Too bad Sprint doesn't have their act together yet. This would be a great opportunity to snap up some disgruntled Alltel customers Verizon is going to kick to the curb.

I like that the phone companies are slowly reverting back into monopolies.

Wait...did I say "like"?

My company used to be on Alltel and we're apparently benefitting from the switch to verizon. They were finally able to register the sales reps with local numbers to their state and I even scored a Blackberry Curve somewhere in the deal.

I know there are small numbers of people who have experienced some change as far as the service on their phones. Everything should have stayed exactly the same as far as how your phone works. Try updating your phone with *228 option 2, as many times that can resolve your service issues.

As far as your contracts go, once you are within 4 months or less you are eligible for new phones at a discount or free: not full price. As far as your old Alltel plan goes, even when your contract is up you don't have to change. Even if you upgrade phones and go with a new 2 year contract, almost any verizon phone that you can get won't require you changing from your grandfathered plan.

If this doesn't answer your questions, call Verizon. The majority of reps you will speak with concerning your account will be previous Alltel reps.

I was also with Alltel and got caught in the switch, and wasn't especially happy about it. However, I received a letter from Verizon telling me that if I didn't want to stay with them, I could leave with no fee's. I went to my local Verizon store to check things out, and was happily suprised when the person I was talking with told me that I decided to stay, I could upgrade my phone for $19 and actually get a better plan than the one I was on, for $50 a month less.

Instead of all the hassell of researching other companies, I now have a smartphone and a better plan, all for less money. Had a few minor glitches at the very start, but found the customer service to be just as good as Altell had been.

Isn't AllTell the one that would mock the other wireless companies in their commercials?

If so, I am amused they got bought out by one of the big guys.

@Jesse: I went to Alltel to escape Sprint. Going back to Sprint is not an option. Ever.

I'm like the OP, wondering how my Alltel service is going to be impacted. I'm getting conflicting information from Alltel and Verizon, and it's the information from Verizon that reeks of typical wireless company shifting promises. Luckily, I've refused to go back under a contract.

I was an Alltel customer for years and a little nervous about the transition, but I've had no problems so far. I even got a 20% discount on my bill since the university I work for has a deal with Verizon.

I've had piss poor customer service with Sprint and ATT. I've never had a single issue with Verizon. Plus the fact that their network totally kicks ass compared to every other national cell company I will never switch.

My only major issue is their absolutely HORRIBLE UI they make you use.

I am patiently waiting for either the Pre or Android to come to Verizon so I can enjoy mobile web and apps :)

Sprint sucks, Verizon sucks. Verizon bought Alltel and made them suck. Sprint bought Nextel and made them suck worse than they already did before running them completely out of business. Jeez, when my contract is up I swear I'm getting a minute phone for real. Yeah they're phones aren't as nice but I know a lot of people that have them and none of them have ever dropped a call. Then again, didn't Verizon just buy Virgin Mobile? WTF?

Verizon is based where I live. About four miles up the road, in fact.

I dropped them for all the bad reasons cited.

Somehow, I never could get them to understand that I needed to be able to use my cell phone while at my house on a consistent basis without dropping calls.

Amazingly, for a carrier that touts widely "the best coverage" I found several dead spots around the area.

Went to ATT and the original IPhone, and have yet to have a LOS or find a dead zone.

Leaving Verizon FTW!

@Smashville: I know, I always say "like" when I really mean "love".

@Jesse: Yeah, Sprint lost about 1 million customers at the last report.

@JustinSane07: Chad doesn't seem so cool now, does he?

I'm a former Alltel customer currently being held hostage by Verizon. My signal strength at my house using the same phone dropped from 5 bars to 1 as soon as the switchover happened, and I have problems with completing calls and text messages. I used to take quick snapshots and e-mail them to myself, but I've had to give that up now as I don't have a good enough signal to send a picture.

I started to re-up with Alltel before the switchover to lock in the great plan I had with them, but I hesitated since I knew of others in my neighborhood who had problems with Verizon coverage in this location. Now I'm glad I'm not locked into a contract. As soon as I can decide whether I want an iPhone, the Pre or a Blackberry, I'm gone.

READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE If any of the prices change there should be out. or if the service changes there should be a clause that will work . i cannot remember what it was but I used a clause in an AT&T contract to get out of it. good luck

Somehwere.. Allhell has.. a good reputation for customer service?

Oh my.. I do believe.. yes, that's the vapors.

I moved last year and had to get out of an AT&T contract because we had NO service where our new town was. They were nice and we had no problems canceling or getting socked with an ETF.(Yes I liked AT&T, was with them 6 years) Had to go with Alltel because they had just put a tower in and they were the ONLY provider to cover our are. Now we have Verizon.

I haven't really noticed any changes in our service, but maybe a few lost text messages, but that happened occasionally before. Haven't noticed a loss of service, either. I'm crossing my fingers that everything stays like it is.

I don't remember a letter saying we could get out of our contract, only that when our current contract was up we would have to switch to Verizon phones and plans. I'll see next year, if we still live here.

