Verizon Tower Down without service for a Week

My cell phone service was not working at my house. My cell phone kept dropping calls or when I would try to make a call it would say no service. My husband tried to call me and went straight to voice mail. Then pretty soon after his phone started to do the same thing. Spotty connections.

I had Alltel and they were recently bought by Verizon. So I had to call Verizon for help. I called and everytime they would transfer me to someone else my call would drop. I don't have a landline, so I couldn't call for help. I tried 3 times and decided to go to the Verizon store the next day.

The next day, I went to the Verizon store. The lady that worked their told me that I had to update my blackberry software then things would be better. She said neither my phone nor my husbands had been updated in a long time. I knew this was wrong because I just got my phone in August (3 months ago) and my husbands was bought a year before that. The software even looked different when using the two phones. I posed that theory to her and she said if you want another opinion you can go to the old Alltel store. All the Alltel employees still work their but now for Verizon. They will know your phones better.

So I drove to the other store. I told them my story and they said that was a bunch of crap what the other lady at the Verzion store had told me. They said the software is the same and didn't need to be updated. They ran some updates and determined that since both of our phones were fine right now that it could be a tower. One person said they had heard that there were tower problems in the area I live in. So I asked what can I do now. They entered the information in the computer and gave me a phone number to call.

Since I cant make calls at home I sat in the parking lot and made the call. When I finally got through a lady told me that I was not authorized on my account and she wanted to talk to my husband. I told her that was not possible, he is at home sick with my sick child and I have his phone because I cannot make calls at home right now. She wanted me to have him call back. I told her he is sick and cannot leave home, that is not possible.

Side note: apparently when Verizon made the switch to bring Alltel customers over some of the authorized users were dropped. So I used to be authorized, now I am not.

Anyway, I continued to talk to her and she said she looked at the notes in my account. She said "if it is a tower issue, you will need to get new phones" I said excuse me. We paid $500 for these phones. You are telling me that I need a new phone? My phone is only 3 months old. She said that we may qualify for Verizons free or discounted phones. Anyway, we continued to discuss this and she was not going to help me because I am not authorized so I hung up and went back to the "old" Alltel store.

I told them what was going on and they couldn't believe she told me I needed a new phone. They said I would need to wait. I waited and listened to someone elses story. The guy ahead of me was having the same problems as me and he lived near me.

I told the Verizon rep that the last guy he had spoken to had a similar problem. He looked up my account and got his supervisor. The supervisor said that they had several complaints from my area in the past hour. He said there was a trouble ticket into Verizon to fix the tower. I asked if I could do anthing. He said no. He told me that with an issue this big it wouldn't take more than 24 to 48 hrs to fix.

That night I got a call to put in a trouble tix myself and was told that it could take upto a week, but she doubted it would take more than a few days because of the seriousness of the issue.

Four days later, still no service. I call Verizon to find out the status. They told me it could be another week. I told them I have a sick child at home and no way to call 911. I have to buy another phone service inorder to compensate for the lack of service they are providing me. She said sorry about that.

Day Five my friend came over with her phone and is havign the same issues that we have. If we drive a mile away, we have service. Please help me! Just fix the dang towers!!!!! I am about to cancel my contract.