Verizon is about to break our Gizmo watches

So the author probably could have migrated if he hadn't used a Google Fi phone number for 2FA. Some banks and businesses (such as Uber) will detect a Google Fi or Google Voice number and not let you use them. Other businesses don't do the detection, but the 2FA texts will never arrive. Like the author, I've got some accounts that I was able to set up for 2FA using a Google account, but 2FA no longer works on them.

```The associate agreed with me that they should not deprecate the old app until the new app can handle this configuration. I asked them to raise this up the chain: they need to push back the deprecation date.```

There's no way a CSR has any power over this.

Cell phone enabled watches are a pile of hacks sitting on top of hacks on top of a system pretending to be a telephone switch board from the 1940s. It’s surprising any of it works.

I have a verizon watch only account. I was able to get the new app working, but it was a struggle. I think it worked on the 3rd or 4th attempt. I had to start over and lost all of the contacts that were connected to the watch. Fortunately, there were only a few.

Overall, the Gizmo watch has been nice to have, but it leaves a lot to be desired. It's surprising that there are not better products in this market segment.

I feel like this is an edge case where it's less expensive for Verizon to issue a refund than it is to actually fix the problem. Sometimes paying for the problem to go away is the best solution and you get a new thing that works better.

I wonder what the warranty period on this sort of device is. It’s broken without access to the hub, right? And it’s only 2 years old.

Google Fi has become shit anyway. Much too expensive and if you use it too much abroad, they cut you off.

Any recommendations for alternatives?

Prediction: absolutely nothing will happen about resolving this. Ever. And eventually they will find a line in the ToS allowing this and point to it — some paragraph that says they may cut any line of service with no notice at all you you still owe them your firstborn and the payment for the rest of your contract, and also you now need to change your name to Verizon.

Since beginning of 2025 big corps turned to be each time more anti consumer. They feel quite comfortable. I wonder what happened for them to feel like that.

Only sporadically.

Reluctant to switch 2FA.

This is the sort of web page that the street's been missing. The comments aggregator is interesting. Not to mention the hover-overs for the related posts.

Hey, that scorpion stung me!

I hate to blame the victim here, but anyone in the 2020s buying a carrier-branded piece of cellular hardware should have expected this sort of thing.

We already learned this lesson back in the days before the iPhone when phones had carrier logos printed on them and GPS apps cost $5/month.

Apple Watch Kids Mode is what you want. If the watches cost too much grab a used one.

The author complained about the high price in the original review but they didn’t really spend enough. They bought a crappy telecom knockoff of an Apple Watch. You get what you pay for.

"Without the app we won't be able to text back and forth, see where they are, or add new contacts (the watch blocks calls except to/from contacts)."

"Our older two kids, Lily and Anna, are ten and eight, and are mature enough that they're able to cross streets and handle unusual situations. They can go to the park or a nearby friends house on their own, but we do need to know where they are"

"Meet Gizmo Watch 3, the smartwatch that introduces kids to wireless technology safely. With an SOS button, voice and video calling4 and text messaging,"

After clicking around the article and the watch page and desperately trying to figure out why a 20 bucks casio F91 isn't doing the job, all I have to say is, thank god I am a millenial instead of being raised by one

Choosing a carrier device without being on that carrier for the rest of your devices would seem to be the first mistake. Treating the carrier as anything other than dumb pipe seems like the issue here. Going with the Pixel Watch LTE and then doing same custom app development might make more sense for the described use case, but I haven't explored the author's use case thoroughly.

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Is part of US phone cartel. What you expect?