Recently, as a courtesy, my former employer let me keep the cell directory number (DN) I had been using while employed with them. The idea is that in exchange for paying for the cellular plan and the handset, I would make it my main or sole cell phone. Basically, this was so they were able to call me when something at the shop went sideways and they needed my help. As a perk, they also let me keep the cellular handset, a Verizon Wireless Galaxy S21 Plus 5G. (It's important to understand that Verizon Wireless and some other carriers have mods specific to themselves, so that if for example you have rooting instructions for a Galaxy S21 Plus 5G, it might not work AT ALL on your handset because you acquired it through Verizon Wireless.) I basically had two choices: port the DN to another carrier, or establish my own Verizon Wireless account. Either way, my former employer no longer wanted to get billed for the DN. I will also add that technically, "Verizon" is not "Verizon Wireless," but when speaking of Verizon Wireless (which I will hereafter refer to as the common abbreviation "VZW"), people often only say/write the "Verizon" part.
My use case is extremely modest. For a great deal of time, I am
connected to Wi-Fi. Therefore almost every month, I was below 2GB of
cellular data usage, even when using up data for the former employer. In fact, most months, I was below 1GB. The heaviest normal usage was streaming talk radio for stations whose OTA signal is weak (WHAM-AM and WLVL), so not at all bandwidth intensive. The times I did go over 1 gig were usually when I had to tether the company laptop because my home Internet connection was out (generally due to power failure). The one time I did break 2 gig was when, for some unknown reason, the Audacy app decided to use about a gigabyte per hour, until I just plain uninstalled it. As for talking and SMS, I have a Google Voice number, and that forwards calls to a Callcentric number (for about $2/month), which then gets answered by an Obihai ATA, and SMS gets forwarded to email. Optionally, this also gets forwarded to cellular, although I only forward voice, and only when I have cell service.
If push came to shove in my budget, all I want cell service for is to be able to call more than 9-1-1 if I get stuck on the road (AAA for example). I can do without the cellular data if I am really in a budgetary pinch, and will try calling 9-1-1 if I were to break down (which, as you probably know, doesn't require paying for a service plan).
I started out by looking at VZW's plans, as this would be the simplest; the former employer would only have to tell VZW to shift billing over to either an existing private, "retail" VZW account (for example, if I wanted to port it to a family plan), or have VZW create a new account for me. As I had no idea for how long I would be unemployed, I was looking for the least expensive plan available. The best I could find was shown as $65/month, their "Welcome" plan. Jeepers! That's $780/year, not including other charges which I'll cover later. That's an awful lot for just talking every once in a great while, and streaming less than a gig. So, what does the Internet recommend as among the best carriers (or MVNOs)?
After a few Google searches and Web site readings, I found Mint Mobile (which I'll refer to as "MM") as a reasonable alternative. They had an introductory offer of $15/mo. for 4GB (now 5!!), if you prepay for 3 months. Afterwards, it's $25/mo., or the "same" $15/mo. if you prepay for a year. (And yes, I know they're in the process of being acquired by T-Mobile USA.) I asked them, would it be OK to port a number later instead of account opening time? They said that would be just fine, I would be assigned a "temporary" DN which could be used until I'm ready to port. In like Flynn, I ponied up my $45 or so, they FedEx'ed two SIMs (one for me, one for me to give away to whomever I think would like MM...a genius marketing idea), stick it in the S21+, it works like a charm (although being a VZW-issued phone, it complains about non-VZW SIMs or eSIMs with a useless FUD notification). I eventually figured out it was MUCH simpler to have MM install an eSIM, because without it, if I ever still wanted to access the VZW DN, I would have to shut down, pop the SIM tray, insert the VZW SIM and boot (and the other way around to switch back to MM). With MM as an eSIM, it's just toggling a graphical switch within the Android settings app for either carrier.
Finally the day arrived when the handset would no longer be under contract (i.e., had been "paid off" through the former employer maintaining service). An email from VZW, initiated by former employer commanding the release the DN from their billing, arrived with an identification number of some sort (we'll get to that shortly) and the usual porting PIN. Great. I called up MM, read off the ID number and the PIN, and wouldn't you know, it didn't work. What they need is an account number and the porting PIN; what VZW apparently sent along was some sort of internal transaction ID. I tried conferencing in VZW to try to clear this up, but after some time, MM hung up and I was speaking only with VZW.
