are here for Xmas.  He's watching downloaded movies and cartoons.  Oh Oh ... over the next two days and until I read my email notices, I've Jetpacked all the way to my "9th data overage".  Oh yes .... that is 2 Gb each overage: $15 for each overage= $135.  Gee, those overages that I didn't even think about (or anticipate) could have bought me 4 months of DSL.  If our friends at Verizon don't help me out on these last set of overages ... I am out of here.  Send me the cancellation bill if you really don't care about customer service and satisfaction.

[#2]

Sorry but HD video on Youtube can use more than 650 MB per hour especially on a computer. 4G is everywhere. And I suggest REAL internet if you want to stream video. Also buffering won't lower the amount of data used. Adjusting the video quality will.

[lookinforanswer]

Follow me for a better solution.

[slapstick]

This replying and following has been going on for several days and I have no answers just lots of people replying and telling me to follow them. Maybe somebody could just pick up a phone and call or send an email that I can respond to. I don't have the time to sit and wait for somebody to reply to my follows. We area getting nowhere.

>>Personal information removed to comply with the <<

Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

[#5]

There is only so much spinning your wheels you should put up with.

You did the right thing.

A jetpack is fine for short term, portable, internet service.   It is NOT a solution for home internet service.   It should be turned off immediately after use.

While password protected, once a jetpack connects to a device, they do not disconnect or re-connect automatically when within range and data is constantly streaming back and forth.

You wrote:  "Tech told me that my smartphone was automatically connecting to wifi and using data. Impossible since I don't use my phone to surf at home when I have a computer in front of me."

Unless you purposely turn wifi off on the cell, it is syncing data back and forth, updating mail, etc.   The Tech was correct.

[slapstick]

This is actually getting pretty funny. Again I get a response from someone telling me that there is no problem with jetpack, defending Verizon jetpack service, and putting it on my use. Let me explain this one more time. The jetpack was used for my home internet service for more than four years and we were VERY SATISFIED with what WE DO on the internet. For me and my wife it WAS A VERY GOOD SOLUTION. So please don't tell me that it wasn't meant for what we used it for when we were getting very good service for WHAT WE DO. We don't watch movies stream videos or music, we only use email and do some light surfing. For more than 4 years we NEVER turned the jetpacks that we have used off when not in use and never experienced high usage. As to what the tech said about the phone syncing with the wifi, I told him and I will tell you that I do not EVER turn my wifi on my phone. I do not want to constantly have to answer if I want to connect to available wifi's. When I use my smartphone it connects to Verizon service so I don't need wifi. I HAVE NEVER USED WIFI TO CONNECT MY PHONE FOR INTERNET SERVICE. MY problem was simple, in one month we went from 10 gigs of usage to 20 gigs and had to turn the thing off after 3 weeks. For the remaining 6 days of the cycle we used my phones hotspot for both of our devices and used a whopping 1.3 gigs in 6 days of our normal use. Proof that something was wrong with jetpack or your charges.. In addition after getting the runaround from Verizon and no satisfactory answers we switched to satellite service that the tech said we would be dissatisfied with, Funny thing in almost 3 weeks of DOING WHAT WE DO our usage is a whopping 4 gigs of usage not 20. And yes the service is very good. For 20 gigs we pay $65.00. Last month I paid almost $200.00 for 3 weeks of service with Verizon internet for the same 20 gigs and couldn't use it the last week. And the runaround continues as various people offer to help and I get emails in my box but no matter how many people I choose to FOLLOW on this site, no one from Verizon has contacted me personally. I have a phone and email. If someone really wanted to resolve this issue I know Verizon reps could get in touch with me personally and not through this medium. I used this medium because talking directly to Verizon got no answers that make sence. Other people were having the same problem and Verizon needs to fix it before they lose more than just me as a customer. So please don't ask my to follow anyone else, use your resources to contact me in a way I can respond personally and not in a forum.

