Questionable Verizon EVDO Support

Once you’ve had a taste of EVDO (presently offered only by Verizon and Sprint), it’s hard to imagine not having it. Like cell service, you quickly forget what it was like not to be online always everywhere. (It’s a great example of our rising “baseline” standard of living).

Recently, I switched to an embedded EVDO card on a new laptop (running Windows for reasons beyond the scope of this blog entry). It worked for a couple of days, and then I started getting mysterious “error 913” messages when trying to connect. After trying all the solutions that seemed obvious to me, I contacted Verizon Wireless Tech Support as suggested by the error message, which otherwise provided no information about error 913.

Perhaps surprisingly, Verizon Wireless Tech Support didn’t really know what error 913 was either. After a few minutes, I was escalated to second level tech support. They had me reboot. Then they had me reinstall the card controller software. The second-level tech support person put me on hold to speak with whatever higher level tech support she had access to. Then they had me delete the EVDO connection from the dial-up networking control panel and re-create it. None of these things worked. So she said I should just return the laptop to the store and get a new one.

It was perhaps the best example of the three “R’s” of Windows Tech Support I had ever experienced: reboot, reinstall, replace. This may perhaps be the only cost effective way of providing such support.

I persisted, though, as I was pretty sure there wasn’t a hardware issue given that all the diagnostics were coming up without error. I would rather not return a perfectly good laptop just because we couldn’t figure it out. I was also suspicious because I had seen several instances of precisely this problem popping up in message boards, and the tech support person herself told me that she had recently been unable to solve the same problem with another customer. It just didn’t have the symptomology of broken hardware.

After a few more minutes of speculating about why this might happen, the tech support person said she had an idea, and asked me to try to reconnect. Since then, it has worked perfectly.

As I understand the problem, my account was enabled for unlimited “roaming” EVDO access, but did not actually have authorization for “non-roaming” (i.e., within the network) access. Thus the connection was rejected.

There are several things wrong with this picture. Why didn’t the EVDO access manager software provide an error message that actually indicated that the connection was refused for lack of authorization? Why didn’t anyone at Verizon know what error 913 was? Shouldn’t Verizon have a checklist for such issues that includes “check to see if the subscriber is properly signed up”? (For that matter, why did my account spontaneously lose non-roaming access?) These are just a few questions that come to mind.

I hate to beat on Verizon, since I’ve done it three times before, but it’s almost like they’re just asking for it. Maybe it’s time they rethink their organizational strategy.

10 comments

  1. Andrew Jan 28

    I use the 1xRTT support (144Kbps) on my cell phone via Bluetooth and it’s reasonably nice and useful. If I’m not mistaken these EvDO cards are just USB serial thingies so they should work with Linux, pppd, and friends no big deal, right?

    Not that I have any reason to know as I can in no way afford EvDO service. :-/

  2. Adam Rosi-Kessel Jan 28

    The reason the laptop runs Windows is unrelated to EVDO. I have used 1xRTT before on Linux through my cell phone — first on the v710 and then on my “LG the V.” The laptop needs to be a Windows machine for other reasons. In any event, as became apparent, EVDO not working was entirely Verizon’s fault.

  3. Anonymous Jan 28

    We’ve had nothing but bad experiences with Verizon. Their DSL service in particular never worked reliably (by which I mean that an SSH connection will stay up for between 30 seconds and 5 minutes), and when we finally switched to another DSL ISP (on a different line), and cancelled the Verizon service, they managed to instead cut off their competitor’s service and leave theirs on.

  4. Anonymous Jan 28

    I recently started using Sprint’s EVDO service on my laptop (which i access through my cell phone)and so far things have been working pretty well. I’ve called tech support once and while they couldn’t help me with my problem at the time, they were surprisingly persistent days later about calling back and leaving messages to ask if I was still having the same issue(which I’d already fixed by spending *a lot* of time with google). Still, it was nice for them to check. I’ve heard horror stories about Sprint’s customer service so they may have been especially nice because I’m a new customer (with the right to cancel service in 30 days without penalty) but i guess the niceness works because I have been pretty happy with them so far.

  5. may Jan 28

    I recently started using Sprint’s EVDO service on my laptop (which i access through my cell phone)and so far things have been working pretty well. I’ve called tech support once and while they couldn’t help me with my problem at the time, they were surprisingly persistent days later about calling back and leaving messages to ask if I was still having the same issue(which I’d already fixed by spending *a lot* of time with google). Still, it was nice for them to check. I’ve heard horror stories about Sprint’s customer service so they may have been especially nice because I’m a new customer (with the right to cancel service in 30 days without penalty) but i guess the niceness works because I have been pretty happy with them so far.

  6. Tom Macfarlan Jun 20

    I was just in the debacle that is Verizon Support and was able to cut my problem time down by doing the following:

    1) Quoted this thread
    2) Requested to the level 1 support guy to speak with a level 3 support guy

    The level 3 guy fixed it instantly. When I asked him what I can tell the level 1 guy to get it fixed faster, he said to quote the following:

    “Remove the national access roaming and add it back again.”

    If this fixes your problem, be sure to get a case number and call your Verizon Rep! This is a fairly common problem, and it’s a problem with Verizon’s internal system! It’s not going to be fixed by talking to tech support.

  7. David T Jul 14

    Most companies tech support is an after-thought and considered a liability.

  8. Anonymous Dec 27

    DSL service is Verizon Landline…not Verizon Wireless. Also the error 913 is a windows error. It can be a problem on verizons side or it could be a username/password problem or a low signal issue

  9. adam Dec 28

    Anonymous: actually, if you read the entry, it should be clear that it was a Verizon problem.

  10. Jonathan Nov 25

    Actually it is not an error related to only windows, I’ve encountered it on Macs as well and several forums also. So its not a native issue to windows but something related to the software provided and the Verizon network.

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