During that conversation, I found out that, rightfully so, I was not entitled to the account number; after all, me knowing former employer's account number could possibly allow me to do untoward things with their VZW service. I wouldn't do that anyway, but the potential is there. So...I asked about the possibilities of creating a personal account instead, and transferring billing to that instead of former employer's account, to which they were of course thrilled...more money for them, right? So I go about giving them my particulars, address, email address, and so on. I also made very sure that there would be no contract, no early termination fee, no penalties, no minimum number of months of service, to which the rep replied, no such thing, I am totally free to do as I wish. Then they got intrusive. They wanted me to send a photo of an ID (NY driver's license for example) and Social Security card to an email address. I carefully checked out the MX for vzw.com to make certain it supports STARTTLS (it does), snapped a photo, and sent it via Gmail. Although I could be assured noone could intercept the email, and that noone should be able to see into my HTTPS session with Gmail, I still have to worry about what Alphabet and Verizon will do with that image. I can delete it from Gmail, but cannot be assured when, if ever, it will disappear totally from Alphabet's systems. And what Verizon will do with it is even less clear, unless I want to waste a couple hours of my life reading through Verizon's terms, conditions, policies, etc.
As a small aside, I will give good marks to Verizon for gathering initial data, such as my SSN and a desired initial PIN, via sending an SMS message with an https URI embedded within to the DN in question. That certainly beats having to tell that rep, who would then also have that oh-so-sensitive SSN. That, however, broke down later.
The rep with whom I was talking said he would call me back at 18:00 to give me some time to snap the picture and for that email to arrive and be processed. Mind you, they gave me no direction whatsoever on what should be in the subject line or body of the message, so I had to wing it. I had the email prepared and sent by about 17:35. I got an automated reply from Verizon's system with a tracking ID. When this rep called back at 18:00, surprise, surprise, they had not seen it yet--to me due to lack of anything to tie my submission to my account application. As I would later find out, this would most likely be due to the fact that, despite spelling out my name with phonetics, they had used the more common (and incorrect) spelling of my surname. Therefore the name on my driver ID and SS card would not match. The rep seemed to think on the 18:00 call that I should have gotten another email besides the automated one, confirming procesing of the image. Thinking it was just slowness of the overall system, the rep said I would be called back at 19:00 to move forward. Ironically to noone but me, one of the last things the rep said was, I was going to be happy with VZW service. If I'm being totally honest, I knew I was not long for the VZW life.
That 19:00 call never happened. Mind you, this was the Friday before Memorial Day. But still, it's a promise broken.
Knowing that former employer would no doubt notice that the DN had not been ported (or otherwise taken off their account), I called up VZW again on Tuesday. That was a long-ish call, in part once again to them misspelling my surname. I was also irked that the new rep asked for my SSN. I thought they had an SMS/HTTPS app to do that so I would not have to recite that verbally. Oh, well, I went along with it anyway. Well...long and the short of it, they finally associated that JPEG file from Gmail with me, ran whatever they do (credit check maybe?), and decided I was worthy of my very own VZW account. And of course, during the process, they sent a message to my handset with a URI pointing to a page for agreeing to terms, conditions, privacy policy, the whole schmeer. And much as I loathe doing it, I did NOT spend an hour or more reading it, and like most others, handwaved that I agreed.
For those who have not been keeping score, at this point, we're already up to about 6 disagreeable things: difficulty porting to another carrier, asking for highly personal/sensitive information (which no other carrier with whom I've had a relationship demanded), not calling me back when they said they would, asking for SSN verbally when they could have sent another SMS and done it securely, wasting my time because they were trying to do (presumably) a credit check with the wrong data, and making me uneasy about agreeing to something I haven't read. While we're at it, let's add that the originally quoted $65/mo. wasn't really $65/mo., it was $75/mo. with a $10/mo. discount if you agreed to set up auto-pay. Verizon lost that privilege with me when they charged me for a missed premesis visit for self-installed DSL, and wouldn't refund my bank account for the mistake. Yes, overall I'm losing more money than I should, but I don't want them to have that power to reach into my bank account to make mistakes anymore. I guess they figured I was not adept enough to tap off pair two of an RJ-14 jack for my DSL; they were very much wrong, but I suppose really didn't have any way to know that.
Next, it was my turn to be a slight dunce. While we were talking, the rep put through the order to port the number from former employer's account to the newly minted VZW account (pun intended). Because the rep knew it was likely we would become disconnected due to that action (the number being ported being in-use at the time), I gave her my MM number to reach me if we became disconnected. In hindsight, now they have yet another personal piece of information which, if they were so inclined, they could call or SMS to try to get me back as a customer. Never having done such things before, during that new call I tried going into (e)SIM setting to toggle the VZW SIM; that does not work. The Android RIL is a quirky beast; it required a complete handset restart in order for the VZW SIM to become active again, and to gain control of the MM eSIM too. Well, let's face it, the rep said so, and I thought I would just be clever and toggle the switch in the SIM settings. Of course, when they called back, I had to hang up on them again because both IDs, VZW and MM, were tied to that handset. This one's totally on me, nothing for which to fault Verizon.