[slapstick]

I have spent a lot of time explaining my situation on this site and having various Verizon personnel who say they want to help. After 2 weeks someone finally sent a personal message wanting to help. I responded and then waited

for a response. Finally the person responded about being late for the response due to being  out of office. They expressed there EAGERNESS to help resolve my issue. They asked for my name and phone number and the details of my issue. I complied and sent them my information. I waited 2 days and no response. So I sent another message expressing my frustration with Verizon customer support. Still no response. So today I sent another response which I expect to not hear from either. I have stated that I love my Verizon phone service but this issue with the jetpack was ridiculous. Now I am starting to question my choice of phone service since Verizon took over Alltel many years ago. I cannot believe that this is the service that a company the size of Verizon offers. I would rather you just respond and say that there is nothing you can do than to send various messages offering to help resolve and then refuse to respond. My view of this company has really changed in the last month. I don't mind your making money heck that is what I do in my business, but at some point making money cannot be the only thing if you have unhappy customers and then do all you can to really continue to make them unhappy.

[slapstick]

So finally after more than 2 weeks someone finally picked up a phone and called me this morning. The rep was very nice and I appreciate the response. After explaining my issue and reviewing the recent problem a solution was offered from them. They wanted me to accept a new jetpack for use to help establish whether the old one was defective. However I explained that I was now using a new service that am very happy with for much less money than the jetpack. So my offer was simply to take the charge of $28.00 a month for the jetpack for the next six months that the contract is in affect and that would make me happy. Did not ask for refund on the overage charges that were occurring especially the last month. Of course that was refused. So I said send the new jetpack and I will use it but don't charge me for the data for one month to see if it was the problem. Again that was refused. So what they wanted was to send me a new jetpack, use it as I was, pay them for the data, and also pay my new service. So I will do the math. My current new plan is $65.00 for 20 gigs of which this month we will use between 9 and 10. Add to this the $28.00 for the jetpack that is turned off and my use is $93.00. What they want is me to pay $65.00 for new service, pay $28.00 for the new jetpack they are sending and then pay $100.00 for 10 gigs that I normally use with them. So to prove a point that I have already proven they want me to pay them $100.00 more. The point is they don't trust that I am telling them what happened with my usage and are determined that the problem is our use. But they are willing to send me a jetpack and trust that I would turn it on and use as I had before. I would easily just not turn t on and it would use no data. Verizon the solution is simple. I am happy to just have $28.00 a month from now to the contract ends in November credited to my account and we would be done. That is $168.00 of credit to make a customer happy. By the way I still pay for 1 smartphone at  $40.00  2 regular phones at $30.00 and 2 gigs of data at $50.00 plus taxes insurance and fees. You are still getting well over $150.00 from my other services. But again I am questioning whether I will continue to use Verizon once my contracts expire on the 3 phones. My hope is that someone in the upper management with Verizon will see how there service team is taking care of problems and see that they are creating unhappy customers. I am not the only person having this issue with PHATOM USAGE CHARGES. Your forums are full of the same issue. All my contracts are up in November and hopefully Verizon will use that time to realize that I pay them in excess of $1800.00 a year for 3 phones. What I am asking for is $168.00 of credit for the jetpack that sits in my desk, turned off and not being used because I couldn't afford the charges. In my business if I had an unhappy customer who asked that I pay less than 10% of a yearly bill to keep him a happy customer, I would jump at that rather than losing him completely. What Verizon is doing now is they are going to take some 2 weeks more to INVESTIGATE my past use and see what was actually happening on my end. My point is the same basic FACT, I have a new service where I will use between 9-10 gigs for $65.00 a month doing exactly what we always do. In the six days I turned my jetpack off in the beginning of February and used my mobile hotspot on my phone I used around 2 gigs. That is our normal usage of about 2 gigs a week. Stop looking on the customers end for inflated usage and look at your end and equipment. If you didn't think it was possible to be on your end why all the sudden are you offering to send a new jetpack out for us to try. I wont go back. The math is simple. $65.00 for 20 gigs from new service or $128.00 for 10 gigs from Verizon. The choice is easy. Now it is just a matter of whether Verizon wants to keep me as a phone customer. The choice is yours.  

[slapstick]

So here is the latest. A Verizon rep had called me over 2 weeks ago now and after some back and forth said that there were going to investigate our usage more and get back to us WITHIN 2 weeks. It is now over 2 weeks and no word. Again I am amazed at Verizon's customer service. In the meantime my new service is as advertised and we used 9.2 gigs in the first month which is much less than the 20 we used the last month with Verizon and had to turn it off 6 days early. Our Verizon bill went down $141.00 simply because of data. With my phone I used less than 1 gig of data.

