Verizon Home 5G-A Cautionary Tale
If you're fed up with your Spectrum bill and thinking about switching to Verizon 5G, I have one word for you: don't. The full story is below for those who are interested.
My wife and I had finally hit our breaking point with the Spectrum bill as it hit $115 and thought we would give the Verizon 5G home service a try as we are both satisfied Verizon mobile customers. Sign up was easy, we went to the Verizon store and provided our information and were on our way with the device within a half hour.
We had 500mbps Spectrum service which reliably averaged around 400mbps on all devices, so about 80% quoted speed. The Verizon service we got was 300mbps, which I (wrongfully) assumed would do somewhere in the neighborhood of 240mbps. The cost of this service was $60 and would be reduced to $50 if we signed up for autopay through a MyVerizon account. At this time, we were assured that if we did not like the service, we could return the box to the store within 30 days and would not be charged for the service. This ended up to not be true, as we will get to later.
Setup was easy, we plugged the box in and after a half hour or so, we had WiFi! We were never able to create a MyVerizon account for it as we are Verizon Prepaid customers for our mobile phones, and since the 5G device is postpaid, it requires a separate account. We were told to either: get another cell phone number to use for the account, or convert the prepaid mobile phone plan to postpaid. Fortunately we did neither. After using the internet for 2 weeks it was readily apparent it would not work for us. First, the highest speed I ever saw out of it was 85mbps. Most of the time it struggled to break 60mbps. A far cry from 300 or even 240. Second, approximately every 20-40 minutes, the wifi network would cut out for 2-5 seconds and immediately come back. This made it useless for my wife to work from home using her company's software.
A call to support confirmed that yes, we had the device near windows and also that this service is de-prioritized during peak hours. Which are apparently all hours in Center Square since I never saw a speed higher than 85mbps. While attempting to cancel this service, we learned that our account apparently did not exist despite the fact that we had received a bill with an account number on it. After 30 minutes of arguing with AI robots, we finally got a real human who sorted it out and set an appointment for us to return the device since we were well within 30 days.
Upon going to the store, we were told they could not locate the account either (even though they made it) and the device was never registered to the account. After 2 hours of them calling various people, they finally agreed to accept the device and give us paperwork saying we turned it in. They did not know if we should pay the bill and advised us to check our mail. Lo and behold, another bill came, for $48 and change because the first month's $60 service was pro-rated to that amount. So, not free as promised.
We could not pay this bill online because we never could make a MyVerizon account, and we elected not to pay by check because the fine print states your bank information would be automatically stored and used for autopayment until you called to revoke authorization (which we did not want to risk given this account doesn't exist according to Verizon).
I brought the bill to the Verizon store where I was told I could not pay it because they couldn't find the account. They sent me next door to CVS, who told me I cannot pay it there because it's a FIOS bill (which it is not). I then went to a 2nd Verizon store who was also unable to log into the account for a credit card payment, but was able to take a cash payment and provide me with a receipt.
I cannot say enough-there is no sum of money that could entice me into using this poor internet service and dealing with this level of confusion and annoyance ever again. I don't know what else exists in Albany, we ended up arguing the Spectrum bill back down into the realm of reason so I gave up on shopping. I am a hair away from switching our Verizon phones to something else despite the fact that we have an amazing deal simply for the amount of aggravation we encountered with them.
Thanks for letting me vent, and I hope that this saves someone the aggravation we went through!