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SO MUCH MISINFORMATION IN THIS FORUM

The warranty on my Fascinate expires this month. Almost a year to reflect on the phone itself, Verizon, Samsung and the people that frequent this forum. So here is my perspective: Overall the phone itself is more capable than any previous phone I've had. My 2 phones were not capable of installing Froyo and they were replaced with new phones, not somebody elses's defective phones ie: Certified Like New.

Some things that I have discovered during the past 12 months: Samsung does not care at all about someone that already spent their money on their product. Verizon only cares that you continue to make monthly payments and if you speak to 10 different reps you will be told 10 different lies. Some of the people that post here know nothing about their phones and have created their own problems, some people that post here behave like they are Verizon employees although they claim they are not and don't miss an opportunity to belittle folks that have legitimate concerns. Some folks that post here are very good people that go out of their way to help others and tell the truth.

I don't write anything that is based on anything other than my own personal experience: the truth, at least my truth. Some of you are been told that you must conform if you have a defective phone your only option is a used replacement for the brand new product that you purchased... that is utter garbage. You have been told that this is the "rule" for all electronic purchases...again utter garbage. I have purchased defective cameras, computers, monitor, e-books, phones that were replaced with a brand new product, you allow yourself to be shortchanged by a retailer, so you get exactly what you allow and not an iota more, this is your fault.

If this post is allowed to stand and It may not because I have been censored and deleted extensively on this forum I am sure people here will disagree with me, and that is ok by me, after all it should be about freedom of expression, but my experience in this forum is that freedom of expression is limited.

Anyway, all things considered the Fascinate has been an interesting experience for me where the good outweighs the bad.

Comments

wardcst24

I agree whole heartedly

I have only seen one moderator that has gave us the straight good and tryed to help us

That said I do love my phone now that it works as a Phone again

CaJa70

AMEN to everything you stated about Verizon. I couldn't agree more. I don't know that I could have stated in the civil manner that you have.

I just hope that in 11 months when my Verizon contract is up and my husband and I go back to AT&T, that AT&T is still as good as they were during the 6 1/2 years that we were with them. Excellent customer service and excellent employees at our local AT&T store.

Tidbits

I don't agree with 1/2 of it. There's various reasons, but I won't get into it. There's a sense of logic to it people tend to overlook.

NuDroidUsrr

CaJa70 wrote:
AMEN to everything you stated about Verizon. I couldn't agree more. I don't know that I could have stated in the civil manner that you have.

I just hope that in 11 months when my Verizon contract is up and my husband and I go back to AT&T, that AT&T is still as good as they were during the 6 1/2 years that we were with them. Excellent customer service and excellent employees at our local AT&T store.

Don't take this the wrong way, because I am just asking, if AT&T was so great, why did you change to Verizon? Coverage? Phone? Friends?

Just curious....

cstephens

HERE! HERE!! The best post by far! I agree 100% with you. This forum is full of folks, some with well intent, others with no clue and then there's that group that likes to post unecessary swipes at people's frustrations. Yet, they are allowed to belittle while those with LEGITIMATE frustrations are censored by the moderators (who are of no value as VZW employees). They rarely offer any advice and when held to accountability, their excuse for lack of involvement is that this forum is intented to let the participants figure out the issues themselves.... OH REALLY?? So why are you monitoring the posts then???

I've raised my frustrations with the Fascinate all the way to the level of the Office of the President and the only resolution I got was an offer to replace my Fascinate with ANY 3G Verizon phone... wait... a CERTIFIED LIKE NEW 3G Verizon phone. I just sighed and accepted the phone because I need a means to communicate with my family.

My family will be leaving Verizon the second the contract on the remaining line of our family plan expires. It was way too costly to drop $350/line in cancellation fees. So, we're stuck being pimped out, in our clear heels on 8 Mile, until such time allows itself for the switch!

I'M OUTTA HERE!

Verizon Sucks!! :smileymad:

CaJa70

@NuDroidUsrr - That's a good question. My post last night was done after I'd already spent a long time reading through lots of other posts by Fascinate owners and after I had written a post in another forum, so I was tired and didn't take the time to address why we left AT&T.

We live in a city that gets fairly decent coverage by both AT&T and Verizon, but when you start driving south of here, within 5 minutes, the coverage is very spotty and within 10-15 minutes, there is no coverage at all. Text msgs. may get through when a signal is picked up for a minute, but making phone calls is not possible. Unfortunately, the route my husband travels to and from work every day (35-40 min. drive), which is also the same route to where most of my family lives (about a one hour drive) is south of here. Last September, we both needed new phones (after 6 1/2 yrs. with the ones we bought when we signed up with AT&T). This was around the time that Verizon TV commercials were airing on every channel all of the time. These Verizon commercials specifically targeted AT&T's coverage map (as compared to Verizon's). Other Verizon commercials (and news articles) said that surveys showed that Verizon had the highest customer satisfaction rate of any of the main cell phone providers.

