Daughter moved from Arkansas to Wyoming. Verizon cell phone - she can only receive calls, not initiate them. Is there anything that would cause this?
Is she in a particularly remote area? Is it prepaid or contract service? Does she have Wi-Fi service?
Dubois Wyoming. Verizon contract.
Verizon would be the best ones to answer that question. 800-922-0204
But she needs Verizon to call her! No outgoing calls, remember.
I want to believe it has something to do with Verizon ending support for CDMA-only phones. (Is the phone older? Does it do LTE?) But that’s not until 2020. OTOH, Verizon stopped activation of such phones July 1st, which might be within the time range of the problem starting. OTOOH, that doesn’t seem like a plausible explanation.
I’m thinking a phone setting got screwed up. She needs to go through settings and look for anything set to a restricted type of connection/signal type.
She can call it from *any *phone.
Dollars to donuts that she’s one of those modern people who sees no point in having any sort of backup–i.e, no landline.
Probably no homing pigeons or semaphore flags either. Kids today.
Y’know, the last time I bought a doughnut I think it cost a dollar (plus tax).
“Dollars to doughnuts” is one of those expressions that has lost its meaning over the years. These days it would mean an even bet!
OP—can you call Verizon for her if no outgoing calls and no landline?
And she doesn’t know anybody with any kind of a working phone?
Nothing modern about not having a backup. That’s a throwback to the turn the crank and ask Sarah to connect you days.
This data is current from the Verizon the site. My knowledge of it whether it is useful anymore is several years out of date. Still free to try…
Verizon Preferred Roaming List Update
To complete the Preferred Roaming List update:
Call *228 from your home coverage area.
When prompted, select 2 to update your phone’s preferred roaming list. (This process may take up to 2 minutes.)
Once completed, a confirmation message will be played, and a message will display on the phone’s screen.
n.b. - home coverage area would be where the phone ‘lives’ now
Edit - If a star [ * ] call wont go through then its time for a trip to the nearest Verizon store.
Maybe a neighbor has ham radio. Jeez people. Verizon will not talk to someone else about her account. They are kinda ass-y that way. She needs to go to a Verizon store or find a phone she can use.
ETA ninja’ed.
Just looked at a topo of Dubois and learned it is mountainous. Cell coverage in an area such as that is going to be dependant on which carrier’s tower is in your LOS at a given time. Sometimes that means a either choosing a carrier that seems poorly rated for your area, choosing between work versus home coverage, or learning to cope with coverage zones. All of those decisions require experience in the area.
The capabilities of the device will certainly play a role but that is only due to what the LOS towers are providing.
Gorram it
Was going to edit my last post to mention that access to reliable WiFi might ameliorate most of those issues. Then realized that if the device in question can utilize WiFi it might have it’s version of ‘Use Wireless Internet Connections for Calls’ enabled.
So check for that.
Enough posts from me this year
I live in a remote area. Our cell coverage is spotty on a good day. We do have reliable wifi. Generally we use one the free messaging apps to text amongst outselves. We let the landline go a few years ago.
I don’t even try to call people from my house. Email or messaging is the only way it’s reliable.
I am waiting for them to ask me if they can put a cell tower in my yard. Yes, yes you can.
I may be over simplifying this, but the one thing that came to mind just happened to my young daughter, who is new to the cell phone world. When we went on vacation, (out of our local area code), she couldn’t make calls to anyone. It turned out that she had not entered the area code into any of her contacts. Once she put in the area code, it worked fine.
It’s a shot in the dark, but it would be easy to check.
This falls into user error category. But I would guess this might be the possible answer.
seal_cleaner can call their daughter and then add Verizon onto a 3-way call. Almost every cell phone plan in the US includes 3-way calling at no extra charge.
Yea, well anything is possible. She could go online and contact Verizon. She could borrow her roommates phone. She could use a phone at work. Go next door. But no she told her parents in another state. Maybe she was just being willful and didn’t call in a timely manner, so they called her. Who knows?
ETA My kids have used the excuse of phone malfunction or dead battery.