Showing posts with label Customer Service. Show all posts

Why does this green dot keep randomly appearing on my iphone?

There are a few possibilities that could explain this behavior:

What State Has the Worst Cell Phone Coverage? A Comprehensive Analysis

In today's digital age, staying connected through our cell phones has become a necessity. Whether for work, social interactions, or emergencies, reliable cell phone coverage is crucial. However, not all states in the United States offer the same level of service. In this article and video, we will conduct a comprehensive analysis to identify the state with the worst cell phone coverage, exploring the factors contributing to its challenges and offering insights for users in that region.

What's the Worst Cell Service? 5 Common Complaints Unveiled

Staying connected has become a necessity, and our smartphones serve as lifelines to the digital realm. However, not all cell service providers deliver the same level of connectivity and reliability. If you've ever experienced dropped calls, slow data speeds, or dead zones, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with the worst cell service. We'll explore five common complaints about cell service providers, helping you make an informed decision when choosing the right network for your needs.

My prediction is that Amazon based in Seattle will partner with T-Mobile which is also based in Seattle.

United States Map of Cell Phone Coverage Complaints

Which State Get The Most Cell Phone Coverage Complaints?

Does Admission of Guilt = Class Action Lawsuits?

There can be several reasons why wireless carriers may be hesitant to openly admit problems with their network coverage or services:

Dropped calls are often more annoying than dead zones themselves. Identifying the exact locations where dropped calls occur can be a complex task, as it requires analyzing various factors and data sources. However, telecommunication companies and network operators have methods to identify and address such issues. Here are some common approaches used to identify dropped call locations:

Network Monitoring: Telecommunication companies continuously monitor their network infrastructure to identify issues that can cause dropped calls. They use network monitoring tools and systems to track call quality, signal strength, and network performance. These tools help them identify areas where call drops are more frequent.

Customer Complaints: Customers often report dropped call issues to their service providers. Telecommunication companies collect and analyze these complaints to identify patterns and common locations where dropped calls are reported. By aggregating customer feedback, they can pinpoint problem areas.

Drive Testing: Network operators conduct drive tests by equipping vehicles with specialized testing equipment that measures signal strength, call quality, and network performance while moving through different areas. These tests help identify specific locations where call drops occur and provide valuable data for network optimization.

Crowd-Sourced Data: Some telecommunication companies and mobile network operators collect data from mobile devices using dedicated apps or network diagnostic tools. This crowd-sourced data provides insights into call performance, signal strength, and dropped call occurrences at various locations.

Network Analysis Tools: Network operators utilize sophisticated analysis tools that collect data from network equipment, such as base stations and switches. These tools enable them to identify areas with high call drop rates and analyze network parameters that may be causing the issue.

Signal Propagation Analysis: By analyzing signal propagation characteristics, such as terrain, obstacles, and building structures, network operators can estimate the signal strength and coverage in different areas. Weak signal areas are often associated with higher call drop rates.

By combining the data from these various sources and conducting detailed analysis, telecommunication companies can identify locations where dropped calls are more prevalent. Once identified, they can take steps to optimize the network, improve coverage, or address any underlying issues causing the call drops.

Southwest Airlines Canceling Flights & Major Scheduling Problems

Something happened with Southwest Airline's automated rescheduling of flights in the last few days. I talked with a customer service representative today who said 90% of the calls today were regarding this scheduling issue. Flights are getting consolidated but aren't being rebooked correctly.

We recommend that you double-check what flight Southwest Airlines rescheduled you. I had two one way flights that were changed wildly incorrectly.

Thankfully Southwest Airlines has wonderful customer service and will accommodate your needs but it will require a phone call likely to make a change. It also won't cost you anything and you might possibly benefit from changing the flight to a better time or date.

Here is the sample email letter you will receive.

We want to make you aware of a change we’ve made to your upcoming trip. This was done proactively due to a Southwest flight schedule change on your day of travel.

Please review your new itinerary below. Your reservation is confirmed and no further action is required.

