Yep, it’s rant night. One day soon I’ll answer the questions to earn my Liebster award, but that night is not tonight. I’m gonna rant. About Verizon Prepaid. About how it SUCKS.
Let me be clear–I am talking about the prepaid. NOT the post-paid, where you have a contract and they charge you way too much money then give you a “free” phone. Aside from the way too much money part, I actually like that side of things. But the prepaid…
Oh, the prepaid. Let’s start where I wrote it down in my little book while waiting in the Verizon store for some assistance.
1) You canNOT get a human on the phone. The nice guys in the store will tell you it’s possible, but I don’t believe them. I once spent forty-five minutes trying to get a human on the service number.
2) Pushing zero does not get you through all the prompts to a human. Push zero and it starts you back at the beginning. Push it a couple times in a row and you get a recorded voice saying “We’re sorry you are having problems. Goodbye.”
3) The website is useless. All you can do is (I presume you can do this) add money. You can’t get help. You can’t adjust your plan. You can just give them money. If you can do that–I haven’t tried.
4) The friendly, helpful, knowledgeable techs in the stores can’t help at all with prepaid. They can’t even look up your balance. Also they suffer under the delusion that it’s possible to get help by calling the prepaid service line. They are very nice about it when I tell them it doesn’t work, but they continue to believe it.
So yeah. I don’t know if there exists a prepaid service that actually treats its customers like people who pay them money, but that service is absolutely not Verizon.
Any suggestions?
I have tried over the years, All Tell. T Mobile, Sprint,bla, bla, bla. The only way to go with prepay is using a disposable cell. Use it until the minutes run out and get a new phone. I have been told this by several people who work in the business. All the pre-paid plans are set up to fail so you will buy the better plan. It is why my daughter and I went in on a family plan. Call and if you want to join on ours, and if Rebecca says it is okay, then we can look at that option and see what it will cost us all. We currently have 2 phones on it, and with you that would add 2 or 3 so I am not sure what we can do, but we can ask.
I have a Tracfone prepaid, and it’s pretty good for what I use it for, which is mainly texting/Twitter and a few phone calls. I’ve had the account since 2007 and am on my second cell phone, but the first did last almost 5 years. NOTE: I have no idea how the internet service is. My phone will allegedly do internet, but it’s 3 “minutes” for every minute of use, so I have never tried it. Also I’m not sure how sturdy their newer phones are – my 5 year-old one was a Nokia. It lasted through many, MANY droppings, etc. My new one has a big, pretty screen, so I’m much more careful with it.
Also I’m the type of person who’s okay with using a 5 year-old phone. Which may not apply to everyone you supply a phone for.
Oh, and Tracfone’s monthly plans haven’t been around terribly long, so I don’t know if they’re going to start messing with the prepaid stuff like in Debbie’s comment.
Basically, I like it, but I’m hesitant to recommend it because I think I may have unusually low requirements for my cell.
Must be a US thing. We have no trouble here in the UK. I’m with Vodaphone and I just call a free number and they give me my balance and it’s the same with Orange. I don’t use my phone very much so it’s ideal for me. I top up every few months at the supermarket so I get their points as well. Sorry you are having so much trouble.
I too share your frustration with Verizon prepaid. In short, it sucks.
Straight talk. You can talk to a person, the service isn’t bad, and they don’t nickle and dime you to death. Verizon prepaid sucks.
ooh, thanks! I’ll have a look.
I purchased a Verizon prepaid Samsung Gusto 3 at WalMart, hoping to save money over my StraightTalk plan by using Verizon’s $15 monthly/300 minute offer. But I have attempted over the last three days to get through to someone at Verizon to answer questions and have found that they have NO CUSTOMER SERVICE WHATSOEVER. At least on StraightTalk and Tracfone I can get my problems addressed. This Verizon phone is going back to WalMart. Verizon gets to keep my $15 airtime payment, as WalMart will not refund those.
The only way to contact Verizon online is AFTER you have activated the phone. I hope they lose ALL of their retail customers and are relegated to wholesale servicing of every other cell phone provider.
That’s extremely rotten. You’d think they’d improve at some point, but it doesn’t sound like it!
Verizon suck the life out of people. They lie cheat and steal. Dowecheatemandhow….
You can get a human on the phone, but the prompts you follow are completely non-intuitive. I think it is something like 1,2,3,7,3, but I might have missed one. After that it is an average of 50 minutes wait time.
It really is not worth it. I purchased a phone on the box when visiting the US. The plan initially was to get there $10 flip phone and apply just enough money for the short period I was there. But when I discovered the Samsung J1 could be unlocked after applying $75 USD to the account, I decided to do that instead. Especially since they had an option to suspend the service with a reason of “Other” for $10 a month, so I could use the phone next time I was in the US.
Two weeks later. All attempts to unlock the phone have failed. The code they gave me simple does not work, and there technical support has provided absolutely no useful way to try and resolve it. During that time they removed the “Other” option from the suspend menu. So now I’ve invested $75 USD for 2 days of actual usage, a phone I cannot unlock, and account that will expire before I need it again.
Costco Canada sells this same phone unlocked for $109 CAD. I should have just gone with my original plan, as it would have been cheaper, and far less of a headacke.
Verizon gets and C+ for effort, but a F for actual follow through.