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Anyone Have Luck Getting VZW to Give You Wirless Network Extender for Free?

OstrichSaK

Android Expert
Nov 22, 2009
1,448
317
Colorado, USA
We just got three lines of service with VZW and three SGS4's. Upon getting home we quickly realized that VZW has squat for coverage at our house and get about 1 bar on the ground level. I'm sure that drops to 0 in the basement which is where I'll be spending a lot of time this winter watching football in the theater. When we had Sprint we had sketchy coverage at our service address until they sent an Airave for free. I contacted the sales rep that we got our phones from and his email response said that those devices are $250 and they're on backorder. Not really what I expected in the way of customer service. I told him that if we had to pay ANOTHER $250 over what we already paid we would likely be returning all of our phones and canceling service within our 14 day trial period. I hope that either they or someone at the 800 # realizes that since we're not yet under contract we have zero reason to stay and they should probably send us one for free if they want $200+ from us every month for at least the next two years.

Does anyone have any tips or advice for getting one of these w/o having to shell out $250 or wait forever? I want to install this and test it out quickly before our 14 trial period ends. I'd hate to have to roll everything back over such a small issue but am not afraid to leave a company that doesn't value us as customers before we're even in contract because things won't get much better once we are.

Thanks for the help.
 
I know of folks that have gotten free extenders from VZW.

You need to beat on them though and like anything else part of it is luck and your powers of persuasion.


If your still in the "14 day" window that gives you some bargaining leverage.

Call their national number and tell the customer rep. that answers that you want to talk to the "customer retention department"

Explain to them that you love the phones but you'll have to return them if you can't get service in your house.

Good luck.
 
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I also know of people getting free extenders. I had a friend that gave up on his negotiations and accepted the extender for $100. My brother (and 1 other friend) were firm on their negotiations and got it for free. Their area is shown on VZW's map of coverage as having coverage but they can't get a data or cell signal.
 
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I know of folks that have gotten free extenders from VZW.

You need to beat on them though and like anything else part of it is luck and your powers of persuasion.


If your still in the "14 day" window that gives you some bargaining leverage.

Call their national number and tell the customer rep. that answers that you want to talk to the "customer retention department"

Explain to them that you love the phones but you'll have to return them if you can't get service in your house.

Good luck.

I totally agree. With three lines of service, and especially while in your return period, I'd keep calling till you get someone in the retention or cancellation dept. who will agree to it. To make your point, if you have to, get the instructions for sending back the phones and canceling your service,
 
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That's what I figured. We do like the phones a lot so this really is the only hurdle to us keeping service. The weird part is that about 3yrs ago we had VZW and our reception at the house was fine. They've obviously changed something for the worse during that time, at least as it affects reception at this location.
Maybe it is the phone. There are a few threads here about the S4 having poor reception.
 
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Well, there you go. You got good reception with vzw in the past. Now, you have phones that are said to get poor reception and you are having trouble getting signal.

I suggest it is more likely to be a phone issue than something changed in your neighborhood cell infrastructure.

I disagree. I said I got decent reception but that was over 3 years ago... before they even had 4G in our area. This means that MASSIVE infrastructure changes have taken place since the last time we had acceptable reception. We also live on the edge of town up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This isn't a house in the middle of town on flat land. Reception here is tougher than it sounds so it's easy to see where a slight tweak in coverage would affect us drastically. This seems more feasible than that all three of our devices are SO horrible that we go from reception to barely a single bar. I can see where a bad device can cause a bar of difference but I'm not buying a three or four bar difference due to device. That device would never even make it to market.
 
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I disagree. I said I got decent reception but that was over 3 years ago... before they even had 4G in our area. This means that MASSIVE infrastructure changes have taken place since the last time we had acceptable reception. We also live on the edge of town up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This isn't a house in the middle of town on flat land. Reception here is tougher than it sounds so it's easy to see where a slight tweak in coverage would affect us drastically. This seems more feasible than that all three of our devices are SO horrible that we go from reception to barely a single bar. I can see where a bad device can cause a bar of difference but I'm not buying a three or four bar difference due to device. That device would never even make it to market.
We had a Moderator a couple of years ago from Colorado with a Galaxy Nexus that was all but useless because of lack of signal. After switching to a Motorola Droid Razr, a lot of her issues fixed. You'd be amazed how much of a difference the phone can make. Motorola makes the best in the business and Samsung has continued to show that they use bad CDMA radios and has for a while. So it doesn't surprise me anymore to hear of people having problems with signal strength on CDMA Samsung phones.
 
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I live in Colorado Springs, have the SGS4 and get pretty good reception in most places but there are a few places in town, where I notice that it drops to almost nothing. As far as radios for signal strength, I think Motorola wins hands down. Too bad I had a love/hate relationship with the Motorola. I still keep my Motorola Droid Razr which happens to be only a month old, as a back up phone. (Motorola got tired of me complaining about poor battery life and sent me a new one from their factory, even though I was near the end of my contract.)

I'm thinking you may be right with the tower infrastructure having changed in your area.

If you live in Colorado Springs, have you considered going to the corporate store on Barnes and Powers and asking what they can do about a getting you an extender? I've found that they tend to be of the better customer service stores in town.
 
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I live in Colorado Springs, have the SGS4 and get pretty good reception in most places but there are a few places in town, where I notice that it drops to almost nothing. As far as radios for signal strength, I think Motorola wins hands down. Too bad I had a love/hate relationship with the Motorola.

I'm thinking you may be right with the tower infrastructure having changed in your area.