In the event this new itinerary does not work for you, we are offering the opportunity to change your flight date(s) and/or time(s) by up to 14 days from the original travel date at no additional cost in accordance with our established re-accommodation practices.

For expedited service, you can change your flight at www.southwest.com/rebook3 within three days of the delivery of this email. Flights with no additional cost will display as “Available”. Should you need further assistance, you can reach a Southwest Representative at 1-800-IFLY-SWA (1-800-435-9792). * Please keep in mind that wait times may be very high at this time.

We look forward to seeing you onboard soon.

-Your friends at Southwest

Frontier Verizon Fios Takeover & Customers Are Suffering

Frontier Communications Takeover of Verizon Fios

Frontier Fios Availability Map

Former Verizon Fios customers are suffering big time as Frontier Communications has just destroyed the customer experience Verizon Fios customers once had. 3 weeks to install and 45 minute hold times on the phone have seems to be the common theme on social media. Customers in Florida, Texas, and California apparently are going to be suffering for a while unless things improve fast. Please comment below if you are experiencing the same issues.

People will be moving to Direct TV and Time Warner without a doubt in these markets.

The customer service experience of #Frontier since Verizon #FIOS sold is horrendous @FrontierCorp @verizonfios Time Warner will benefit
— DeadZones.com (@DeadZones) May 23, 2016

@DeadZones Is there something that my team can assist you with today? ^EGS
— Ask Frontier (@AskFrontier) May 23, 2016

@DeadZones If you need assistance setting up service, please DM me the details here so I can see what's possible. Thanks -LB
— Ask Frontier (@AskFrontier) May 23, 2016

Southwest Airlines Request A Call Back Has Major Problems

Southwest Automatic Request A Call Back Has Major Issues

For several years Southwest has had a problem with its automatic call back feature. Instead of waiting on hold for 5, 10 or 20 minutes call customer service at their phone number 800-435-9792 it gives you the option of calling you back. When the system does call you back and you follow the instructions to of hitting any key when " " is on the line. It just hangs up.

I have even experimented with turning WiFi calling off on the phone and the problem still persists. I also added the Southwest 800 number to my phone book so it wouldn't be blocked. The reason I am writing about the problem is that apparent customer service is aware of it based on this discussion Serious Problems. Yet nothing has been done to fix the issue in the last two years.

I assume Southwest is a problem outsourcing their call back feature to a third party telecom company. I would like to know what telecom company is providing this service and would love to call them out also in this blog post. Southwest always has had great customer service and this happens to be something that does not seem to be getting resolved. I would bet AT&T and/or Verizon are providing this 8000 call back service and scamming Southwest by dropping calls and then charging them for each call. Wouldn't put it past them to do this.

This hangup problem has occurred with me several hundred times and it's annoying and wastes my time. The problem seems to happen most when the wait is longer than 10 minutes. Please chime in below under discussion and let us know if you have had similar issues with customer service.

I am also a huge fan of Southwest Airlines and think they are light years above every other airline by far. I think their customer service is amazing when you can reach them and love their credit card point system. Hopefully, enough people will read this post so they can do something to fix the problem. Comments appreciated.

Why Your Home Cell Phone Signal Has Stopped Working

Cell Towers vs Distributed Antenna Systems

If you live in a rural area of the United States it is likely that your cell phone signal strength has been fluctuating or might have dropped entirely in recent years as carriers move from 3G to 4G LTE. Wireless carriers are increasingly moving services in areas from the very tall cell phone towers to the smaller distributed antenna systems as you see in the picture above. Why?

These very tall cell phone towers can provide 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE coverage of 1 to 2 miles and service several thousand people and homes from a single tower. Carriers are increasingly dealing with capacity issues on these tall towers and have to turn wireless signals down or off in areas on antennas where there are congestion problems (too many users) or not enough customers (not profitable).

