In the town of Valdez I was able to utilize my cellphone without issue all over town. However, when I went into the Blueberry hill subdivision the cellphone coverage was poor. I had no bars up to 1 bar of signal. I could occassionally hear the phone ring but could not communicate with the person calling. Text did not work there either. In town the service was fine.

I moved from MN to Valdez to attend college and was told by Verizon that I would recieve coverage through their Extended Service Area (roaming off of ACS towers) with my old flip phone, worked ok for the most part through the first semester. I went back to MN on winter break and purchased a LG Ally smartphone with the android system, with a skeptical approach I prompted the Employee in the Verizon store to assure me that these smartphones would work with all of the bells and whistles in Alaska, again I was told that it would work. Worked great for the first few weeks of January had awesome 3G and 1x coverage. Towards the end of January my phone did an update from the old OS to the new Android Version 2.2.1, immediately after this update took place I was no longer able to send text messages or access the web. After countless hours on the phone with Verizon "customer service" we came to the conclusion to send my phone back to MN and get it reprogrammed and make sure everything was good on the phone (I was without a phone for 2 weeks.) I finally get my phone back in the mail, turn it on and I am still unable to send text messages, but is able to access the web at a low speed, call Verizon back up (rather frustrated by this point but still patient and cooperative) and spent more countless hours going through troubleshooting with the tech support, after losing web service again while the "technician" was messing with account settings we came to the conclusion that this particular phone must be faulty, so they send a replacement phone to my father in MN so he can take it into a Verizon store to have it activated and programmed yet again (because the programming has to take place in a Verizon coverage area and the replacement phones come bareboned with nothing on them.) I get the replacement phone in the mail, turn it on and nothing changed, I was having the same exact issues with the replacement as I was with the original phone, not to mention I only had 2 / 175 contacts in my contact list! I am moving back to MN in 2 months but this whole ordeal has been taking place for over a month now, and now that I am having my old flip phone shipped up to me because they cant fix the problem, I call them up expecting to receive account credits for the 1.5 months of $29.99 / month data usage that I am not getting and won't get with the rest of my time here in Alaska and the 1.5 months of $20.00 / month text messaging that I am not getting and they basically told me they can't figure out the problem and they will not credit any of the usage because the billing cycle was from January to mid-February and the computers were showing that I made 1800 text messages during that time, well of course I made 1800 text messages my phone was working great for the first 3 weeks I came back to Alaska! The customer service representatives were very rude on the phone and had no drive what so ever to help me with these frustrations. I even went as far as calling ACS to see if they could help me, they basically re-appointed me back to the Verizon customer service. I am officially fed up with the situation and would leave Verizon in a heart beat but I do not want to have to switch because it is cheapest to stay on my father's family plan, not to mention I am moving back to the lower 48 in 2 months so what would be the point of switching, quite frankly I feel that Verizon is taking advantage of the fact the I am thousands of miles away from the nearest Verizon tower or store and will not help me.

Even though my Verizon phone works great in the valley, the Kenai, and in Anchorage, it's dead as a hammer in Valdez. I can't even use the alarm clock function because the phone can't get the time. My Verizon phone turns into a paperweight here in Valdez. The lack of service is really a shame because I was satisifed with the service before my move to Valdez.