Sharing my experience from April 21, 2026 and April 22, 2026 in case anyone else runs into this. I was trying to set up a travel suspension on a personal cell plan ahead of an upcoming international trip, and what should have been a short task turned into a multi-hour ordeal with LOTS of conflicting information.
Importantly, the risk I was concerned about is that I could have been set up on a lost/stolen suspension, which auto-disconnects my line after 30 days and would've cost me my phone number.
Verizon has offered a 90-day travel suspension for years. It pauses your standard billing while you're not using the service, which is useful if you won’t need your service for an extended period of time.
The app and website now guide you toward two options:
Notably absent: a travel/other suspension.
But if you type "Travel Suspension" into the chat within the app, it surfaces the full terms and details for a 90-day travel suspension as if it's a live option. It shares billing impact, device protection implications, suspend effective date, the whole thing. It even prompts you to pick an initiation date. When I entered the date, the chat crashed with "Something went wrong. Please try again in a moment."
Type “Travel suspension” into the app to get the terms, as if it’s a live offering.
Billing implications are clearly communicated.
The app even prompts me to input my effective date.
Chat crashes on inputting the effective date.
So the self-service path is broken, but nonetheless, the option appears to exist.
Unable to input the effective date via the app, I called Verizon.
Rep #1 spent 40 minutes trying to set up the travel suspension. He ran into system issues, then asked a colleague, and came back to tell me it's no longer an available option for cellular plans. He was seemingly unaware of this for the first 30ish minutes of speaking. I then pushed back and told him, honestly and without exaggeration, that I'd cancel my service. I don’t want to be unnecessarily paying for a service I don’t need. He put me on hold, saying he was going to check with the loyalty team about any other available offers.
Rep #2 picked up 40 minutes into the call, while I was on hold, and with zero context on the prior conversation. I explained the situation from scratch: I want to set up a vacation suspension. He proceeded to set it up without issue for 90 days.
An hour in, I got the text confirmation:
The confirmation text specified “SV-Vacation/Other”, not lost/stolen or military. I thought I was now done. Success. Or so I thought…