This could result in your home that previously had several bars of cell phone signal suddenly not having any signal at all. The wireless carrier may put up a DAS system in your neighborhood to fix the problem if you complain enough. DAS or Distributed Antenna Systems are essentially smaller and lower power cell towers that are installed on top or inside of buildings or utility poles most commonly. DAS antenna systems will provide service to a smaller number of people. The theory is that your signal will be more reliable and faster.

Unfortunately, the FCC or FTC has no mandate for the wireless carrier they have to inform you of changes in signal strength in your neighborhood. Carriers might not even reflect this coverage accurately on their coverage maps for several years. Deadcellzones.com has been operating for the last 18 years collecting complaints on a map of where customers have trouble getting cell phone signals.

The complaint latest trend in the industry seems to be carriers optimizing their networks in markets and dropping coverage for "unprofitable" markets. There is no guarantee that coverage will be provided at your home and this is the biggest portion of customer traffic adding data to the dead zones map.

I am curious what some homeowners have done to remedy this problem with carriers. Please comment below if you have any feedback or suggestions on how to solve this problem with each carrier. These carriers have gotten so big that bureaucracy is probably the biggest obstacle to getting solutions for customers who have lost good home cell phone signals.

T-Mobile Service Plans and Coverage Review

Coverage: T-Mobile's coverage can be spotty in a few areas around the United States and Mexico, but not as bad as most people proclaim it to be. Their features and flexibility far outweigh the lack of connectivity in most areas and provide the most valuable data plans. If you don't have coverage in many areas simply make calls through T-Mobile's WiFi android app on some smartphones. This is huge so you don't if you make a lot of calls indoors in remote places. If you live in a major metropolitan area it is likely you will have comparable coverage to AT&T and Verizon 3G in most areas. One benefit of being a smaller carrier means you are likely competing against fewer customers for network capacity. T-Mobile now has the best 4G (HSPA+) coverage and its great to be a customer with fewer people competing for coverage on the HSPA+ network. The difference between 3G and 4G LTE is not that significant in my opinion if you are not downloading the video. Nevada and some of the mountain states are some notable dead zones in their coverage network and even Northern California and Oregon have quite a few miles where service is not available. T-Mobile has network coverage in every state except Alaska, reception in rural areas can be spotty. Also, as with all carriers, the reception will vary due to location. International coverage is available in more than 187 countries. Their website does have a nice feature that allows you to check coverage areas by inputting your zip code and overlaps nicely with dead zones reported on our map on the right. If you travel a lot, they do have international service options, but it will cost you as roaming charges do apply.

Plans: T-Mobile leads these carriers in free minutes and value now offering unlimited plans without long term contracts. Prepaid cards are affordable if you only want a short term plan. For the money, they offer the freest minutes of any plan and likely the most value depending on where you live. T-Mobile offers more plans that are typically less expensive, particularly for Internet access, text, and multimedia messaging services. They offer several plans including business plans, pre-paid, family, and individual plans. They do offer free phones subsidized phones, including camera phones, but if you want to choose a different phone than the one they offer you will have to pay for it.

Other features

Unlimited data plans still exist for some customers grandfathered.
Offers unlimited calling plans without long term contracts is a great selling point
As a GSM carrier and a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile has extensive international roaming and thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States and Europe.
Of the major carriers, T-Mobile received the highest customer service rating by J.D. Power and Associates for several consecutive years.
T-Mobile is the only major carrier not to offer push-to-talk services.
We recommended you monitor your text messaging usage closely and get on an unlimited plan so you don't get charged the outrageous .25 cents per message if you go over.
Has 4G Coverage now in most cities.
5G LTE plans will come soon but 4G HSPA+ is plenty fast.
T-Mobile has an Android phone with unlimited data plans. We highly recommend it!
T-Mobile & Sprint merged but they are keeping separate business brand units similar to when they purchased MetroPCS.

Finding the best best cell phone coverage just got easier by comparing cell phone coverage reports from other customers. Which wireless carrier has the worst cell phone coverage?

Other Reviews:

Feedback is always welcome. Please submit your comments below.

@TMobileHelp Twitter Chatter

Tweets about @Tmobilehelp

Bizarre Letter From Frontier Communications?

