What a horrible Company!!!!!!!!!!!

[alaska]

My family and I were recently moved form Kentucky to Alaska, with the Military.  We went to the local verizon store made sure we had no problems with our phones there.  We were told we were completely covered by them.  My husband recently broke his phone.  When we called to see what we could do about it, they told us we could order a new phone.  That sounds great until we hear the rest.  We were told we couldn't activate our phones in Alaska.  The tech support guy actually told me to drive to Washington state and activate it.  That is almost 3,000 miles away.  My other option was receive a new phone but have no data service available on it, but we would still need to pay for it each month.  Thanks Alejandro!  I then asked for his supervisor and after getting the run around finally got to talk to Ben.  Who came on the phone already stating he new what was going on and there was nothing else they could do for us.  He actually stated, "It's not Verizon's problem that you were moved in the military and we don't care!" I actually asked him at this point in the conversation is this being recorded because this is outrageous. He stated for quality issues only.  I def. felt like this was a quality issue.  I then asked can I cancel my plan with you.  I was told that I could if I wanted to pay 20 dollars per line per month still in contract. This is absolutely ridiculous to me.  This is def. no way to show support to people in the military! And I plan on making sure everyone is aware of this situation.  Do not use this Company!!!!!!! Especially if you are in the Military!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BlackDragon]

Although it definetly wasn't right of the supervisor to say what he did, they were right in saying there wasn't much they could do. Unfortunately vzw does not have a single tower in alaska, they have only roaming partners. In an extended network like alaska, *228 will not work so you would be unable to over the air program the phone. Manual programming would work to get your phone to make calls and text but is very unlikely to activate data services unfortunately.

[alaska]

This could have been addressed before we moved all the way to Alaska.  The second issue is if they don't have a single tower then they should not offer service to alaska.  If you can't offer your costomer's phones, then it should be a viable option to end the contract.  You really can't expect to run a phone company and not be able to offer people phones. 

[BlackDragon]

Well i agree with the fact that people who live in alaska should not have verizon wireless service, to not have any service there offered by verizonwireless would ruin it for the tourists.

[budone]

You can try calling *22800, *22801, *22802, etc, to see if one of the options is VZW. 

But you can call tech support from another phone and they can walk you through manually activating the phone.

[alaska]

You can't manually activate a phone while in roaming.

[budone]

Unless you have an iPhone, There are many posts on here stating they activated their new phone in AK via tech support walking them through, but what do I know. You apparently just wanted to rant, not any help.

[idaho2010]

I lived in Alaska for some time and realize your frustration.

One way around this is to have the phone sent to a relative, have them activate it (living within the VZW service)  and send it to you in Alaska. 

Just thought I would try to give a suggestion

Mark

[Coaster]

You haven't been in the military long if you haven't run across this more than once. Go to post legal, they are used to giving this speech and give it better than I do, but here is the summary: You are military, and orders supersede contracts. If there is no service where you were required to be, they can't hold you to the contract.

I'm surprised no one from Verizon told you that. Go see post legal.

[surfdude001]

Hello Alaska,

I am very sorry about the poor experiences you've had with Verizon Wireless and it's patrons. I do want to point out that Verizon does offer a "network extender" which will give you signal, any where you have an internet connection.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/networkextender.jsp

I know this will not reverse your thinking of Verizon Wireless, however I felt as if anyone having a problem with their signal and did not want to move out of their contract would find this useful.

-Anthony