When I switched to Verizon a million years ago, it was because my family's house was a dead-zone and after switching, I never had a problem again. They jumped on board soon after and have been loyal customers ever since. I've had close to a dozen addresses since then and never once had a reception issue until now, and it's BAD.
I call my family a lot when I'm on my way home from work and every night, when I reach the intersection of East Street and Washington Street in Westwood, my call drops. Unless I luck out and make it through the light there adn there is no traffic. Otherwise, dropped call. I wait until my car makes it to Clapboardtree Street and call back. I'm fine until I pull into the entrance of my apartment complex. It's not a building but a series of townhouses. I lose reception as soon as I pull into the entrance. I may get it back depending on where I park, but typically, all hope is lost.
Inside the apartment is the same. Dead. Some days are worse than others and I'm able to connect to the occasional conference call by propping my phone up at a certain angle in the bedroom window, muting myself and putting the meeting on speakerphone. My boyfriend and I rotate between this occasional lucky spot as it is our only way of communicating by phone as this point, and it's ridiculous.
We talked about getting a landline and doing a cable package, but for some reason Fios isn't available in our townhouses and as the office made it sound, never will be. I've had the worst experiences with Comcast, so, no thank you. And there's a cable/internet/phone option through our electric company which seems weird. We are using them for internet service right now and it's pretty good, but really, it was our only option outside of Comcast. The two buildings that were recently built have FIOS options... but not us.
So, since we would prefer to rely on our cell phones for everything, we are left with having to change providers. We are new to the area but we were told by our building manager that Westwood has no towers and that is why we aren't getting a signal. I looked at the Verizon coverage map and it LOOKS like we should be okay, but we aren't. I'm not sure where Norwood's towers are, but we are evidently too far away to pick up the signal. The people in the building office all have AT&T, some had recently switched, and they said they had no issues after the changed to AT&T. I'm not sure why that works, but I held one of their phones in my hand and saw the three bars/dots on there iphone next to mine which had none.
So really, this is a last ditch effort to try to figure out why it's so bad and if there is any plans to improve it on Verizon's end. I'm a little disappointed by the reviews of the Network Extender and honestly, I don't think I should have to pay $250 for something might allow me to use a service that I'm already paying for especially with the way it works. If I'm paying $120 a month for a service, I think it should work. Always.
