Here's my 5 day battle with Verizon CS since this past Monday.

[gallyjh]

For some context, I have had the same phone (Samsung Note 20 Ultra) since last December. My wife and I had TotalWireless as our initial carrier.

She had strange constant issues of getting text messages late, and then they would come in rapidly when the messages were backlogged. I never had these issues with texting, but I also never texted as much as she does.

In any case, I got tired of her complaints and finally started researching for a new carrier. I wanted to stay on Verizon's network because we use to have GoogleFi, and it was terrible service in our house (though it worked great in our previous house). My research lead me to US Mobile. There was well priced and got great reviews. Their customer service was great. However their data service was horrendous for both of us. I stuck it out for 2 months, but they couldn't do anything to make it better.

This leads me to Verizon. Figured I might as well just quit playing with MVNO's and just get the 'real' thing.

I decided to port my number only (and wait before transferring my wife's number) last Wednesday to their prepaid plan of $75. I received the SIM card last Friday. Stuck it in my phone as the mailing and pamphlet said it was ready. It was not ready. So I called their customer service. After about a 2 hours and talking to 2 different techs, they determined the SIM was not ready, and that it wouldn't be ready until Monday. That was my first disappointment.

Monday comes, I stick the SIM back in. Great! I can make and receive phone calls with my transferred number. However I can't send or receive text messages to real phone numbers (however i can receive VZW messages and I can reply to them). I called up support again. After 4 hours of trouble shooting, factory reset, network reset, app reloads, grabbing their text app, etc, etc - they could not get it to work and concluded it may be the SIM. So they were going to mail a new SIM.

So I wait until Wednesday. Decided I need to try them again before getting the new SIM that was mailed - as it's fairly frustrating I can't get into many of my accounts that require two factor authentication (not to mention they had me factory reset and I lost google authenticator QR codes - still dealing with that). So I head out one of their Verizon branded stores (not a reseller). The rep there was super nice and helpful. He tried many different things as well since he had the hardware, like taking my SIM and trying it on one his other phones. He was able to make and receive calls, but still couldn't send texts. He tried putting in a brand new SIM and that still had the same problems. So he decided to call their tech support too. Unfortunately they have to sit through the same procedures as we do. I thought they had faster access. Long story short there, he went through the same steps I did on Monday and after 3 hours on support, they this time blamed that I hadn't waited 3-5 days for the full port. The rep and I didn't really believe what he saying, but that was all we could do. So I waited 2 more days.

Today is Friday. A full 5 days after the porting. Still can't send/receive text messages. Called up support again. Caught the person up on this fiasco. He promised (yeah sure buddy) me he would have this fixed by the end of the call, and he would be the last person I needed to talk to. This person didn't have me do much on the phone, instead I was on hold many times and he was "doing resets" on his side. 2 hours later, still nothing. I demanded this had to go to someone else that had better tools than him. An engineer or something. He told me OK, that he would transfer me. He transfers me to another tier 2 tech, that had not been briefed. At this point I'm pretty angry. I felt bad I had to be aggressive with this next person and I was tired of their troubleshooting. I demanded to know what would be done if he can't fix the problem. He said he has to fill out a ticket. I said I want that then. I am not going to go through all the hoops a 4th time again. An hour on hold with him and he finally has a ticket number for me. In a last ditch effort he has me test texting again. Of course it fails. He says I'll have to wait until next Wednesday to get a response back from the ticket.

I'm not sure what to do at this point - whether to find another carrier or stick this out. I know TMobile isn't great around here, but at this point I hope to at least have texting again and be able to get into my 2FA accounts.

[vzw_customer_support]

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