Monday November 23, 2015 Most Recent Post:
Bahia Honda State Park We Should Definitely Get Points for Determination AKA
Big Pine Key, Florida Dodging the Weather: Neither Rain nor Wind nor ……..
MONDAY
It was a longer story about our rain dodging Sunday but a fun day. If you want to read about it, the link is at the top of this page. Today it’s a short story about my irritating Monday.
The clouds are black at sunrise this morning but there is some color. Maybe these black clouds should have warned me.
I thought there would be a visible sun up but the clouds all pile on to cover it up. Just a rim of orange glow at the top edge of the mountain of clouds.
With a repeat of yesterday’s rainy windy forecast for today, I decide to head over to the Verizon Store in Marathon, 20 miles away but the closest one, to get the activation of my phone finished.
Here it is, the store in Marathon where they tell me “oh yes, they can move my contacts and get my pictures and find my favorites” However, if I didn’t buy my phone from them, it will be $30 please.
Are you kidding? The woman from Verizon left me in the lurch and then sent me somewhere to pay $30 to do what she should have done in the first place. I don’t think so. I am NOT a happy camper. Worst service I’ve had from Verizon Wireless in nearly 6 years.
At one time, in a former life, I was the manager for IT systems in a Division of the hospital at UVA. When I left that job I lost all interest in electronics and have not kept up with what is going on. But today I’m going to have to get interested again since I definitely do not want to allow Verizon to screw this up any more than it already is by trying to deactivate and then reactivate anything. So I move the contacts by Bluetooth, 10 at a time. Take a look at your contacts and imagine how long that takes. Moving the pictures is a snap but finding my Chrome favorites through the hunt on the non intuitive settings seems to take forever.
FINALLY at least those things are accomplished and I have my daughter Carrie in her Tiger Halloween Costume as the home screen on my Samsung Galaxy 5 with the inferior antenna for which I paid far too much money even though it was about 40% off since it is not their newest model which I read is even worse..
Every single time I get new electronics it ends up being a serious pain in the neck and I swear it will be YEARS before I do it again and so I hang on for a long time before caving. My laptop is a 7 year old Dell.
I was also thinking about asking for a Kindle Fire HD7 from Santa but then I read that a lot of folks say don’t bother it’s slow and apps are limited and the older ones are better. Older is better in lots of ways me thinks. <grin>
Walking out to catch the sunset I see this pair of interesting 4X4 RVs parked in one site. Not sure if they were both using the site since their tops were up but they are definitely interesting. Bet you could find some really fine boondocking with these rigs.
Tonight’s lovely sunset makes me smile and forget my irritations at least for awhile.
Verizon really needs to get it's act together...we are still waiting, since Nov 5th, for them to correct the mess they made of our accounts. Wish there was another game in town for phones and internet that would give us the coverage we need. Feel like we are being held hostage:o((( BTW, check our Tom and Marci's (http://roamingfree2010.blogspot.com/) latest post about their son's fiasco with Verizon. Really something needs to give with them!!!
ReplyDeleteLove the photo of Carrie:o)))
As an older guy, I appreciate the "older is better" idea. ;)
ReplyDeleteDid you get down to the sand sculptures in Key West?
ReplyDeleteWe definitely thought about it but because we have to drive there every Wednesday, we just didn't feel like going on the week-end. They are done on a private beach behind a resort so I'm not sure how that works for the public. But I'm sure it does.
DeleteKnock on wood... Virgin Mobile has been great for me...how annoying of Verizon. So 'you' to spend the time to save $30...how many contacts do you have...? Sounds like it might be more than me! It does seem that 'new' just gets more expensive, more complicated and sometimes less useful even if more fancy. That is a cute tiger picture-lol! :) At least it was a lovely sunset!
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I both got new iPhones this summer. Verizon moved the contacts for us seamlessly. iTunes can be used for a backup and we did that with the old phones before making the switch. Then it was as simple as connecting the new phone to our laptop and using the sync feature in iTunes to move the rest of the data over. In less than 5 minutes we had our pictures and apps loaded on the new phones. I don't have any experience with Android phones but wonder if there isn't some similar feature available for it. Another point is that many of the Verizon stores are not actually owned by Verizon and they tend to charge for services that are free in the real Verizon store.
ReplyDeleteAs Doug pointed out about the Verizon stores, the one in Marathon is a Wireless Zone authorized retailer. That's why they wanted to charge you, Sherry. A true Verizon store wouldn't have done that. Look for "authorized retailer" on their sign...if you see it, avoid the place.
ReplyDeleteThose are interesting RV's. That almost looks like a Cadillac grille!
You and Doug are correct about the "authorized retailer". The closest one I found later is in Key Largo, if it's still open. That's 130 miles round trip. Not worth that to me when the phone "technician" should have taken care of this for me. Not sure I think stores other than "authorized" should be allowed to use the Verizon name and logo. Seems like false advertising to me.
