Verizon AC - Roaming charges in SW Washington?

Yes, this is the reason single-rate west was a very popular option in this neck of the woods. Both Oregon and Washington will have pretty major holes and issues for AC users (in my opinion). Northern CA included, but Verizon's footprint in California is much larger so it's less of an issue for folks say in the Bay area and south.

The obvious fixes include:
- Add US Cellular to AC. If this happens I'd give up my SRW plan.
- Offer an enhanced no-roaming option like SRW, or nights and weekend minutes on single-rate (to compete with Sprint's no roaming option).

-Dan

 

In addition, they need to put US Cellular for Lake and Mendocino Counties(SID 1075) here in Nor Cal in the PRL. Also, stop blocking people with Lake and Mendocino County prefixes from making calls on US Cellular. Contel, and later, GTE did not do this, and this only started happening under Verizon, in fact, Contel and GTE employees used to put their phones on Auto A when they sold them to customers knowing the poor coverage that Contel and GTE had in the area. In Lake and Mendocino Counties, there is no one else to fall back on if you can't get a signal except US Cellular, no Sprint at all. I know this, and got Santa Rosa prefixes for all my lines, Santa Rosa is in Sonoma County, our southern neighbor. Calls go through and come in just fine on US Cellular with those prefixes, though I do have to keep my phones on Auto A to pick up on them due to them not being in the PRL. Verizon does not charge to use US Cellular here on their local, regional and Single Rate National plans, but does on AC. They plan to have their CDMA signal on here soon, so I can stop having to roam on them in analog!

 

I just called Verizon to ask about the new tower in Longview, since the store didn't have any specifics. The representative was spectacularly unhelpful, though.

As many of you know, I have been using the following workaround in southwest Washington to avoid roaming charges:

- Set roam mode to "Automatic A"
- Disable analog

Obviously, this is kind of a hassle whenever I'm in this area, and it still doesn't ensure that I won't hit US Cellular if the Sprint tower is busy (since the phone will automatically fail over to USCC if the Sprint tower is busy for whatever reason). So I was understandably curious whether the "new tower" was actually the USCC Longview System ID.

When I called, the Verizon representative didn't know the answer. She called the "technical department," but they, apparently, don't know the answer either. They also apparently can't find anyone over there who *would* know the answer. I told the CS rep that I was "guaranteed to worry," in that case, and she abruptly ended the call.

If anyone happens to be in the area, try dialing *2 while you have a flashing roam signal and see whether you get Sprint or a US Cellular intercept. I'd be interested to know whether they are slowly beginning to open up US Cellular areas to the AC plan.