Verizon cut off my 90 year old mother's phones

[harllee]

They cut DWs 3G device also, but we were warned well in advance.

I'm curious regarding how you were warned in advance? By what means? I am trying to get to the bottom of whether Verizon sent mother some sort of notice before cutting her off on 9/3. Mother says that several other people who live in her building have the same issue--they were cut off by Verizon on 9/3 and none of them got any warning.

 

[disneysteve]

I'm curious regarding how you were warned in advance? By what means? I am trying to get to the bottom of whether Verizon sent mother some sort of notice before cutting her off on 9/3.

Did your mom get paper bills? Were there any notifications sent with her bills that perhaps she overlooked and just made her payments? You might want to take a look at her past bills if she kept them.

 

[Mark1]

All this talk of the 12/31/22 cut-off made me realize that I had better check the monthly prepay phone we have on our account for DMIL. Since not have a phone would also be a big problem for her in the NH, we have a backup new phone stored at our house that we could ship overnight (or nearly so), if necessary. Luckily it shows to be a 4G on the box. It was pushing ~$100 at the Verizon store when we looked into getting a a flip-phone for her during COVID. We ended up buying the exact same Verizon phone (and a backup) at Wally for ~$20 each.

 

[harllee]

Did your mom get paper bills? Were there any notifications sent with her bills that perhaps she overlooked and just made her payments? You might want to take a look at her past bills if she kept them.

I don't know if she gets paper bills, I will ask. The Verizon bill is on autopay from her checking account so I doubt if she actually looks at her bill.

 

[jldavid47]

That's what Verizon says, that mother's landline is 3G so they cut it off.

3G is not a technology that "land lines" use. I worked in the industry for over 30 years including working with Verizon of cell phone programming.

Land lines are generally old-fashioned wired service like we had when we were kids. Modern "land lines" are mostly Voice Over IP (VOIP) and are provided by many companies (mainly ISPs).

If someone at Verizon actually said that her land line was 3G, they need to be fired.

 

[jldavid47]

Whatever the big V is spending their money it isn't customer service.

+1


We were trying to upgrade our Verizon phones and plan last year and the process was painful at best. We finally go so frustrated with both their web site that made upgrading next to impossible and unhelpful customer service, we switched to T-Mobile. Got nice Motorola 5G phones for free plus cut our bill by about $10 per month with far more data.

 

[harllee]

3G is not a technology that "land lines" use. I worked in the industry for over 30 years including working with Verizon of cell phone programming.

Land lines are generally old-fashioned wired service like we had when we were kids. Modern "land lines" are mostly Voice Over IP (VOIP) and are provided by many companies (mainly ISPs).

If someone at Verizon actually said that her land line was 3G, they need to be fired.

There is a 3G "router" that mother's home phone is hooked to and they cut off the 3 G router. Maybe it is actually Fios? In any event her home phone no longer works and Verizon says they had to cut it off because it was 3G.

 

[harllee]

OP here, my sister who lives near mother has made an appointment for the local telephone company to hook up mother with a land line and she has ordered a Jitterbug flip cell phone for mother but it is going to take several days to get it all done. We are so done with Verizon. I have a Verizon iPhone but I am thinking of changing to some other company after this bad experience. I have posted about mother's experience on the local Facebook,Yelp and Nextdoor and everyone agrees this is outrageous. Mother is concerned about what her elderly neighbors who have had their Verizon phones cut off are going to do, some of them don't have nearby children to help. A mess.

 

[Teacher Terry]

I totally agree that this was dangerous and inexcusable.

 

[pb4uski]

Did Verizon give you any sort of notice regarding the cut off?

Different vendor, but the notice was basically a heads up and overly broad... basically a warning that you shoud switch to 4G sooner rather than later. Didn't bother me much but it wasn't my phone... it was a hotspot that I use off-season for my security cameras in Florida.

 

[pb4uski]

.... If one of these elderly people fall or have a heart attack and cannot use their cell phone to call 911 that would be a lawsuit.

that you would never win and would be a big waste of time.

 

[harllee]

that you would never win and would be a big waste of time.

