TL-DR - Verizon admits its cellular service, which was once "good to excellent" in our area, is now "fair to poor", with no decrease in prices. We moved to a different MVNO provider and cut our bill nearly in half.
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On behalf of our entire community, I filed a trouble ticket on March 16, complaining of reduced service and dead zones throughout the area. Every time I supplied additional information, a new rep took over and wanted me to provide all the previous information AGAIN. More often than not, I got the message: "Need more info". Nothing specific. By March 21 I refused to regurgitate the same information over and over, saying I had no more information to provide. The response? "Need more info". To which I began replying, "Me too. Need more info".
It became nothing more than a cat & mouse stall tactic by Verizon... but I learned from one message that area service, which was "good to excellent" just a few years ago, has been degraded significantly:
"...I can see that you are in an area that is considered fair to poor coverage. That does mean that service can vary from day to day. There are always changes that impact our Network, some are controllable and others may not be and we do our best ot offer solutions, like for example wifi and wifi calling to enhance the experience."
Thanks, Verizon, for "enhancing" your lousy cell service with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi calling, which our PHONES do with no help from Verizon, on our personal Wi-Fi that we pay for from a whole other company!
I identified an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that works with all providers' towers to find the best coverage for each individual customer. They even share our values! Pay for your own stadiums, VZW... we're out. Needless to say, I closed the ticket in disgust this morning. This afternoon, our new provider's SIMs arrived. I couldn't move our numbers off Verizon fast enough.
(EDIT: we have had stellar service and connectivity ever since we ported over, and we're saving a young fortune)
IMPORTANT: If you plan to move your numbers to another provider, call Verizon and make SURE that there are no SIM, port or account locks of any kind... on every number you're moving! Three VZ reps confirmed we had no locks remaining... and the fourth one actually cleared the remaining lock we found still on the account.
Meanwhile - if you're interested in our new company's information, I'll be happy to provide you with the information in a PM but I won't be spammy about it by posting it publicly. Just send me a message and I can give you the information... and you can take advantage of it or not.