Prepaid Samsung Will Not Activate and Roaming No Help From Verizon

[jennlk]

I got a Samsung J1 at walmart along with a 45 dollar card and I cannot get this thing to work. I went through the process of activating it based on the user manual. After the phone rebooted I keep getting a pop up saying that the activation was not complete and to contact customer service. Well the phone is constantly roaming so when I make calls I get that recording that directs you to buy 15 minutes of roaming minutes. I did that and finally got a rep on the phone only to have her not help me at all. She told me that the prepaid phones have inferior signal to contract phones because there are less towers and that to get the phone to finish the activation process I needed to go someplace with a better signal and keep restarting the phone until it worked. Or go to Verizon and get help. Well my fiancé did that and all they told him to do was enter #66 something and enter the code on the prepaid card or the phone I really don't know but after doing what they told him to do it STILL does not work.

If the phone is going to roam in my location then fine I will add extra money to my account to pay roaming fees but it seems like this phone will not even activate. We have driven around town with it and tried and still I get the pop up telling me that I need to contact customer service because the activation was incomplete.

I set up a my Verizon account and it clearly shows my phone and my 45 dollar plan.

I also got a pop up once telling me the sim card is not recognized or something to that effect and that was after I tried to do a different method of activation by typing the code I got online.

Can someone PLEASE give me some clue and to what the heck to do. I personally would have stayed at Verizon until they resolved my issue but my fiancé waited a long time and did not have time to wait around he had things to do.

If I need to go back I will. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could please help me.

 

[NB73]

Sounds like a strange issue that is being made worse by you being lied to by Verizon staff. Prepaid phones are exactly the same as contract phones, because the phone has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever contract you are on, it's the SIM card. They use the exact same cell towers as everything else, so the Verizon rep is attempting to cheat you into a contract.

By the sounds of it (and this is a guess based on what you've said), you live in an area where there aren't that many Verizon celltowers. The fact that your phone says it is roaming might mean that there is another provider's celltower pretty close by - or maybe you live close to, for example, the Canadian border, and the phone is picking up one of their towers near you. Your phone is trying to work - it's pinging around, looking for a tower to talk to. The strength of the signal for the Verizon tower isn't strong enough to work properly (which is why your activation is not completing) and it's trying to be helpful by asking you if you want to roam onto this other network.

A couple of things you could do: 1. Go onto Verizon's website and check their coverage for your area. If they don't cover you, AT&T might, so you may have to change providers. 2. Take the phone back to Walmart to see if they have any technicians that can take a look for you. Verizon clearly can't be trusted to help you out without trying to push you onto another contract, so leave them out of it. Also, it's always quicker and easier for someone who knows what they're doing to physically have the problem phone in their hands while trying to fix the problem. They might not be able to fix it, but there's a far better chance that they'll be able to properly identify whether it's the phone, SIM card, coverage or user that is at fault. Good luck!