Service is terrible in Downtown Berkeley, California. You know, the one with the flagship public university!
Area code 94703
Visit Civic Center Park on Martin Luther King and Allston and you maybe get 1 or 2 bars. Go to the opposite corner, on Milvia and Center Street and it's worse yet.
Go half a block up Center to Berkeley City College - the community college - and good luck getting any signal at all.
I'm using an iPhone 13 Pro. My spouse is too and reports the same awful coverage. I called Verizon about this from that location and after the call was dropped (!!!) they said they would escalate to some team or other and of course nothing happened.
I repeat: this is in the heart of Berkeley, where much of the technology of modern telecommunications was developed. I imagine quite a few people in Verizon leadership were educated here too. But the service is terrible!
We want to make sure that all your concerns are clarified, and that all issues are fixed. We sent a Private Note to continue assisting you. ~Geo
No private message has come through.
Check the bars on your phone and resend? 🤣
Kidding aside, the help I need is simple: send a Verizon employee over to each of the locations I named and have them take a picture of a phone with 5 bars. Reply publicly with that. Be accountable for service quality!
Anyone wondering how Verizon handles this in private chats - they insist that you go to the problem location and message with them even if the network is so bad that their messaging app doesn't work. SMH!
Hello, OMGNotAnotherScreenName. Help is here as we can review your area regarding your signal concerns. I have sent you a Private Note for additional assistance.
-Natasha
Community: posting here will result in agents trying to pull you into private messaging. I spent a LOT of time chatting with them and going through exhaustive and time wasting steps that were frankly quite silly. How the heck do you run a speed test when the network is so bad that you can't run a speed test?
I called *611 from a landline and eventually got someone who wasn't robotically following a script. She still had to do her thing, but she had some awareness that the issue wasn't user error or my device. I was able to replicate with multiple devices and with other people.
One possible explanation is that my area is dense with people on higher service level plans (I'm pretty high but not at the top) and so their traffic prioritization is boxing me out. This suggests poor understanding of the customer base and also underinvestment in the infrastructure. The ticket has been escalated, so we shall see....
I've repeatedly contacted Verizon for over 20 years about having little to zero service at my home in Albany/N Berkeley. EVERY time, I'm directed to refresh network settings, which has never made a difference--other than giving me a job restoring all of them. I've been given a booster box for my house (ha).
Anyway-- I've been out of town since July, and now back October 1, 2023. I have almost no service ANYWHERE anymore. I constantly get the ! Informing me that texts are going nowhere. If I have one speck of a bar, I'm lucky.
I'm planning to switch carriers at the earliest. I'm actually stunned at the degradation in service around the Bay Area.
Thanks for reaching out and bringing your situation to our attention. We want you to have consistent and reliable service to connect. et’s work together to address this issue today. Please reply to the following Private Note to get started.
-Deb
OMGNotAnotherScreenName, I am sending you a Private Note now. Please be sure to check it as we are eager to help.
-Natasha
I've got a Samsung S23 Ultra and some days I should just leave it somewhere else. I went to a friend's house, The coverage map shows coverage but if my phone is in my pocket it has no service, if I lay my phone on the table it gets service but I can not use any internet features. I'm looking into switching carriers...
We know how important it is to have your service working, and we are sorry to read that you had this negative experience. To better assist you, we will be sending you a private note.
~Freddy
Moving everything to private notes is not helpful. There needs to be a way to report bad signal to you all without having to go to a bunch of dumb "turn it on/off" steps. If 100 people tell you that your network is deficient, you ought to look into it. So... make it easy for us to tell you.
Remember the "can you hear me now?" ads Verizon used to run? Bring that guy back!
I'm pretty sure I remember the coverage maps used to show the estimated coverage quality, now it just shows "Coverage" or "No Coverage". With the shutdown of the 2g and 3g networks coverage is even worse. It is like your wifi at your home, 2.4GHz has better coverage and reaches further, and 5GHz has a smaller coverage area but can push faster speeds. I miss my Motorola StarTac at this point and the T9 texting.
I shut 5G service down on my S23 Ultra, the 5G network is so small with Verizon it doesn't do anything but eat my phone battery. The bad thing is Verizon locked this ability on their branded S23 Ultra, another reason I never will purchase a phone from Verizon again. Unlocked FTW
Same here. Live on a lake and lucky for 2 bars when standing by the back door! Often calls fail or drop. You can hold for an hour when calling Verizon and then they disappear.
Hey there, Janetb1510, we know how important it is to have reliable cell service. How long have you been running into an issue with service? Can you please verify your zip code so we can take a closer look at the area? How far away from your home area do you have to travel before service improves?
-Lauren
We strive to provide reliable service, and we are concerned to learn you are experiencing issues in the area. To better assist you, I'll be sending you a Private Note, please reply to it, so we can get started.
~Maria
Another 94703 Berkeley resident who has seen their Verizon cell service go to garbage.
Used to be I had fine cell service in my apartment (windows two sides) up until a few months ago. Now, many of my calls with coworkers aren't working- I can often hear them but they can't hear me. Most of them are on company phones, on the same Verizon account as I am. When I call them back using our companies VOIP app on my cell (or my landline), I can connect.
iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 16.7
We're terribly sorry for the issues you're encountering with our service. There have been some updates to the iPhone software. The new version is 17.0.3. Have you tried to update your device?
~Ivone
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