| Author | Message | ||
     U4euh |
Anyone know where I can look or call to find out if a particular cell phone company has lost a lease on a tower? We have been with Alltell for almost 7 years. Then they were bought out by Verizon! Long story short, up until 2 months ago we had full signal at our house, and anywhere in our yard. Now I have to stand on my head and hold one arm out and grab the lamp in order to get maybe two bars. I've been around and round with them and get only excuses, none of which ever fix the problem. The other thing I can think of is they closed, destroyed, lost a lease on the tower that was servicing us before(unfortuanatley, I don't know which one that was). If this is the case, I feel a lawsuit in the works. | ||
| Dannyd |
Lawsuit over not having good cell phone reception? And we wonder why American businesses are all going overseas? | ||
| Hootowl |
Hmm. Coverage is a big factor when choosing a cell carrier. You chose one that had good coverage near your home. Now they don't. It would appear to me that the service you are paying for has been degraded to the point of being useless. I don't think it is unreasonable to pursue remediation. | ||
| Darth_villar |
Hopefully you get this worked out. If they did lose a tower, I believe at best that would free you from any commitments with the company. You should know however they do make cell phone signal boosters (as a last resort). Phil | ||
| Xl1200r |
I can't speak for Verizon, but myself and most of my friends are on AT&T. One of them has absolutely no signal at his house (the whole general area is kind of a dead zone for many carriers for some reason). He called and complained and they gave him (i.e. no charge) a signal repeater or something that plugs into his internet... Now, I say internet because I don't know if he needs a computer that's connected or if just plugs into his router (and therefore on all the time), but the point is it has fixed his issue and they don't charge him anything to have it. Worth asking about, me thinks. A lawsuit is kind of silly, but as a last resort you should be able to get the contract nullified with no fees if you make big enough of a stink. | ||
| Pammy |
Verizon offers a device (to boost signal) that attaches to your home. I am sure you can persuade them to provide one to you for free. Also there is an update that needs to be performed about once a month or so to keep the signal strong. *228 send, follow the prompts. | ||
| Greg_e |
Did you call support and ask them? Tower work can take a long time depending on what happened, they may also have been in the middle of an upgrade when the strike happened (you do know they are on strike right now, right?). When on strike things that are not of immediate need do not get done and I doubt many of the managers are able or certified to go up a tower and repair antenna cables. It's also possible the strikers disabled the towers, there are rumors of them damaging customer cars when people go into the stores where they are picketing. Also damaging delivery trucks (from a Con-Way driver who helped pull some nails out of a tire with another driver). Striking I understand, damaging innocent customers and trucking firms should send those people to jail and they should lose their jobs when the strike is over. | ||
| Doon |
Those Repeaters are Femtocells. They basically build a small cell hotspot inside your house and then truck the calls over the internet via VOIP. The only thing to look out for one them is that I think they still charge you cell minutes even though you are technically using your broadband, and also I am not sure if you can lock them down to just your phones, so any of the carriers phones that can see it can probably use it (I might be wrong on this, I get decent signal on VZ everywhere in my house).. But yes they will normally provide you with one for free to boost your signal. Also it might not be the loss of a tower, it could be some obstruction.. Do you have lots of pine trees around you? Pine needles will screw with a cell signal something wicked. but it could be something else was erected or the like that is now causing you degraded signal. | ||
| 2008xb12scg |
FYI the signal boosters for the house wont hand off the call. So if you're on the phone and leave the house it will drop the call, at least that's what I was told about them. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
remember 20 years ago when there were not cell phones ? enjoy the silence. | ||
| Just_ziptab |
Is your phone going bad? My Star Tac was getting practically nothing for signal and the tower is two blocks away! A new,no box,no contract phone from eBay for a few bucks solved all the problems. | ||
| Americanmadexb |
My theory is most cell phone companies are pushing the 3G and 4g, LTE phones. If you have one that is older then 4 years, you could be finding yourself looking for a signal standing 5 feet from the tower! | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Most carriers, ATT, VZ in particular are in a MAD scramble to upgrade all of their tower sites in order to support 4G. Most of ATT's towers don't have enough back haul bandwidth for 3G let alone 4G. In all major metropolitan (and lots of minor ones) both carriers are running fiber to all their towers. They will run a minimum of 10M per sector. Each tower is comprised of at least 3 sectors. Each sector covers about 120 degrees of real-estate. Currently ATT's 3G towers have at least 18 T1's (1.544Mb) per tower or 6 for each sector. That's not near enough for current 3G loads let alone 4G. Call your carrier and report the problem. It may be that work is being done to upgrade a tower site. I doubt they have permanently removed a tower from service. | ||
| Cyclonedon |
As important as it is nowadays to have good cellphone reception, it just doesn't make sense to try and Sue a large company for lack of cell phone reception. I feel you'll only lighten your pocketbook. But I would COMPLAIN daily until Verizon did something about it. A Guy at work complained about AT&T and they gave him a much better plan at no charge. That settled him down and he remained with AT&T. | ||
| Court |
IMTS | ||
| U4euh |
I guess a little more history would answer a bunch of questions. Like stated in the OP, we have had this contract for almost 7 years, without a single problem. It didn't gradually happen, it was good one day, and two later we started noticing a significant change in reliability. I went to the office and complained. They said it was the storm, yes there was a storm, perfectly acceptable. They said they would have a technician look at the towers in the area to see if any damage had been sustained. Wait 3 weeks, nothing changes. Go back and complain, they put in a work order and tell me to call the TECH line. Call the TECH line and he agrees that it is odd that our service all of a sudden decreases. Sens the updates to our phones, and changes the PLR, PRL codes in the phone so that supposedly they will search for a different tower. At the risk of using all BWB bandwith, I've been back and complained SIX-6- times! They have even sent a tech out to our house to tell us what we already knew-"yep, you have a weak signal in this area!" Well no SH!*, did you really need to pay somebody to do this???? The signal boosters!! They work on the high speed internet. The problem with this is, my phone operates on the 3g and is my hotspot for internet use. So the boosters will not work, as told to me by the Verizon TECH, and it only makes sense. Now as far as the law suit, I'm not looking for a million dollars, I want the money back for the last 3 months of degraded service that I have paid for and I want out of my contract. If they know that they have had a decreased signal in my area, but they are still charging the same amount and giving me the run around about not knowing why the signal has decreased, I believe that is fraud. Court, I'll have to look into that a little more. | ||
| Greg_e |
In the past I have had really good luck getting partial refunds due to poor quality of service. As far as boosters go, my brother uses one of these with great success on ATT: http://www.amazon.com/zBoost-YX-510-Signal-Booster -Dual-Band/dp/B000J2XZ1K I think he has the older 500 series and uses the external directional YAGI but no outside amplifier. Not saying this is the proper way to fix the issue, but it really should work and should cover data too which is the biggest reason he bought it. |