Every year, Frontier negotiates contracts with local TV broadcasters and national cable networks to offer their programming. Some are demanding unreasonable rate increases. Frontier is working hard to negotiate a fair deal and avoid any channel disruption by the broadcasters. We understand how important your local programming is to you and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Our goal is to deliver the highest quality in TV entertainment at the best value for your money. If any stations are removed from your lineup, Frontier will work on your behalf to return those channels to your lineup as soon as possible and at a reasonable rate.

As always, thank you for being a Frontier customer!

UPDATE: Frontier continues negotiations with local TV broadcasters who are demanding unreasonable rate increases. Channels listed below may be removed at any time. If any of your channels are impacted, Frontier will provide further details on this page.
Dear Frontier Customer,

Frontier Billing Problems

Ever since Verizon FIOS was acquired by Frontier customers in Southern California have been experiencing massive problems. Frontier continues to have customer billing problems. Several customers have experienced problems with their automatically billing and notifications

Even if you have automatic billing on your account the company has not charged many customers. Instead of notifying you that your credit card or account is past due. Frontier simply shuts off your TV or internet service. This has happened to several customers in the area.

To make problems worse, departments within Frontier do not talk to each other. You first have to speak with collections and then collections send you to another department. It often takes 5 to 10 calls just to reach the right person who knows how to turn your service back on. It is probably the worst customer experience ever. The amount of incompetence by customer service teams is really amazing.

Time Warner / Spectrum was hanging around our office building. They were able to hook up internet service in less than 12 hours. We dumped Frontier's service today after waiting 6 days for the service to come back on.

I would not be surprised to see this company go into bankruptcy or see a private equity company come in a buy them out. The number of drastic changes that need to happen are obvious to everyone in the marketplace and their stock price reflects this.

See all the Tweets below about the problem.

Tweets about @askfrontier

SiriusXM Customers Getting Refunds for Poor Reception?

Comment about SiriusXM customer getting credit for poor reception

SiriusXM Customers Getting Credit for Poor Reception

We received a comment on our blog post about SiriusXM siganl issues from SiriusXM losing signal and we are getting a lot of traffic to this page. According to a customer report from Canada the company did some upgrading of the satellites which did not go so well. This customer received 3 months of credit after he threatened to cancel. See Discussion

@SXM_Help Twitter Chatter
Tweets about @SXM_Help

See SiriusXM's Coverage Map

Why AT&T or Verizon Should Buy Twitter

U.S. wireless carrier Verizon is reportedly among a handful of other contenders (probably AT&T) are considering buying social media Twitter. The renewed speculation around a potential Twitter deal comes as Verizon attempts to navigate its way through a headache at Yahoo, which recently revealed a hack that impacted more than 500 million accounts. Reuters reported. As of yet, it remains unclear what the breach will mean for the Verizon-Yahoo deal.

However, we think AT&T or Verizon should buy Twitter because in my view the carriers provide the worst customer service on the planet compared to any industry. Twitter in my view could be a much better customer service tool vs a social media tool. It can be much quicker to get a response versus calling support which typically doesn't help much. Carriers get thousands of Tweets per day to their customer support Twitter handles. See all the Tweets at Verizon and AT&T customers service in real time below.

Tweets about @vzwsupport
Tweets about @attcares

How to Purchase More Data on T-Mobile's Not So Unlimited Data Plan?

T-Mobile's Not So Unlimited Data Plan

If you read the details of the "unlimited data plan" it says the following: Includes up to 2GB of high-speed data on T-Mobile's network instead of standard 500MB (as part of our Simple Starter plan).

T-Mobile Data Plan Usage

We called T-Mobile today in order to purchase more data since our current 2GB data plan ran out apparently. As you can see by the chart above we don't use more than 1GB of data per month on average. If you are traveling and using Google Maps for navigation you won't be able to very easily if they cap your plan and turn the data off.

Why am I not able to purchase another 1GB or 2GB of data? You can't according to the customer service person I spoke with.