In addition to those two things, our daughter (a Verizon customer in Atlanta) wanted us to switch to Verizon so that our phone calls back and forth would come out of the free minutes on her plan. That alone was not enough reason to switch, but when put together with the reasons stated above, we decided to try Verizon for a couple of years. We thought it was possible that we might get a little better coverage in those areas we travel the most often, and we thought that, even if it wasn't better, it would at least be the same. We figured we didn't have anything to lose in trying. Ha!

After switching to Verizon and getting new phones, we soon realized that the coverage was not only no better, but it was actually worse. Our son & daughter-in-law are AT&T customers and have been with us several times while traveling that route and they both had signals on their phones while our phones had nothing. (By the way, my husband has a different phone than I - his is a Samsung Intensity II.) We weren't happy about having even less signal than we did before, but figured we could live with it for 2 years.

However, after 2-3 weeks, we realized that we could no longer make phone calls from inside our house (this had never been a problem before). We tried several different areas, standing along the outside walls, near windows, etc., but the calls just kept dropping. When I decided to call Verizon about this, that was my first taste of Verizon's Customer Service. I'm not even going to go into the details of the countless hours spent on the phone with them, the promises they made that they never followed up on, the numerous times I called back (after they failed to call or email me as promised), asking to speak to supervisors and being denied, lied to, all the ridiculous *228 & other things they had me doing that did not help, on and on and on. I'm sure anyone reading this already knows how frustrating they are to deal with.

So I decided to go back to the local Verizon store where we bought our phones for help with phone-related issues on my phone. I don't know where all the employees who had waited on us the day we bought our phones were, but it was like a whole different crew of people - not one familiar face. And this crew was the rudest, most unprofessional, apathetic bunch I have ever seen. I was there about 2 hours and left knowing that I never wanted to set foot inside their door again. I felt like I had been totally degraded and emotionally drained. Their lack of concern about anything (including talking to other people, following other conversations across the room, all while I was talking to them) was just unbelievable.

What really made me realize that had made a foolish decision in leaving AT&T was when AT&T called me one day asking if I minded answering some questions as to why we decided to leave them. I usually don't like doing that kind of thing, but decided to go ahead. The woman was very professional, polite, actually seemed like she cared, and really wanted to know (instead of just doing her job and going through the questions on the screen in front of her). She paid particular attention to detail - repeating back to me what I had said, as she typed it into the system. It wasn't all multiple choice or fill in the blank Q&As -- the kind where if your answer doesn't fit, it's just too bad. As she went through all the questions, it made me stop and think and then I realizes all the things that we did like about AT&T but took for granted, assuming all the big companies would be good in those same areas. I wish we had had a checklist of those questions to go through before we made the switch. I might have realized we had a good thing and shouldn't have taken a chance with someone else.

AT&T's Customer Service (both via phone and local) is great (maybe one or two exceptions but that is the norm with any large company) - Verizon's Customer Service...well, I think you know my feelings on them. Another point of aggravation that I totally didn't foresee was the pitiful online experience of "My Verizon", Verizon Wireless, the billing, Verizon Community, etc. I could not believe the ridiculous amount of separate user IDS & passwords we had to have to be able to do anything -- even just to speak to a Verizon rep on the phone. The timing out while working online at most of the above mentionedsites is just ridiculous. The way everything is set up is so confusing, full of glitches and poor designs -- just a terrible online experience overall. Had I not had anything to compare it to and not known how simple, smooth & streamlined AT&T's online experience was, I might not have found Verizon's so terrible.

Although this post is very long, I am leaving out lots of details about the unpleasant, frustrating, and exasperating experiences I have had with Verizon. My husband and I both are counting down the months until we can go back to AT&T. Unfortunately, we will both have to buy new phones when we switch -- an expense we had not planned on as we tend to hang on to the same phones, cars, appliances, etc., for a lot longer than the average person -- but losing all the aggravation and stress of dealing with Verizon will be worth the cost of new phones.

cstephens

Don't forget the cap on the "unlimited" data plan. My blood boils everytime I read that "Unlimited Data Plan" entry on my billing, when I know that I'm capped out at 2g. What a gross misadvertisement.

mdram4x4

CaJa70

another question

since you found out you got worse coverage, did you attempt to return the phone and cancel the contract?

you do have 14 days from purchase to do this.

not every carrier has the coverage for everyone.

as far as customer service, that all depends on the cs you get. unfortunately its like this for any company.

there are a few bad ones that ruin the experience for people

i, personally have had nothing but good service from vzw, but i use phone support 99% of the time.

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