Verizon Fails at 911
This evening my daughter and I were victims of a hit and run. The incident occurred a little after 6PM at our local grocery store parking lot. We were at a stop sign. The perpetrator overshot the turn and ran into my Nissan Leaf before hastily driving off. After checking to make sure my daughter was okay, I called 911 using my cell phone. Except it didn’t work. The number appeared to be dialing, but froze. Hitting the home button didn’t do anything. I had to shutdown and restart the phone. I dialed 911 again, and the same thing happened. After the third time, I gave up and went back towards the grocery store where I happened to find a neighbor who let me borrow her cell phone. With her assistance, I was able to call the police.
I’ve been a Verizon user for nearly 10 years. I’ve been pleased with my service, but they really let me down today. With Verizon, I experienced three failed attempts at calling 911. My daughter and I were lucky – we did not incur any injuries (that we know of). But if we did, I shudder to think of how that scenario would have played out.
When I first called Verizon, I was told that I had simply misdialed the number as 119 at around 6:42PM, per their records. I was incredulous, and doubly angry. Below are the screenshots from my first call.
Three failed attempts. No 911.
Verizon failed me big time today, when I really needed them the most. Based on talking with a few Verizon customer service reps, the problem seems to be more widespread than I thought. This is simply unacceptable.
-Krishna
DAVe3283
December 15, 2015 at 12:01 pmI wonder if it is entirely Verizon’s fault, or a bug in the iPhone software? I used to be on Verizon until recently, and I have called 911 numerous times for accidents, and it has always worked perfectly, both on a dumb flip phone, and an Android smart phone.
It is still unacceptable, and should be one of the first things they should test in the phone OS. What if you had been trapped in the car??
Becki
December 15, 2015 at 3:48 pmGlad to hear you are both okay. And, unfortunately, calling 911 isn’t really something that can be recommended to test when buying a phone; the local call center would be inundated. I would definitely bring up the problem with the phone’s manufacturer as well as Verizon.
Jason
December 16, 2015 at 3:09 pmSorry to hear about the accident. Glad to hear that you guys are ok. Sorry to hear about the phone, I would really suspect the operating system if you dialed 911 and Verizon received it as 119, that sounds really odd.
Krishna
December 16, 2015 at 3:17 pmVerizon had the wrong time recorded for the call.