Have been using a Verizon jetpack on a pay-as-you-go plan for about 5 years no problem and use it for camping only in the summer. Has always been very reliable except for spotty reception on the Oregon coast depending on location.We're currently in Welches OR, near Mt. Hood for about 2 weeks. Previous to being here, we were up in Chehalis WA and the mifi worked great there. First couple of days here in Welches, the Verizon worked great. Then it stopped working. Contacted Verizon and they could not figure it out and said they would "escalate" it. 3 days later, we did not hear back. Another call to Verizon and they said it might be the SIM card so we drove an hour to a Verizon store to get one. Did not help. The guy at the Verizon store said if that doesn't help, it's likely the jetpack. Verizon said a new one would be $150 and that there's no guarantee that would fix the issue.But the weird thing is, for the past 5 days, it works fine for 2-3 hours in the morning and then stops working at the same time each day, about 10 am. Why would it do that?? According to Verizon, it's not the plan we're on and we have plenty of gigs left.If it works for a couple of hours each day at the same time each day, how could it be a hardware issue at our end? We also have a nice brand new laptop. We tried walking around the CG with the jetpack & laptop and there's no difference.Am at the CG clubhouse at the moment and being "forced" to use the usual substandard CG wifi. :E Help!

probably jetpack. get to verizon and try one of theirs or find a neigbor who has one working. process of elimination

or there could be ongoing maintenance at the tower you're connected to. a buddy works for Sprint and tells me that it's not unusual for towers to be down for maintenance, occasionally for a few days.

edbehnke wrote:probably jetpack. get to verizon and try one of theirs or find a neigbor who has one working. process of eliminationThat's what we wondered at first but why does it go down the same time each day and work only for the same duration?

rk911 wrote:or there could be ongoing maintenance at the tower you're connected to. a buddy works for Sprint and tells me that it's not unusual for towers to be down for maintenance, occasionally for a few days.Never thought of that. What's annoying is that we're on our annual 3-week vacation and we can't survive in a CG without the internet... DW has been doing some important office work and needs the internet to view and edit documents. I'm retired and "need" the internet for entertainment. Even if it could be fixed, we'll be back home by then. At least CG wifi is available.

Several things:1. It could be a signal problem due to atmospheric conditions including rising sun. 2. Get a cell booster to help prevent future problems and provide better signals. Since it's "important" get a good one with 4G capability.3. CG Wifi is rarely secure - be careful as anyone can use a app to see and access your computer. And see if a neighbor has a cell booster that you can try (in their rig perhaps) to help isolate the problem.

Verizon mifi issue. Verizon of no help. | Good Sam Community

edatlanta
Explorer
Aug 22, 2019
Two days ago we had a pretty strong thunderstorm passed through here and the Verizon tower that serves my area was right in the middle of it. During the storm passage one of my 3 Jetpacks quit working or should I say slowed way down. I looked at it and it was roaming on 3G and AT&T. All three of my Jetpacks are in the same area about 8-10' apart and the other two were operating normally on Verizon 4G LTE. I rebooted it and even took the battery out and rebooted with no change. It booted back up to AT&T 3G and 1 bar. AT&T does have very poor coverage in this area, but why did this one Jetpack switch to AT&T?

I went into the configuration settings and looked at the network options and sure enough it was set to AT&T. I changed it to Verizon and now it is working normally again.

On another note I have an Amazon Fire Stick. The first time I used it after the Jetpack issue I noted the captioning was in Russian. I had to change that back to English.

Electronics? Go Figure!
Neil_Citro
Explorer
Aug 21, 2019
If you are on a prepaid plan, they are subject to deprioritization. This means that all the other Verizon customers in the area go ahead of you. That said I would think it should work, just be extremely slow. When you say it "Does not work" what does that mean? Are you failing to connect, does the display (or status page) show now service, or are you just not getting any internet? Try a speed test when it is "not working" and see if you get anything at all. If so that would suggest everything is working, you are just depriortized. If your phones are Verizon post paid and working correctly, that would rule out any kind of tower issue and again lean towards depriortization being the issue.
jcpainter
Explorer
Aug 21, 2019
1. By "pay as you go", do you mean a pre-paid plan? All pre-paid plans are deprioritized behind post-paid plans.

2. You never have identified the model of your new hotspot. Look at your online account and it will tell you if you can't tell from your sales receipt.

3. Have you gone to the online diagnostic page and compared your signals when it's good and when it's bad like wa8yxm recommended?

If you will give specific answers to these questions, some of us may be able to help you more.
JiminDenver
Explorer II
Aug 21, 2019
I hope that it is working for you now.if not it could be your plan. You said that you were on a pay as you go plan? Often those plans do not come with all the bells and whistles of a post paid plan. One of those is priority on the tower. Traffic increases from mid morning on and prepaid subscribers get taken care of before you. I use to see it when I had both a Cricket phone and a post paid AT&T account.

Part of it can be just using Verizon. Big red has the biggest footprint and twice as many users as AT&T. They may have not updated the tower/s since the local number of users grew and it becomes overloaded. You can see this in dramatic fashion during the big tent even in Quartzsite. I still have all four carriers and only AT&T stayed strong the three years that I have been there.
rk911
Explorer
Aug 01, 2019
with each update it sounds more and more like a tower issue.
myredracer
Explorer II
Aug 01, 2019
Just updating...

It starting working mid-day yesterday and has been working non-stop since. No idea why but maybe Verizon did actually fix it? I guess we'll see over the next few days.
2oldman
Explorer II
Jul 30, 2019
Verizon is showing a good-faith effort, but likely they have no clue either.
wa8yxm
Explorer III
Jul 30, 2019
Again I will say as others have it may be a signal issue. Log into the device's diagnostic page and pull up the signal meter

And the tower gets busier during the day as well.
Bill_Satellite
Explorer II
Jul 30, 2019
I would take it to the Verizon store during the period that it is not working and make sure they can get the problem resolved.
myredracer
Explorer II
Jul 30, 2019
OMG. It started working again just before 9 pm. This now seems to be a pattern. We are connected to the jetpack on 3 devices but we lose connection to the internet in the morning around 10 am and then it comes back in the evening. Has been the same for going on a week.

It's as if other users are on the internet during the day and we get bumped to the bottom of the access list. Is this even possible? The CG office told us today they've been having problems with their wifi which is provided by Wave. Could this be related?? They did say though that Verizon has been the best service at this location.

We tried the jetpack in a town about 20 miles away and it didn't work.

Not sure why Verizon can't figure this out.

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Verizon mifi issue. Verizon of no help.

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