Why do they think they will be forced to buy new phones at full price at the end of the year? I would be very surprised if this was the case. As far as I know, you can stay in your Alltel plan as long as you want, but if you wish to upgrade at some point, that is when you would have to switch to a Verizon plan.

I can only speak from what the Verizon and Alltel reps at my job have told me, however.

Anyway, I always find stories of why people switched carriers interesting, because it seems everyone always has completely opposite experiences. Personally, I switched FROM Alltel to Verizon a few years back for the same reason the OP switched from Verizon to Alltel. On Alltel I even had phone calls and text messages end up going to complete strangers (and I was using the numbers stored in my contacts, not dialing them manually!).

Sorry, but I think the OP's a bit confused.

"I am especially annoyed that it seems like we will have to get new cell phones at the end of the year, and that we'll have to pay full price for them." That's not true.

"Not to mention, our service has actually gotten worse since the transition - all sorts of dropped calls, text messages that never reach friends, and so on."
That's not true either; Alltel's network is still in place.

I'm not suggesting he's lying by any means; but I am saying these things are a negative placebo effect; he'd had bad experiences with Verizon before, now his provider is bought out by Verizon, therefore bad things are happening.

I am a former Alltel customer myself, and there's an odd story behind that.

Years ago I'd been an AT&T Wireless customer, out of Litchfield county, Connecticut. When Cingular absorbed AT&T Wireless in 2005 (IIRC), the CT attorney general forced both companies to sell off CT accounts, and Alltel bought them.

At the time I wasn't happy, since it meant I had to buy a new phone (my AT&T was GSM but Alltel used CDMA). Alltel, moreover, had ZERO antennas of its own in CT which meant that I would be "roaming" all the time. It turns out that it was only Litchfield county customers who'd been forced into this inexplicable deal by the attorney general. (Apparently, customers in other CT counties complained and were removed from the deal ... but not us.) Eventually I got assurances that I would not be charged "roaming" fees while I was in the northeastern US, and it turned out this was the case.

At any rate, we Alltel customers in Litchfield county were essentially left hanging by Alltel. They had just one retail location in Torrington, they never installed any antennas of their own in CT, and never developed business anywhere else in the northeastern US (that I ever knew about anyway). It was a ridiculous and incomprehensible situation.

Last year, around the time that I'd heard Verizon was talking with Alltel about a merger, I got a letter telling me that Alltel had sold my account to Verizon. (This was in advance of, and independent from, the merger talks.) They offered money toward a new phone if I wanted one, and also offered time window to terminate my contract early, for free. Verizon already had a presence in CT, unlike Alltel which never seemed to have wanted to do business here at all (I remain perplexed as to why Alltel bought the old AT&T Wireless accounts from CT in the first place).

In short, I wound up doing business with a company that actually WANTED my business. The people at the local Verizon store were helpful, friendly, and got me set up with new phones. Compared to my Alltel experience, I can't really find anything to complain about. I know Verizon isn't well-regarded here ... but honestly, they've done right by me so far.

I've been an Alltel customer for as long as I've had a cellphone (2002ish?). Always had acceptable service provided by them. And my service has not been any different since the switch. If I had not gotten so many mail notices/emails that Alltel was switching over to Verizon, I personally would have had no idea.

I also recall getting mail notices as far back as January describing how to leave your contract early if you did not want to stay with Verizon, but I could be mistaken on that.

Either way, I agree with one of the above comments, seems like the OP is correlating issues implying causation.

@pecan 3.14159265: Verizon/Alltel should have done one last commercial.

This was my favorite:

@undefined:

Actually, internally, they did do Chad meeting the "can you hear me now" guy videos, for employees eyes only. :)

Can we get back to real stories on this site?

I was a Verizon customer for several years and didn't have any major issues with them. Their customer service was average, but things always got taken care of. I will say that I didn't like all of the weird hoops I had to jump through to get customer service in one of their stores though (signing in, taking a number, waiting at an empty counter for someone to show up).

After moving to another state we switched to Alltel because they had a better deal and I had heard their customer service was very good (which has turned out to be true so far).

I'm not too sure what we'll do when the contract is up, but the wife has mentioned the iPhone a few times so that may narrow down the choices a bit :)

I've been a AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T customer now for 10 years. Not because I like them, but because I'm use to their crap.

I'm of the mindset that all wireless companies suck. I don't switch because I really don't want have to learn about the shortcomings of Sprint or Verizon after figuring out all of AT&T's (mainly where the deadzones are).

@Sarcastichobbes: ... you DO realise they have both Windows Mobile AND Blackberry choices at Verizon, right? Both do mobile web just fine, and to be honest if you need an App Store type deal to work with smartphone programs you're better off with a normal phone -.-

I don't blame this customer one bit; Verizon has had awful customer service for me. And not just once; it seems like every time I asked them to fix something, they would screw something else up.

Of course, Alltel doesn't exactly have a stellar customer service reputation for me, either.