I disagree I could see this could be a class action lawsuit against Verizon if this happened to several elderly people after their 911 was cut off by Verizon. I think a jury or judge would be very sympathetic to an elderly person under these facts.

 

[street]

Cutting off communications service to anyone without proper notification is improper, but to do so to a senior citizen is inexcusable.

Sometimes it’s important to complain, not for financial remedy or reimbursement, but for the principle and to help prevent the same from happening to others. I think complaining to the FCC is warranted, and would also complain to the state Attorney General and even write to the Verizon CEO. I would also consider sending a “letter to the editor” of her local news organization and the AARP.

I think it would be a good thing to notify them also and have them on record for their actions.

 

[ERD50]

I disagree I could see this could be a class action lawsuit against Verizon if this happened to several elderly people after their 911 was cut off by Verizon. I think a jury or judge would be very sympathetic to an elderly person under these facts.

But I suspect, that after you dig into it, you will find they did get the notices. If they didn't see the notices, not sure what you can do.

You said she doesn't have email or text, so if she doesn't look at her bills, how is she to find out? Are you sure they never left voice mail for her?

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not with Verizon, so I don't know. But I'm with Ting (who resells T-Mobile), and they gave lots of notices. IIRC, even left voice mail on my 'landline' (VOIP) phone (that I gave for contact info on their site). But I have email and text and I think I got the reports that way as well.

They kept warning me that it might not work after such and such a date, but it was dependent on when the local towers got switched over, or whatever towers I used when away from home, and encouraged me to upgrade before I got stuck. I procrastinated, just switched over a few weeks ago. Never seemed to lose service, but now the old one is unregistered, so I can't really check.

It's a shame the Continuing Care Community wasn't more proactive on alerting people to this, and maybe Verizon should have reached out to places like that, to get the word out, maybe have flyers that could be posted?

-ERD50

 

[harllee]

I don't think the Continuing Care Retirement Community has any duty regarding this. After all, not all of the residents had Verizon and probably many had newer 4G phones. Maybe mother got a notice in her bill or a voice mail. But the irritating thing is that the only notice she got in the mail (I know this because I go through her mail) is the one that talked about the 12/31 date. How hard could it have been for Verizon to send a second notice with the 9/3 date? In addition, none of the local Verizon stores have any 4G flip phones to replace all these 3G flip phones they are turning off. Very poor customer service and they are losing my family as customers because of this but they don't care.

 

[Calico]

I had an old 3G Tracfone.

For a solid year before they switched to 4G I received constant texts saying the switch was coming at the end of 2020; it's time to get a new phone; don't get left behind, etc. I also received emails with the same info.

They sent so many darn reminders that it drove me crazy, but there was no way to miss the messages, that's for sure.

I finally got a new 4G phone in December of 2020.

Lo and behold, what happened in January of 2021 (days after I set up my new phone)? I started getting text messages saying the "switch deadline has been delayed" and my old phone would keep working until the end of 2021.

For folks who don't use texts and don't use email and don't look at their bills I'm not sure you can place the blame on the provider. I would not expect the provider to call people individually to inform them of the impending switch.

 

[ERD50]

I don't think the Continuing Care Retirement Community has any duty regarding this. ....

I didn't mean to say they had a "duty" to inform residents. I just said it was a shame they didn't, just meaning it could have helped out. It's not a perfect world, so there you go.

-ERD50

 

[harllee]

But they could have sent an accurate letter--one that said the switch was on 9/3 rather than 12/31. The letter mother received was misleading and inaccurate.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I totally forgot Verizon is also playing fast and loose with what they promised the legislators to close the massive Tracfone deal. They're using the 3G shutdown as an excuse to migrate existing customers using ATT and T-Mobile sims with Tracfone over to Verizon service although they promised the legislators that existing customers could stay on their plans til November 2024 before being forced over to Verizon service. What they're not telling the customers is that they can buy a 99c Tracfone bring your own phone sim kit and using an unlocked 4g phone they can still stay with their preferred carrier and even move their existing balances over to the new phone. Instead they send the customer a Verizon sim and migrate them over to their brand so technically I suppose it's not illegal, they're just not offering all options. Also customers have also been complaining about their service suddenly being shut off due to their older 3G phones suddenly not working similar to OP's mothers situation. Reddit is awash with unhappy Tracfone customers but I think it's happening with all the other MVNO's that were part of that deal, Straight Talk also comes to mind.