So I sent a personal email to the person who was very eager to help with my issue and who told me that I would hear back WITHIN 2 weeks. Low and behold, the email would not go through to the customer rep. I should have seen that coming. Now we are back to square one. Verizon I don't know what to say but your customer service is horrible, frustrating and a waste of time and effort. You don't do anything that you say you will do  or when you will do it. I have begun to look at changing my phone service because of this experience. Evidently looking for new customers is more important than taking care of the ones you have that have been loyal to you. I have been dealing with this situation for about 6 weeks now and that is simply ridiculous. Upper management should be ashamed that there customers are being treated like I have been. I cannot express my disappointment any more than I have to this point. If there are any Verizon customers who want customer support, my experience is that you are not important to this company, even when you pay in excess of $200.00 a month for phone service. You should be ashamed that you cant or wont do better.

[fishgirl]

I've just replace the jet pack with Frontier connection. much cheaper.

[slapstick]

My first post on this subject was Feb 7 and now we are at Mar 19. I am still waiting for the INVESTIGATION of our usage that was promised over 2 weeks ago. If I had the time I would post my disappointment on every discussion in this forum. But I don't have that time and the fact is that Verizon wouldn't care anyway. I would write a letter to Verizon management but I know they wouldn't get it and evidently  the company policy is to give people the runaround and blame them when people have LEGITIMATE problems. They have taken the stance of car insurance companies that make you get lawyers involved in the hope that the trouble and time and money spent will wear you out and shut you up. Three months ago I was a longtime happy Verizon customer and now I am a frustrated, disappointed, unhappy, and angry  soon to be former customer. I figure that I have averaged at least $200.00 per month to Verizon for the last 5 years since I bought my first smartphone and jetpack. That would equal probably in excess of at least $10.000 in the last 5 years. Now go back to when I started with Verizon when they bought Alltell  and I had my wife, my mother in law and my phone and there are thousands of dollars more that I have spent with them. And all that time I was happy until a sudden spike in data usage during the month of January 2014. And instead of looking at me as a  loyal customer who is having an unusual problem, I was looked at as someone who doesn't matter to them. And now I already begun using a new internet service and unless something changes will be looking for a new phone company. I really like my phone service and coverage and don't mind the charges we currently have but Verizon must want me to leave. Why else would they refuse to help me out and listen to my side.  SAD SAD SAD .

[slapstick]

This is to Yalek. I appreciate you replying but I have followed several people including the person named Arnett who was supposed to be helping but as of 3 days ago I could not respond to his direct message because it is now undeliverable. So since he has my phone # and email just respond that way because I am tied of this following and getting no where.

[slapstick]

Let me say this again I am tired of people asking me to follow them and wanting to help and then ignoring my responses or not getting back to me. So again I say if you want to REALLY help then do something about the issue that I have explained to no end on this site. I found a way to write the Mid South director and am hoping to hear from them Monday as promised on there site. If you want to help you have access to my phone # and email because Arnett had it and used it but has I guess decided  that I was not worthy of helping since he disappeared and now I cant contact him directly. It is March 23 and I started calling about this is the last week of January. You have taken 2 months to do nothing but make a once happy Verizon customer into and very mad and disappointed one. So unless you are going to credit my account for the six months I want be using your data stealing and broken jetpack then don't bother contacting me.

[slapstick]

I mentioned yesterday that I had written an exhaustive explanation on Friday of my recent jetpack issue and the subsequent customer service nightmare that is still ongoing.  The person I wrote was the mid south president and at the end of the email it said that there would be a response within 24 hours or 1 business day. Today came and went and again with no response to a longtime loyal customer who really wants to keep there phone service with Verizon. The fact seems to be made clear to me that this company has no desire to keep customers happy and try to resolve issues.

[gypsyarizona]

I'm sorry this response won't help slapstick & I know you have repeatedly explained that YOU had NO CHANGE in usage.  But I just had to log in & respond to this situation as well.