The good thing is that I have family on Alltel, and so (eventually) they will not use up minutes on my plan.

@Hil-fish: Me too. When it's bed time for me and my fiance, I always say "Goodnight honey, I like you...", and then we spoon, but with an inch or two of open-air in between us.

@JustinSane07: Eh. Management wanted to be bought out--there was a big windfall to be reaped. So, marketing made fun of the other players, just so Alltel could gain a larger market share in order for its value to be enhanced so that it could be purchased for even more by the same other players.

I was a Unicel customer for years before Verizon bought out their Northeast market. Because I live in Vermont, and Verizon was not allowed by Vermont to pick up the customers within the state, we went into a kind of limbo. We were allowed to receive (shittier) service, and we were certainly allowed to pay our bill. But as we had continued problems, and tried to contact someone for help?

Oh no, they were instructed that they could not assist Vermont customers with their issues.

AT&T is more expensive, but I will never give Verizon another dime.

Pros: My phone bill went down $8 for no apparent reason.

Cons: My service has inexplicably gotten worse. I drop calls more frequently and in places where I never dropped calls before. The reason why I stayed with Alltel was because of their excellent rural coverage (I travel frequently by car, off the major highways) and that advantage is gone.

My first cell phone was a Verizon prepaid that I activated while I was in college in Birmingham. At the time, VZW prepaid coverage was limited to North Alabama and the Mobile/Baldwin Coast. They charged .35 per minute with .99 per minute roaming--which I was always doing when I went back home to SW Alabama (Alltel country). It was kinda stupid of me to do, but I really wanted a cell phone since everyone else had one.

When I found a Simple Freedom phone (a Nokia 3585i) that charged .25 per minute with local coverage over most of the state, I put the Kyocera 2135 on eBay within a week. Years going by, a rate drop to .15 cpm and one handset change, I've been with Alltel ever since...only to have Verizon buy its way back into my life.

They haven't changed anything toward my service yet, but I'm not sure I want to wait for them to. I'm reluctant to leave the great rural coverage they have down here, but I can't help but be intrigued by offers and phones from Tracfone/Net10.

I think that the OP is full of crap about having to get a new phone. The two companies use the exact same technology, maybe there is some software that needs to be changed, but you don't have to replace a phone to do that.

Me thinks that they are so unhappy to be with Verizon again that "things" are starting to happen. Nobody that I know that uses Alltel has noticed one bit of difference in their service.

I can see people in the Northeast that are going from GSM to CDMA having major issues, but CDMA to CDMA shouldn't be much of an issue at all.

In my area of NC Verizon tops everyone for signal strength, I know so many people who chose to put up with the crappy UI and the locked up phones just for the sake of no dropped calls. Actually I can't remember the last time I dropped a call even when traveling, it is to the point that I don't even bother looking at my signal strength indicator, I just take for granted that the call will go through.

I think that the phone is just as important as signal strength, a crappy phone will drop calls like crazy, I usually buy motorola phones, they are built like crap but they can pull a signal like no other.

@ZekeSulastin: I am pretty sure s/he mentioned "horrible UI..."

Besides, Blackberry has an App store. App World I think was the name. I honestly have no idea if the Windows Mobile (or what that Phone?) has an integrated App store.

Some people just happen to like Google's offering in that area. Besides, being able to tinker with it under the hood is a nice feature.

I switched to Alltel about a year ago because I was sick of how overpriced things were at US Cellular, not to mention the horrible coverage. Alltel seemed great. The only issue I had was that when I left for college, the closest store was an hour and a half away. Not too much of a problem, because what do I really need an Alltel store for? Customer service took care of any problems over the phone.

Then I was informed that I'm now a Verizon customer. And what do you know? Dropped calls. Roaming charges when I'm sitting at home. My account doesn't exist in Verizon's system, so no more paying my bill by pressing *PAY. And accessories have gotten so much more expensive. I lost my charger on vacation at the beginning of the summer and had to pay $30 to replace it -- double what it had cost before.

I'm counting down the months until my contract with them is up. (Right now, I believe it's 11.)

@Not__Sure: It was Spring that bought Virgin Mobile.

@lihtox: I meant Sprint of course. Geez.

@Sarcastichobbes: uh hello?? if those phones came to Verizon, they will cripple the UI as well. ALL Verizon phones are crippled by them. the only way to truly enjoy a phone the way it was intended is to leave Verizon and go to another carrier

About half the people in my office had switched from Verizon to Alltel over the past few years to get to rid themselves of Verizon's profit-heavy rate plans, crippled Blackberries, etc.

So July 12 rolls around and NONE of our Blackberries are working reliably. Thanks Verizon. 4 people in the office didn't receive a single e-mail on their Blackberries all Friday. Lovely.

Which leaves me with a fun dilemma. Sprint has spread its towers too thin, AT&T's signal is even worse, T-Mobile has the worst coverage in the area. So who can I go to?

Fewer choices in this case = bad for consumers.