DeleteLove the small glimmer of light lining the cloud tops - beautiful. We have heard that Verizon has the best coverage and there were two places where I think they had service and our AT&T didn't, but we've been really happy with our customer service when we've upgraded our phones. Upgrading my laptop to Windows 10 took my son 26 hours (a long story about Windows 8 updates) which I likely would never have had the patience for. I try not to expect the worst as I am often rewarded with being right :-( I agree with David that old being better is nice to hear :-))))
ReplyDeleteYou would certainly think that technology could improve but I have to agree that most of the time older is better. Sorry to hear about the rain and troubles. Interesting 4x4 RVs. Glad you got a beautiful sunset to end your frustrating day.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you. . .Verizon is annoying the bejabbers out of me right now too. . .I have been a loyal customer for more than 20 years. . .that seems to have no bearing on being treated well. . .grrrrr. . .
ReplyDeleteRead yesterday that the Kindle Fire was $35 this weekend on Amazon. . .guess now I know why. . .they've come out with a new one. . .I love my OLD ONE!
We bought our Samsung Galaxy 5 out right, also. We have an unlimited data plan with Verizon and the only way to keep it, is to not purchase a phone with Verizon. All John had to do was transfer the sim card and all our info was moved. However, we lucked out when we stopped at a Verizon store to ask another question and we had a great sales rep. This fellow said to go buy a phone at the Walmart (across the parking lot) and he would move the sim card for us!! How nice was that! So we immediately head over and brought the phone, brought it back and he moved it for us (much faster than John probably would have done). Everything now was the same as our old phone:) No charge:) Boy did we luck out!! Glad you were able to figure out how to fix your problem by yourself...smart lady:)
ReplyDeleteSo he activated your old sim for your new phone? I thought about that but when I called Verizon I obviously got a dud who just activated the new sim in my new phone. We bought it for the same reason you did, to keep our unlimited data. Hope Walmart had a better price than we got.
DeleteTechnology -- can't seem to live without it anymore, but it sure can be a challenge and take up a lot of valuable time. Glad you got everything fixed. And glad you had a lovely sunset to improve your day!
ReplyDeleteIf older is better, then I must be terrific! A nice bennie for getting older. :c)
ReplyDeleteI don't think Verizon knows the meaning of good customer service, we've had issues with them, too. Thankfully we now only use them for our Mifi and our pay as you go phone which we need here at the Thurmond COE, our AT&T phones have no coverage in this area.
Good for you taking the time to set up your own phone, maybe $30 isn't anything to Verizon, but for us living on a very fixed income, that is a lot of money that can be better spent elsewhere.
You win some, you lose some. ;c)
I will never bother with Verizon again. They don't seem to understand that they now have compition and lots of it. I just bought the same phone you have from Straight Talk and they did all the changes for me. I have unlimited everything. I also just bought their hot spot, unfortunaley it isn't unlimited but since my phone is I use that quite a bit now that I am learning how it all works. Good luck with your phone
ReplyDeleteLove you sunrise with just a thin line of yellow
Sorry to hear about your experience with Verizon. Have to say that we've been with them since hitting the road and have gotten pretty good service. Wish they would give unlimited data again.
ReplyDeleteJust a tip. If all your contact were with Google, this would never happen. Open a gmail account and revert all contacts to that email address. When you get a new phone, all you have to do is log into your Google account and all contacts will sync with your new device.
ReplyDeleteGreat tip, but can you elaborate on exactly how you revert all contacts to that address? I already have a gmail account.
DeleteLike you, when I was working I was always the "go-to" person about computers, and even the I.T. folks would stop by my desk now and then to discuss a problem. When I retired I did a memory dump and have been just fine. I use a computer, but that's it! Anything I can't do with my simple internet connection doesn't need to be done!
ReplyDeleteI have to believe there is a real Verizon store on KW. Sometimes they don't show up maps, but are actually there. When did they put a Walmart in the Keys? Or did you buy the phone on the mainland? They have made such a big deal about the first walmart coming next year. Did they sneak a little local walmart in somewhere???
ReplyDeleteWhen I switched my phones over, the Verizon guy was most helpful. He switched the sim card over from one phone to the other since they were the same phone and the card was the same. He said if I had gotten a different type of phone than the old one, he would have also given me a new sim card for free.
My switchover went pretty easily, but I also synced my phone prior to changing phones. I can't remember exactly how I did it all, but I googled how to do it before I started. I got my phone from ebay after reading a great blog post on Wheeling It. I felt safe to do it that way, and it worked out great for me. I chose an older model which was just like the old phone I had and that I liked, but I had worn it out. I ended up with a brand new phone for $100 complete with the OLD google maps and blue navigation arrow that I love and depend on and that are no longer available. It didn't come with a sim card, but per Verizon they will give you a new sim card.
Karen I'm not the one who got mine from walmart. That was in the comments. There is no walmart here and I'm sorry to hear there will be one coming. There is no "authorized" Verizon in KW that I know of. I'd sure like to know how you get the old google maps. On any browser I use regardless of phone, old or new, that is not available.
ReplyDeleteThe sunset makes up for the nuisance by Verizon!
ReplyDeleteSorry for the Verizon mess. When out of Texas (our home network), the only AT&T stores that could service our account were corporate stores. Those can few and far between, and certainly not convenient. So funny . . . the AT&T store in the mall in NJ could not help me, but the Radio Shack a few doors down could and did. Unfortunately, Radio Shack stopped servicing AT&T accounts during their recent "reorganization" and shuttering of many stores. Oh well. At least we're back in Texas now.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't take me long at all condiering I have about 10 contacts total! Don't use my phone or Facebook or email much for actual communication. I'm sure that will change some day.
ReplyDelete