T-Mobile proceeds to send me survey questions over text on how easy it was to resolve the issue. All of my responses of course were 0. There is not solution to the problem of purchasing more data.

Here is how you find the data pass.

T-Mobile's data passes cost $5 to $10. Here is the pricing schedule below.

Below is a Tweet and a response from T-Mobile. Apparently they have data passes that they don't seem to promote.

@DeadZones Hey there! Are you looking for our Data Passes? Check them out over here :-) https://t.co/ClmVlPidyj *MelY
— T-Mobile Help (@TMobileHelp) September 21, 2016

It might be time to consider a data plan from Republic Wireless. Its a pre-paid data plan that will work on T-Mobile's network. All you need is a SIM card and you can use T-Mobile same phone.

How to Search Dead Zones Database Map

Word Cloud of Dead Cell Zones Database

You can search for these locations on the dead zones map.

See the map below for directions.

Can You Drive Testing Indoor Coverage?

In our ever more transparent and tough economic environment don't you would think Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint should take a look at new innovative ways to better serve their customer's needs as more customers are using their mobile phones indoors. Our mashup DeadCellZones.com collects thousands of carrier indoor and outdoor cell coverage complaints from customers each month with zero advertising. If our website is collecting this data for free it appears the carriers are all overlooking a very simple way of listening to their customers. Ask!

Wireless service providers (especially in the U.S.) do drive testing to build theoretical coverage maps and test their networks for cell signal strength. Drive Testing or wireless data collection is used to provide coverage analysis, network weakness information and to aid in finding specific problem areas reported by consumers. Most drive testing companies are specifically tasked with simulating the actual call experience of customers during weekday periods to simulate capacity issues outdoors. Such companies include GWS, LCC, and WFI. Most carriers outsource this capability to third parties, unlike Verizon who has its own in-house drive testing team. Drive testing companies usually spend between $15-25 per mile in over 300+ U.S. markets benchmark testing signals. These companies provide a tremendous service to the carriers and deserve every penny for their efforts but how do they efficiently acquire in-building coverage data where customers use their phone the most?

DeadCellZones.com will be a the forefront of the carrier femtocell revolution and will start helping drive testing companies get better visibility of in-building coverage problem areas. U.S. carriers are starting to roll out femtocells and the number of worldwide subscribers is rising rapidly, jumping from 1.7 million in 2007 to 9.7 million in 2008. The number of femtocell phone units is expected to nearly quintuple in the 5 years from 2007 to 2011.

I think the current recession is going to demand cost-cutting measures that we have never seen from these companies since churn is more prevalent than customer growth. The carnage could be huge from suppliers and vendors beneath the umbrella of these giant companies of those who do not innovate. Its widely known throughout the industry that working with carriers is not much different than working with government bureaucrats because of their proprietary networks and huge customer bases. The lack of leadership of the wireless communication giants to is the primary reason why the U.S. is way behind Europe and Asia in wireless telecommunications.

How Much is Verizon's Upgrade Fee?

Used Car Salesman at Verizon Wireless Stores

A $30 upgrade fee is ridiculous and out of principle you should leave the arrogant carrier. A "used car salesman like experience" is what you will likely expect going into a Verizon Wireless store today. Verizon is now charging existing customers a new $30 upgrade fee to any existing customers purchasing new mobile equipment at the discounted price with a two-year contract. Verizon is letting some lucky customers trade in their phones to reduce the fee a bit, but how that helps will depend very heavily on what kind of user you are. All negotiable.

Negotiation and hassle is basically what Verizon would like their customers to deal with. Nothing is straightforward and it sounds like everything is negotiable. Atleast that is why my wife said on her last trip to a Verizon Wireless store and that what it sounds like with the new $30 upgrade fee that is negotiable. Verizon bogus statement says:

"This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.While the upgrade fee is not unique to Verizon Wireless, most devices can be traded in with our green friendly trade-in program at verizonwireless.com/tradein as a way to save money or potentially offset the fee completely."