I should also explain, in most places I am, VZW has only 1 or 2 bars of signal, particularly at my home. In those same locations, T-Mobile USA (the carrier behind the MM MVNO, for now) gives me 3 or 4 bars, sometimes 5. And the "5G" logo "lights up" for MM more times than for VZW. So for me in particular, for the core of their product, VZW just comparatively sucks, let alone all their annoying or dubious practices.
Next, let us delve into the dumpster fire that is the Verizon Web site (which leaving off the "Wireless" is intentional; it is virtually the same for FIOS). Like many contemporary Web sites, it is thoroughly JavaScript (JS) infested, which in this case breaks one's ability to right click on something and open it in a new tab or window. They are similarly as lazy as most in that if there is some function they can't perform, they simply put up a generic error message that something went wrong. If you're going to include JS URI after JS URI, you might want to test if those URIs actually loaded, maybe by doing a try/catch around calling one of the functions in each. OK, maybe I'm six standard deviations away from a normal user, but I run NoScript and uBlock Origin, because I object to all the inclusions of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. codes, plus clearly ones that, from the names, are ads and trackers. I whitelist or temporarily whitelist JS URIs in NoScript as they're called for by the page; I want to know everything like this which is going on. I don't need to be advertised to or tracked any more than absolutely necessary. You UI/UX folks: it is not always manifest what a user wants. For example, something on my bill MIGHT be something in the billing section, or it COULD be in the account section. I will not know a priori. That is why I want the ability to right-click on something and open it in a new tab! I don't want to think about how to navigate back to where I am! I just want simply to close the window or tab which proved to be a fruitless navigation. If you ONLY provide JS click events, you destroy that possibility.
Let's also cover the fact that they never send emails with a text/plain part, only text/html. Then again, they're not unique in that regard, not by a longshot. I wish the folks who send these out would realize that HTML email is one of the easiest ways to compromise people, a.k.a. phishing, especially financial institutions! Also, please don't patronize us by putting something in the text/plain part like, "we tried to send you an email, but your email client is not capable of displaying it. Please go to this URI." Strip the formatting junk out of your text, and put that in the text/plain part, like decent human beings would. It shouldn't be all that difficult.
Now, let's talk about the marketing. I guess I don't blame them, they want to earn as much money as possible, so they sent some promotional SMS message about discounts on accessories or additional handsets/lines. Still...having told these folks I'm looking for their cheapest plan which will get the job done, they want me to spend more. Yeah, not gonna happen.
Also, while I do appreciate sending suveys to ask how they're doing, I'm exceptionally torn in my resonses. They were basically asking, how was your interaction with our rep today? They were absolutely stellar, extremely personable, polite, upbeat, patient and everything. It's just that the company behind them sucks very badly. I really wanted to reply 1 or 2, but I could not honestly do that because the individuals were just fine.
What was the final, last straw was receiving an SMS that my bill was coming due, and it would be over $81. So we went from $65, to $75, to >$80. OK, time to pull the ripcord. I navigated through the Web site (again, slightly painful) to find their Customer Service number, called it, and said I needed to close my account. The rep noted it was a very new account, and of course asked why. I went through some of the gems in this blog post: poor signal, objectionable Web site, escalating price quotes, wayyyyyyyyyyyy too expensive, maybe some more thrown in; I don't remember. I thorougly expected to get some sort of retentions pitch or transfer, but the most he offered is that it would be only 70-something with autopay. I don't think I said to him, but as previously mentioned, they very much lost me agreeing to that with their PSTN billing snafu. I suspect they knew there wasn't much they could do about signal strength, or the price, and just said, fine, here you go, a disconnect order has been entered. I once again confirmed, if I paid this bill, there wouldn't be any other charges; if I paid the $80+ I would be done; he said yes, I would be.
What's a mystery to me is that doing subsequent research, namely Googling for something like "most inexpensive Verizon Wireless plans" and reading the results, they have far cheaper alternatives, albeit they're prepaid instead of postpaid. You'd think they'd whip that out and offer it to try to retain me as a customer. No such deal. Honestly, it wouln't have helped anyway; their rate was on the order of $35/mo., over double MM's rate. I also wouldn't doubt it if it came with the same autopay caveat.
Well, dear reader, I thank you for reading this far; I hope it was at least entertaining. I will just add, at the risk of former employer reading this and crying foul (and maybe wanting their S21+ handset back), I had absolutely no interest in the VZW DN; I really couldn't care less if I retained it. As sort-of mentioned, the DN I hand out to everyone is my GV number, and calls to that get forwarded wherever I want, which can include cellular (at any DN). If I'm totally honest, all I wanted was not to have to give back the handset and therefore buy another. It looks like I ended up getting an approximately $1000 cell phone for about $81. It's possible that I could have had it for nothing or next to nothing, if I just asked them nicely to stop service for the DN, but I'm guessing they would have wanted their Galaxy back instead.
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps
really suck!