I have been with ever major national carrier and many regional and some prepaid providers. I had recently been with Sprint for 3 years. When I first signed up with Sprint I was amazed at how great the service was, but over the past 2 years service has gotten pretty bad. Their Customer Care has become by far the worst I have ever been forced to deal with and is 1 of the 2 main reasons I decided to leave. The other being the constant fear of dropping a call. I also got sick of lying and blaming the dropped call on something else; like me pressing the wrong button or something. These were not always problems with Sprint. Once Sprint deciced in order to save some money they would outsource, then things got beyond worse. So I left... Verizon was the last national carrier that I had not used. All of the other carriers services that I had tried before Sprint; T-Mobile, Cingular, AT&T, ect, are truly horrible.
I was weary about going with Verizon, because I had used PrimeCO. This was a company that ended up merging into the company that became Verizon Wireless. I had an extremely overpriced prepaid service plan and had lots of problems. They ended up turning over a bill I never owned over to a collections agency. Even though my plan was PREPAID and I paid for my service in advance. So that was months of dealing with the human trash known as Debt Collectors. But the idea of having the most dependable service possible was the main selling point for me. So I pushed this outdated problem aside and went ahead and switched to Verizon.
So far I am happy with Verizon. They do lack in some areas though. Areas that others might not see as a big problem, but for many of us we do. So overall I would say Verizon's service is an B to a B. So here is just the basic Pros and Cons from my experiences and from my point of view.
PROS:
1. Very dependable network services, both voice and data. Very few if any dropped calls. I used to roam sometimes onto Verizon's network in places Sprint had a hard time reaching. So I had never been to a place where I didn't have either Sprint or Verizon. I live in Middle Tennessee and this place has an odd setup. Mountains, hills, wide open locations, and cities that pop up out of no where. And Verizon has been perfect here.
2. Their customer care is second to none. They introduced me to a new concept of a "Follow Up." With every other carrier, after that call ended with Customer Care, the problem I was having in their eyes was completed. Verizon reps will actually keep an eye on your account and the problem, for months if needed. Or that is what they have at least told me several times. No other carrier has ever done this for me. Plus, THEIR REPS ARE AMERICAN!!! Oh, man I can't tell you how nice it is to speak with an American! Not having to repeat myself. Not having my plan messed up because the person in India had no idea what product they are suppose to help you with. With Sprint, most of the time it was outsourced Customer Care. And those people not only don't have Sprint in India, or do they understand the phones, when they simply don't want to help, they hangup on you! So having a good-old American rep to speak with means a lot.
3. Great selection on phones. My favorite phone design is the 9800, aka the Voyager and EnV. It is like a tiny laptop computer. Sprint's answer to the 9800, was the LG Rumor. Read the spec's between the two and you will understand why the Rumor is pathetic.
CONS:
1. Games/Application/Wallpaper/Ringtones are NOT UNLIMITED! Sprint will give their customers "TRUE" Unlimited access to the content. With Verizon, if you buy a Game, or a Wallpaper, a Ringtone, whatever; and you pay extra for the so-called Unlimited. It isn't really Unlimited. Let's say you download 1 game and a week later the game crashed and your forced to delete it. You then have to re-buy that game! That Unlimited Buy, is really only a 1 time download and that is it!
Sprint has something called a "Content Manager". When you download something, that content is then listed on your account. So at anytime you can re-download it. The first game I purchased from Sprint was Pac-Man. And that game stayed on my account for 2 years. It was only deleted after I had to change my phone number. That was still 2 years of using that game on several different phones. I downloaded a game from Verizon, and my first phone was defective. So they wanted me to pay to re-download the game to the replacement phone. They worked with me that 1 time. But needless to say I will not ever be buying games from Verizon. Take my advice, make your own content. Use Bitpim to customize your Verizon phone. Do a Google search and read about it. You can even backup those Games, Applications, Wallpaper, Ringtones, ect. As well as make your own.
Http://cellphoneforums.net/lg-voyager/t262971-how-free-ringtones-voyager-vx10000.html
2. No Pro-Rates On Application/Games usage: I downloaded a few applications just to test them out. 20 minutes was the longest amount of time I used one of them. And when I didn't like them, I canceled the service. But I still have to pay for the entire month of service. So I don't have the applications on my phone, because if I download them again, the service fees will restart. This is just plan stupid. So my money is lost, and I can't use those applications.
3. Night And Weekend Start And End At Times To Hurt The Customer: Nights start at 9:01PM and end at 5:59AM. While Sprint and most other carriers use the 9-to-7. Verizon, like AT&T, cheat customers by ending nights way too early. I just view this as a petty way to trick customers into using more minutes and getting them to buying a more costly plan.
4. BREW Limits Your Phone. While BREW is dependable, it is also very limiting. That is why customers have had to find ways like using Bitpim to customize and unlock the true power of their phones. Verizon is so desperate to nickel and dime customers, that they use the BREW User Interface as a means of controlling their customers freedom. So no FREE GMaps, or Gmail Email Client or Opera Mini. You are forced to buy the content Verizon offers you if you want anything extra. So if you want POP email access to Gmail, it will cost you extra per month. No freebies!
5. Limited Phone Functions. On every Sprint media phone you can stream free live streams of radio and TV. The built-in media players can handle all types of formats. While Verizon is getter better with this, they still only allow 3GP streams. So no streaming radio and very limited streaming content. The best you can do is use Youtube Mobile. Or use ORB MyCast www.orb.com to stream that content from your computer, to your phone. But then your computer will need to be on whenever you are streaming that content to your phone. Just make sure you don't use more then 5GB's of data a month or Verizon may cancel your service. It isn't impossible to use over 5GB's of data a month streaming content through your phone, just very unlikely. Unless your using your phone as a wireless modem. Which I don't think Verizon would allow anway.
And only recently has Verizon started putting HTML browsers in some of their phones. Because they want customers to spend an extra $40 a month for PDA data access. Where a PDA can stream and view HTML. So $15 Vcast on a Non-HTML phone isn't really worth the money. I was using PDA's with Sprint for $15 a month. So no matter how bad Sprint's Customer Care has been as of late, or how many dropped calls I kept going through, they always allowed me to enjoy my phone and services to the max! They didn't cripple or limit; they let their phones function as they were intended to be. If Verizon could just unlock the true power of their media phones, they could be so much better in this area. But as it stands, Sprint is kicking Verizon's * big time when it comes to advanced services.
So those are the core PROS and CONS. All-in-All Verizon is a great company and offers a very dependable service. But they are so far behind the times when it comes to advanced features and in offering phones with Unlocked features. And the Nickel & Dimeing customers to death doesn't add anything good to the mix, because most customers are not going to waste the money. Sprint sells lots of advanced phones and services, because they offer them pretty much Limitation-Free. If the major players over at Verizon sat down with some true techies and learned what features would help make them better, Verizon would have a chance at being the best US carrier. So hopefully someone over at Verizon reads this and takes my CONS into consideration.
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