docj

Reauthorized in 2006 with additional updates in 2015. https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/patriot-act It's my understanding that the concerns about this sort of thing got magnified by the "Know Your Customer" rules which the US’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed in 2014. Under KYC financial institutions are encouraged to do whatever they feel is appropriate to (a) identifying and verifying the identity of customers, (b) identifying and verifying the identity of “beneficial owners” of customers that are legal entities, (c) understanding the nature and purpose of customer relationships, and (d) conducting ongoing monitoring to maintain and update customer information and identify suspicious transactions. Although I doubt that anyone disagrees with the intent of KYC, apparently there is a lot of vagueness with respect to what banks and other institutions need to do to be compliant. This results in inconsistencies between the policies of different institutions of the type we have discussed in this thread. You can read more about this issue here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/10/11/kyc-and-aml-what-all-banks-need-to-know/

The law allows financial institutions to ask for a physical address, in lieu of a mail forwarding service, but that address doesn't have to used on your account other than to meet Patriot Act requirements. We have exactly one financial institution which has insisted on an additional address and, at the time we were asked, we provided our daughter's. That address didn't affect the billing or mailing addresses for the the account in question.

FWIW since I did a factory reset of my 7730L I haven't experienced any additional issues. Of course, this post will probably jinx that! 😀

Are you aware of the fact that MiFi's added to Verizon postpaid unlimited accounts are only permitted to have 15GB or 22GB of 4G/LTE data before the speed is reduced to <600kbps? The prepaid plan being discussed in this thread is completely unlimited and not subject to any throttling.

Thanks for the detail of what carriers are discount, etc. Our Fido stick is on Rogers which happens to be strong at the CG we stay at on PEI. We used to have a Bell prepaid phone for voice but that was before Verizon started offering us free service in Canada.

We replaced the original mattress with a Serta that was designed for RV's and didn't need an extra foundation. It's aged a bit so recently we added a pretty high quality latex topper. There are lots of reasons why we chose latex over memory foam which is more common and less expensive. Suffice it to say we were thrilled with the purchase. Here's a link: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EK0E3X6/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thanks for the detail of what carriers are discount, etc. Our Fido stick is on Rogers which happens to be strong at the CG we stay at on PEI. We used to have a Bell prepaid phone for voice but that was before Verizon started offering us free service in Canada.

Now if there was only something similar I could buy for my summers in Canada. My Verizon Unlimited plan on my phones gives me free Travel Pass in Canada but that's only ~500MB/day. I have an inexpensive Fido USB modem that can give me another few GB but it's not all that cheap. Do you know of any Canadian plans that might be similar to the prepaid you are using in the US? I only got the Rogers plan because a guy at a Fido store didn't care if I wasn't a Canadian citizen. But a prepaid data plan would seem to be perfect if it existed; we're planning on being in Canada in later June. Joel (AKA docj)

I assume you are aware that there's a $5 discount for setting up automatic payment..

Maybe there are other reasons for the behavior I observed. Over the past two days my Jetpack began exhibiting the same behavior--no error message but none of the connected devices had internet. I called VZW and the CSR couldn't find anything wrong but she noted that "your Jetpack isn't fully activated with the network" whatever that means. Supposedly she went off to have someone fix that problem but a few minutes later (after the call had ended) the issued reoccurred. I then did a full factory reset and for the past ~20 hours things have been Ok. We'll see what happens.

Call them back and tell them that you're happy to provide a cell phone bill with the FL address and you are willing to provide a "good address" in compliance with the Patriot Act but those two things don't have to be the same. Unfortunately, financial organizations can create their own internal procedures which may be more strict than those of the Act. You can read about that here: http://www.treasuryalliance.com/assets/publications/cash/Treasury_Alliance_Customer_Information_Programs_And_Patriot_Act.pdf If they won't budge, I'd ask to speak to a supervisor to try one more time. The key thing is that they are going way beyond what is required.

😂🤣

There's now a thread on IRV2 about the same issue: http://www.irv2.com/forums/f53/pre-paid-verizon-jetpack-out-of-data-426706.html#post4589977

That's very similar to the behavior I observed.

Well, mine won't work without one and attached is a post from VZW customer support stating that it's not designed to work without one. Maybe the firmware was changed in more recent versions of the device.

My 7730L was "very unhappy" when I tried running it without a battery. Did you employ any hacks to get it to operate without one?

My battery did go bad several months ago and I bought an OEM replacement on Amazon. The problems I reported all went away the day after the renewal "anniversary". I still think that had something to do with it.

Thanks for the info. If I have to go that route I'll remember to ask for "the deal of the day!" 😀

I have a 7730L, not an 8800, and the 7730's not supposed to have that problem! It never did before, but previously I didn't rely on it the way we do now. It's possible that the problem always existed but I wasn't trying to use ~150GB a month off of it.

Please don't say that! It's out of warranty and I don't want to pay $200 for a new 8800! 😪

Interesting. My "issues" continued throughout the renewal day despite the fact that my online account stated that payment had been received for the next month, etc. What was odd was that when these outages occurred the Jetpack's display screen was totally normal and showed that I had an LTE connection. But none of the devices on my internal network could access the internet until I rebooted the Jetpack. Of course it could have been a local Verizon issue, but my phones didn't seem to be having any problems. I'll see if it reoccurs next month.

I discovered an interesting behavior with my unlimited Jetpack plan today. This is the my monthly "anniversary" day and I have the plan set up for automatic payment in order to get the $5 discount. But, at around noon, the Jetpack stopped connecting to the internet even though neither its display or its online admin screen indicated there was an problem. I power-cycled it and it began working normally. My assumption is that the prepaid plans function as stand-alone "blocks" of usage and, therefore, there is no way to "slide" from one month's usage to the next without a reboot. I'd be interested to see if others experience this same issue. You'd probably never notice it if you turn off your Jetpack when not using it. I don't bother to do that; I have its charger set to cycle on and off so it doesn't overcharge the battery but I see no reason to shut off the device itself.

Do you have a phone that is also on the Verizon network? Have you thought to measure the phone's download speed at the same time you're having issues with the Jetpack? If the phone is on a postpaid plan, like most are, then that would help determine if the download speed issue is related to it being a prepaid plan or if the network is seriously overloaded, in general.

Have you measured the download speed in the midnight to 5 am time period? If you're being limited because of network congestion, it shouldn't be evident at that time of day. The few slowdowns I've had with my prepaid plan have all been of limited duration.

You're right, it's on my 7730L also. You learn something new every day! My comments stand, that a SNR of 1dB is horrible and is likely the cause of poor download speed.