 

[jldavid47]

There is a 3G "router" that mother's home phone is hooked to and they cut off the 3 G router. Maybe it is actually Fios? In any event her home phone no longer works and Verizon says they had to cut it off because it was 3G.

OK, that's legit. There is hardware that allows you to tie a mobile device into a home phone. It isn't really a "land line" but an extension off the mobile device. That could definitely use 3G. If 3G went away then the "router" would be rendered useless.

 

[jldavid47]

I disagree I could see this could be a class action lawsuit against Verizon if this happened to several elderly people after their 911 was cut off by Verizon. I think a jury or judge would be very sympathetic to an elderly person under these facts.

Verizon gave advance warning. You would have no case. You can bet their lawyers ran this scenario before doing this. Besides, once 3G service is cut there is no way to provide 911 service separately for those phones. You need to be able to connect to a cell tower to dial 911 and once they turn off 3G, connectivity for 3G phones for any purpose is impossible.

 

[ERD50]

But they could have sent an accurate letter--one that said the switch was on 9/3 rather than 12/31. The letter mother received was misleading and inaccurate.

But it is not clear that they didn't.

We'd really need to see the letter, and any that were sent along the way (that maybe you never saw).

As was posted earlier, that 12/31 date might have been the date they expected everything to be shut off, but they might have made it clear that some areas could be shut down earlier. IIRC, my notices were something like that.

-ERD50

 

[ivinsfan]

But it is not clear that they didn't.

We'd really need to see the letter, and any that were sent along the way (that maybe you never saw).

As was posted earlier, that 12/31 date might have been the date they expected everything to be shut off, but they might have made it clear that some areas could be shut down earlier. IIRC, my notices were something like that.

-ERD50

My broke friend that I have talked about before had at least 3 years worth of unopened Verizon bills. They could have been telling him the sky was falling and he'd still be clueless. Not saying this happened with H's mom but something was off.

 

[cranberryjoe]

That's awful. Verizon needed to take a lesson from AT&T.

They handled the ending of 3G far better. We got notification ages ago, sometime last year I believe, that the service would be ending and my mom's phone would no longer work. We got several reminders. Finally, they sent out a new flip phone free of charge totally on their own. Her old phone remained active until we set up the new one so she was never without service and we didn't have to do a thing to make sure she had uninterrupted service.

AT&T did not handle it well here. AT&T's 3G cutoff in this area was in March. We only found out about it from seeing it mentioned on Internet news sites, and when my partner's cellphone voice calling suddenly stopped working around the end of March. No advance notifications of any kind from AT&T (text, email, paper, online bills, calls, carrier pigeon, ...).

 

[SecondAttempt]

Cutting off communications service to anyone without proper notification is improper, but to do so to a senior citizen is inexcusable.

Sometimes it’s important to complain, not for financial remedy or reimbursement, but for the principle and to help prevent the same from happening to others. I think complaining to the FCC is warranted, and would also complain to the state Attorney General and even write to the Verizon CEO. I would also consider sending a “letter to the editor” of her local news organization and the AARP.

A couple of things here...

First, 3G is old technology being phased out by all US carriers. This also takes out a lot of other services people have relied on such as original Kindles and many emergency and other car connectivity services. My BMW Connected Services stopped for example although I did not really use it. So Verizon may not be the villain here but may have just bungled the situation.

The said, I agree with MichaelB about complaining except to the Verizon CEO, although that may not hurt. I have complained directly to a CEO twice in my life and was successful both times in that I got their attention and my situation was addressed promptly and to my satisfaction. But both were situations where the lower level employees and managers egregiously created problems. And while I think the situation is egregious in that it interferred with your mother's ability to communicate in an emergency, I don't see how Verizon as a corporation was egregious. I might speak to the store manager at the store you visited though. If you do, recognize there is little he can do beyond disciplining the employees that did not help you and you will not get a promise or feedback about that since it is an HR matter.

Something you might consider is providing your or your sister's email on your mother's account so you get notices in the future.