VILLA HILLS, Ky. — Some Tri-State Verizon customers say their phone service was living up to the carrier's "reliable" reputation up until three weeks ago when service plummeted to spotty at best.
"Suddenly the voice communications became very distorted," Elaine Duras said. "It was robotic. It was like underwater and it was on either side so I could sound that way to a caller and a caller could sound that way to me and then the sound would just disappear."
The Villa Hills grandmother said the only way she can have a phone conversation is if she goes outside on her deck, and the issue has become so routine she now has a "talking chair" — positioned in the one spot she can maintain a signal.
It didn't take long for Duras to discover some of her neighbors were dealing with the same issues. She said while she was outside on the phone, she noticed they were too.
"Everybody has a 'talking chair' and we all have to sit outside and we take our phones and we hold it to the north and that's the only way you can get the most reliable signal," Duras said.
"There are at least several houses in (Villa Hills) who are having major issues which we're trying to get resolved," Duras's neighbor Sally Raash said in a Nextdoor post. It's way past being annoying and inconvenient. There are times the phones are not able to be used. You cannot be heard on a call and the other party is often garbled and unable to be heard also. I worry about trying to make an emergency call under those circumstances."
"I have a problem with Verizon Wireless at my house in West Fort Wright. Seem to be in a very low reception area. I have to use WiFi calling," one Nextdoor user said in reply to Raash's post.
Duras said she and her neighbors determined the fault to lie with Verizon after other neighbors with different carriers reported no service issues. Several of them have been back and forth with Verizon looking for answers, she said.
"(Sally Raash) was the first one to call it in and they were being told there was probably an issue with the tower that would be affecting all cell service in this area," Duras said. "And the neighbor behind us was also saying that they were saying it was a tower thing and they would provide a booster."
Duras was the third person to call, she said. A customer service representative told her they weren't sure what the problem was but that they were going to "escalate her complaint" because they noticed a "red flag" in the areas where there were towers, she said.
"To have something as big as this just disappear...voice communicating, which is the reason the phone was invented — just voice communications, before any other technology existed — that that would be the last thing to go, and they would at least have an understanding of why that is," Duras said. "So, I am befuddled."
The problem seems to extend across the Ohio River.
"We're having the same issues in our neighborhood in Anderson Township — just in the last few weeks," Peg Browning Fenner said. "I've had three conversations with Verizon, but no change in our signal strength yet."
Verizon did however put in a work order to look into what is going on in her area, Browning Fenner said
"My daughter lives in Anderson Township and I’ve been having that problem talking with her in the last couple weeks," Linda Reiter said. "But we never dreamed it was a tower or that it was that vast of a problem. I hope people stay on them to fix it."
More Verizon customers from Southwest Ohio also shared their frustrations.
"I have to walk around my house holding my phone to hear a conversation. My neighbor also has the same issue," said Beth Thorne-McKenzie, who lives just outside Georgetown.
Adams County resident Cheryl Longacre said she's been dealing with service issues since May.
"They sent a text to me stating they would be upgrading to provide better service. I've spent countless hours on the phone with techs, which are awful. Finally, I was told that the upgrade caused our home wifi equipment to be obsolete. I just purchased a new jetpack, the battery loses power quickly and no one can help," she said.
WCPO reached out to Verizon for comment. Andy Choi, head of communications for Verizon's consumer group Great Lakes market, shared a statement.
"We are upgrading our network in the Villa Hills area to make sure our customers in the area continue to have the excellent experience they've come to expect from Verizon. We’re notifying customers in the spirit of transparency, because we know our customers rely on the Verizon network."
By the end of the day Thursday, Choi did not respond to inquiries into whether those network upgrades are impacting current services or when upgrades should be completed.
Duras said she doesn't think Verizon is doing enough to help so, with fingers crossed sitting in her "talking chair," she's going to keep calling until they offer a solution.
"I feel like I'm doing their advertising for them but maybe not in the best way because I'm constantly saying 'Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?'" said Duras. "But I haven't seen those ads on TV lately so maybe there is an issue."
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