To anyone claiming the jetpack was not designed to be your primary internet service, I'd like to see where any promotional material states that !  As someone who lives in a rural area, I first used my netbook (with a VZW 3G) then a Xyboard tablet (4G connection) for my SOLE internet service for years.  Then I switched to a jetpack.  What are those of us in rural areas without DSL/cable supposed to be using? (aside from DishNet - which used to be much more expensive than using VZW, with these random overages & its price reduction, maybe not)

But I also want to emphasize that I had a similar experience to slapstick.  Actually blamed it initially on Facebook (2 years ago I think, it was, when they did a major revamping) & stopped using it entirely as I saw my usage just jump from never going over 5GB/ month to randomly exceeding my limits.  Everything was fine for a while & then this past December the usage again just started going wild.  With NO change in my usage (and even after I went through & manually overrode every setting on every tablet app and laptop program to prevent automatic updating) I suddenly found myself barely able to keep my bill within a 10GB/ month limit.  Bought a jetpack when the tablet stopped charging & have managed to stay within the 10GB (At 9 with the cycle ending tomorrow), but that is without using 2 tablets that my son & I normally use. So like slapstick said, NO videos, NO music downloads, NO web printing, NO program downloading, just normal webpage surfing & I still can barely keep it below 10GB/month.  My jetpack is prepaid, as I thought I might have the tablet fixed, and I would love to see what the usage would have been if it weren't ( I wouldn't be the least surprised to find it would have shown even higher if I was subject to overages & not just disconnection).

As others have said (not sure if in this post or the one I read just before it), I initially thought someone had managed to break my password & was piggybacking on my service.  But even with the new device & fewer connections, the data just keeps randomly increasing.  I cannot make sense of it.

Again, I know this doesn't help the original poster but I just wanted to commiserate and to add my voice to the reply to those who claim we aren't using the jetpack correctly by not having other internet access.  Why would there be a 10GB plan then ?  When VZW claims the average user uses <2GB?

[slapstick]

Thx for your understanding of the issues that I have recently had with the jetpack. I understand the confusion that you have had and your issue is much like others who have posted. I ended up going all the way to the corporate level to try and get some understanding of the sudden issue. What I will tell you is that it was, it is and it will always be your fault for how the jetpack is using data. Even though I use my mobile hotspot on my Verizon phone when away from home on several occasions and used little data and even though I have changed to satellite service for the past 2 months and have used 9.5 gigs and 9.8 gigs doing what we always do, Verizon will never admit that the jetpack is somehow flawed. I was told by corporate that they conducted an investigation and showed that nothing was wrong with my jetpack even though the jetpack remains turned off in my desk. What they said was that the months that the data went crazy in December and January  was actually accurate according to there report. Of Course if your investigate yourself your going to be found not guilty. The proof though is as they say in the pudding. My new service is back to where the jetpack was before it went wild, and is much less expensive and just as good even though corporate told me that it may appear to be as good but is not. They did in the end give me a $90.00 credit for the data overage but then charged me $95.00 to cancel the contract. So I did agree to basically pay 5 dollars to get out of the contract and that is the best they would do. My point is that it took me writing numerous times in this community having many people to offer to help and didn't and getting the runaround from every customer service rep from the phone to this site to corporate to pay 5 dollars to get out of a broken jetpack that I know is messed up and have proven is messed up but Verizon says is fine. My suggestion is to simply use your mobile hotspot on your phone. Last weekend my wife and went out of town for 3 days and I tracked how much I used my hotspot. We used it a total of 5 to 6 hours of DOING WHAT WE DO and used less than 1 gig of data. Again for me this is proof that the jetpack that I have was messed up. I have found the perfect combination by using satellite service at home and my hotspot when mobile.  Hope this helps you and others to have some insight on how Verizon treats its customers.

[tcgty]

Well, it is understood by the majority that things like satellite internet and similar signal delivery like the Jetpack are only the consumers' last resort. That is, if there are no cable/dsl/fiber optic internet service available in the area of concern.

[grywolf58]

Wow. I wish I could find the phone number everyone else here is using to get up to the corporate level. I've been on hold 30 minutes each time three times now without getting anywhere. We're having exactly the same issues although I look at our data usage and find there are times, mostly in the early morning, when somehow I'm suppose to be using over 200 mb of data when I'm not even out of bed or the computer isn't even turned on. One time it was 1 am in the morning. I'm asleep at that hour. There are way too many and too numerous complaints about the Jetpack. Why is Verizon being so stubborn about it?

Like I said, I wish I could actually talk with someone about this. The local Verizon stores are a joke. They've been given the company line about it's the customers fault. Yeah, right.......

[BrendanFella]

I do not believe there is a phone number for corporate. They do not want you calling them.

Here is a link to the leadership where you can send an email to the person in your area.

However, do not expect any satisfaction.

The only way you will get a phone number is if one of the "leaders" responds and gives it to you.....GOOD LUCK

Leadership | Verizon Wireless