This seems most logical to me and if VZW can find me a Wireless Network Extender I will be able to test this theory. The phones seem to work fine for the most part just about everywhere else.

I too have a love/hate relationship with Moto smartphones so we chose not to go that route and the HTC has a sealed battery. Coming off of an HTC Evo LTE w/Sprint we have no desire to get back into that situation. I hope this pans out because the first thing I'm doing is ordering up a kit of two 3,000mAh ZeroLemon batteries & quick charger for these! I go through batteries like crazy (especially when I've got limited coverage) so not having changeable batteries has been the bane of my existence the last couple of years.
 
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This seems most logical to me and if VZW can find me a Wireless Network Extender I will be able to test this theory. The phones seem to work fine for the most part just about everywhere else.

I too have a love/hate relationship with Moto smartphones so we chose not to go that route and the HTC has a sealed battery. Coming off of an HTC Evo LTE w/Sprint we have no desire to get back into that situation. I hope this pans out because the first thing I'm doing is ordering up a kit of two 3,000mAh ZeroLemon batteries & quick charger for these! I go through batteries like crazy (especially when I've got limited coverage) so not having changeable batteries has been the bane of my existence the last couple of years.

That low signal area will definitely cause you to go through batteries pretty fast. I bought two 5000mAh external chargers for the Razr and just keep those in the car in case I get low on battery, but honestly I have not had to use them except on a couple of occasions when traveling.
 
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This seems most logical to me and if VZW can find me a Wireless Network Extender I will be able to test this theory. The phones seem to work fine for the most part just about everywhere else.

I too have a love/hate relationship with Moto smartphones so we chose not to go that route and the HTC has a sealed battery. Coming off of an HTC Evo LTE w/Sprint we have no desire to get back into that situation. I hope this pans out because the first thing I'm doing is ordering up a kit of two 3,000mAh ZeroLemon batteries & quick charger for these! I go through batteries like crazy (especially when I've got limited coverage) so not having changeable batteries has been the bane of my existence the last couple of years.


I'll be honest that I have not had a whit of trouble with reception on my S4. I had a Moto Droid 3 before this (3G, but the voice reception should be the same) and it was not one iota better than the S4. I was just hypothesizing based on what others around here suggest.

Totally agree with you about sealed batteries.

And, btw, I made my chice based on your exact logic. My Moto D3 received such poor support from the OEM (basically declared EOL and with no software updates after it was out for only fou months) and was so buggy that I will never buy another Moto, google ownership notwithstanding.

I liked the HTC but I absolutely had to have a removable battery.
 
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I'll be honest that I have not had a whit of trouble with reception on my S4. I had a Moto Droid 3 before this (3G, but the voice reception should be the same) and it was not one iota better than the S4. I was just hypothesizing based on what others around here suggest.

Totally agree with you about sealed batteries.

And, btw, I made my chice based on your exact logic. My Moto D3 received such poor support from the OEM (basically declared EOL and with no software updates after it was out for only fou months) and was so buggy that I will never buy another Moto, google ownership notwithstanding.

I liked the HTC but I absolutely had to have a removable battery.

We had HTC Evo 4G's and LOVED those phones and they had a removable battery. Why HTC went away from that is beyond me. At the time they claimed that they could get higher capacity in the device but I think that Samsung and Moto have proven you can have just as high of capacity while allowing the end-user to change out batteries. The HTC Evo LTE was the first phone I've ever owned with a sealed battery (even though I bagged on my iPhone buddies for that as one of many reasons) and I will never do it again. We gave it a shot and it was teh suxxors.
 
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To the OP: If VZW is anything like AT&T, you have to show them you are not afraid to take your business elsewhere. I had a mobile family plan with 4 lines (my wife and I + 2 kids), AWA two landlines with them. I had been complaining for years about 1-bar (or NO bar) reception at home, as had many of my neighbors. When the kids got married, we carried them for awhile and then dropped them (at the same time) from the family plan. AT&T inquired if there was anything they could do, but I didn't know about the extenders (AKA, microCell or femtocell) at the time. I just told them to fix their network or I was seriously considering Verizon or Sprint when our contract was up (I didn't bother mentioning that it wasn't a service protest, but new hubby was picking up the tab :)). Shortly after, my broadband/TV provider offered a sweet deal for bundling my landlines (more services at less cost). So I switched immediately. Shortly after that, AT&T corporate sent me a letter acknowledging the issue, apologizing, and instructing me to take the letter to my local AT&T store and redeem it for a free microCell.

It's all about money and customerr retention
 
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To the OP: If VZW is anything like AT&T, you have to show them you are not afraid to take your business elsewhere. I had a mobile family plan with 4 lines (my wife and I + 2 kids), AWA two landlines with them. I had been complaining for years about 1-bar (or NO bar) reception at home, as had many of my neighbors. When the kids got married, we carried them for awhile and then dropped them (at the same time) from the family plan. AT&T inquired if there was anything they could do, but I didn't know about the extenders (AKA, microCell or femtocell) at the time. I just told them to fix their network or I was seriously considering Verizon or Sprint when our contract was up (I didn't bother mentioning that it wasn't a service protest, but new hubby was picking up the tab :)). Shortly after, my broadband/TV provider offered a sweet deal for bundling my landlines (more services at less cost). So I switched immediately. Shortly after that, AT&T corporate sent me a letter acknowledging the issue, apologizing, and instructing me to take the letter to my local AT&T store and redeem it for a free microCell.

It's all about money and customerr retention
 
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