Verizon Wireless Usage Controls, Parental Controls, Should Be Called USELESS Controls Nationwide

I have had Verizon since February 2007. Most of my dealings with Verizon had been good (even helpful) until recently. I have had problems with my teenage son and his cell phone usage. I tried switching him to Cricket but the unlimited nature exacerbated the problem, which turned out to be a pedophile in Canada.

When I turned off the phone to try to stop the pedophile's influence, my son became suicidal. All of his counselors and psychiatrists agree that he needs his cell phone to talk to friends and family (he became susceptible to the pedophile due to feeling socially isolated after our recent move to a new state) and strongly encouraged me to find a way for him to have it back while still keeping him safe.

I talked to Verizon and they told me about the new Usage Controls. I thought I had a solution, so I swapped phones with him and sent him to be with family in our old home state. I then jumped online to set up all the glorious Usage Controls.

I naively trusted what the CSR told me and did not take the hours required to read all the fine-print (you know, the difference between what is advertised block communicates with unwanted numbers - and what is actual). Here is, sadly, what I have discovered the hard way:

-- Minutes/Messages Allowance You can set this but it means nothing. Apparently all that happens is that warning text messages will be sent to the account owner's phone but they will not be restricted from going over on their minutes or text messages.

-- Time Restrictions These only work for texting and downloading. You cannot restrict voice. Hello?!?! As a parent why would I only want to block texting?

-- Blocked Numbers I went through the trouble of going through and adding every number (especially the pedophile in Canada) to the blocked numbers. To my utter horror, I discovered this feature ONLY blocks that number from calling my son. It DOES NOT block my son from calling that number. So I now have the privilege of paying $141 in long distance charges for my son to talk to the pedophile in Canada despite it being a BLOCKED NUMBER.

-- Trusted Numbers To add insult to injury, you can only designate Verizon phone numbers on the account as trusted numbers. Since my phone is on a different carrier, I couldn't take myself out of the restrictions. Oh yeah, all those lovely notifications (item 1 above) of when my son was going over his minutes and texts were sent to his phone (used to be my phone). I couldn't get them set up to go to my phone since I wasn't on Verizon. Now that was helpful! NOT!!!

So, when I had the account suspended once I realized all of the above, my son attempted suicide again and almost succeeded!

ANOTHER ISSUE - When I swapped phones, I tried to download my backed-up numbers. There was a problem and I could not get the back-up page to load properly (I don't have this problem with any website). I opened a ticket with Verizon on this matter on June 13, 2009.

After a week, I called and the CSR told me they could not access that third-party ticketing system. I posed the question to her of whether Verizon was really so inept that they actually had a third-party handling their website yet had no way to monitor whether they were actually handling support issues. Bless her heart, she became flustered and accidentally said the ticket was unassigned. This means she lied and that she could see the ticket but no one was working on it.

In a subsequent call to follow-up on this issue, one of the agents laughed at me and asked me for the password to my account. I was shocked and told her she had no right to ask me that. She insisted she did. I insisted on speaking with her supervisor, and I did talk to someone who purported to be her supervisor (he was MUCH nicer and seemed to be trying to resolve the matter), though I could not verify he actually was. Of course, I did not get to speak to an actual tech and the matter was not resolved. To date, I have not received one single call on the matter and it is NOT resolved.

I believe Verizon intentionally makes it so you cannot control the voice, text and data usage on phones on your account. They count on overages and have no interest in providing actual effective controls so we parents can protect our children.

There it is.I can't wait to hear what Bikebryan (or one of the other VZW non-employees) have to say. Let the snide remarks begin

Smarty McPants
Denver, Colorado
U.S.A.

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