Verizon Smart Family - Parent Reviews

VerizonSmartFamily is basically life360 all over again. It’s just a dumb concept of saying “hey (name of child), I don’t trust you at all so, I’m going to spy on you and track and monitor on every little thing you do on your phone and not respect your privacy at all.” I understand about blocking inappropriate content but it’s still not going to do anything good for your child and makes him or her feel like that you don’t trust them and it’s more likely that you guys will end up arguing about this whole mess and it’s just a huge waste of time so don’t even bother with VerizonSmartFamily unless if you wanna cause problems with your children.

It is utterly awful! Seriously, for instance with the time restrictions, you can’t even tell what you’re restricting. Is the time that you restrict the time the phone is off, or on? You really have no way of knowing, until you do it, and then your kid complains, or not. It actually says “set custom hours“ and then has a start time and stop time. That’s it! What does that mean!? Plus you can’t set different times for different nights, like different for weekdays and weekends, but who would ever want to do that? (Heavy sarcasm).
Plus, you can set a limit on your kid’s data. But then it just shuts off! It doesn’t throttle down so they limited access to data. The purpose most people want is to limit their use so they only use their share and don’t use up all of the family plan, not cut them off completely when they reach their limit. That should obviously be an option. Unbelievable!
But wait, there’s more! It doesn’t work and less you install an app on their phone! That’s idiotic! All they have to do is delete it! Of course there are ways to set up the phone so they can’t do that, But I shouldn’t have to.
I really can’t believe someone with even a high school diploma could’ve come up with such an awful app. What’s even worse is they charge you 10 bucks a month for this awfulness when it should be included with your plan!

Not accurate and unreliable, it crashes ALL THE TIME. I can’t even look at the call log for more than a minute before it just crashes and disappears, forcing me to start all over again. Good concept though, just sucky execution.

Update- Almost a year later and still having the same issues. You think they’d invest a little in making VerizonSmartFamily work better, since, you know, it’s not a free service.

Another update - well, they switched it to Verizon “smart family” for the first bit of time VerizonSmartFamily actually functioned. Now, every time I want to do anything it gives me error messages, so I can’t really accomplish what we are paying to be able to do. I wish there was a way to attach photos to these reviews. What are we paying for? Seriously need to invest in better developers or something. It looks terrible that such a well known company who specializes in communication technology can not even get an application to function correctly. I’m a trusted contact, yet I can’t get through during restriction periods (ie...school). I actually have to log into a computer when I want to change things. Isn’t the point of VerizonSmartFamily so that we don’t have to do that? I despise having to write bad reviews but this one seems to be a consistent problem. I just don’t get it. I feel like they really need to get their act together here, it looks terrible for them.

Downloaded VerizonSmartFamily to monitor my teenage daughters calls, texts, location, etc. After I downloaded and signed in there was absolutely no directions or prompts to set up VerizonSmartFamily with my daughters’ phones so I could monitor them. Instead it gives me the option to monitor my own phone, place restrictions on my own phone, limit calls and texts on my own phone!??? Then I clicked on their “Help Center” and that proved to be just as useless and only showed grainy/blurry screenshots of what I should see in my app. I read the developer response to another review where they claim you don’t need to download VerizonSmartFamily on your child’s phone if you’re using LTE. Well guess what... there’s no option to add another phone within your family plan! I can only limit my own use as the only number that appeared in VerizonSmartFamily was my own. I fully expected to be greeted with some sort of setup wizard when I opened VerizonSmartFamily to add the numbers on my plan that I wanted to monitor. Instead they left me searching through their app with no direction to be able to connect to the other phones in my plan! I can’t believe they would expect someone to pay $10 a month for this useless app! Instead of being able to monitor my children’s’ activity, it just left me in the dark with no way of being able to do so. Complete waste of money!

I’ve been using smart family ($5.00 version) for years but recently decided to pay for the upgraded version because of issues with my 16yo. I downloaded the necessary apps on both our phones. I set up all parameters to keep her from accessing certain apps and deleted those apps from her phone. But because VerizonSmartFamily was previously downloaded to her device, she just adds it back at will. She can not download new apps but can reinstall deleted ones. The time restrictions work well for us to limit her use on school nights. But I was already getting that with the cheaper version. The location settings are all messed up. My daughter hasn’t left our house in over 12 hours and I have 95 notifications telling me she has left her job which is two streets always from where we live. I am constantly getting notifications of her leaving home or leaving her work while she is sitting in the same room with me. I have the addresses for home, school and work loaded into VerizonSmartFamily but it doesn’t register properly. Why pay for the upgrade if it isn’t giving you accurate information? I upgraded my account so I could keep her from downloading certain apps, looking at harmful things on Safari and monitor her location at all times. This version of VerizonSmartFamily has not assisted with any of those things.

I can’t believe I actually paid for this service. It is a nuisance, not at all helpful. Requires my son to be connected to VPN always when I have it enabled & when he is connected to VPN he is unable to use our wifi! What is the point!? I limit his cellular data and only have 2gb plan per month because that is what I can afford & should be able to keep track of his location (which told me he just left school the other night at like 9 pm when he was in our living room!) without worrying about keeping a constant watch on my data plan or approving things left and right. Furthermore, it is really so ridiculous that in order to set up VerizonSmartFamily, he has to approve it or I have to physically have his phone & set it all up on there. Seriously? Cancelling this paid service when I pay my bill in a couple days unless I see an update 1st which addresses this nonsense, which I doubt because I have been waiting for awhile considering other parents have to be dealing with these issues & I’m sure are also irritated as can be!
UPDATE- oh just in the last 2 days, even though I removed the vpn from my sons phone, which caused him to be unable to connect to WiFi, he could only text or reply to 2 family members but not to 2 others that had texted him Happy Birthday msgs! Grrrrr! I want a credit for this headache.

You want your kids location? Ask them. Don’t expect them to tell you after you’ve installed this. (I speak for teenagers, I understand using this for children under 12). VerizonSmartFamily ruins communication between child and parent. I know you think you’re protecting them, I get it. But think about equipping them for bad situations rather than preventing bad from happening bc it WILL happen regardless of how much you hover. My parents hovered over us and you know where it got us? My sister was raped several times and I was assaulted, leaving me with PTSD. Is this what you’re trying to prevent? VerizonSmartFamily does NOT prevent that. Trusting your kid does! Trust them and they will trust and be open with you! You cannot expect your kid to tell you anything when you invade their privacy like this. Yes, THEIR privacy. They are your children, but they are not yours. These are their bodies, their lives, and their human rights that you’re violating. You may say that the world isn’t as safe as it used to be. I agree, it’s getting worse! PREPARE THEM FOR IT. Teach them to see red flags. Teach them to pick good relationships, but do NOT pick for them. Let them love who they want, boy, girl, or otherwise.

Let my family be an example. Don’t repeat the mistakes we made.

One star. App does what it says it does. Functions. Breaks trust.

When my child reaches their data limit for the month, it locks up my data (the parent) on my phone as well. This has happened for numerous months. The child can still use the phone on wifi so even if you purposely block their phone, they can still use all functions. The location services that you pay extra for is not accurate. Compared to the “Find Friends” app, which shows my child’s EXACT location, this Verizon app shows their location a few hundred feet or a mile away for their actual location (differs daily). I have yet to see it place their location accurately in the past month or so since upgrading to this service. Even though we have time limits on their phone, it stopped working a few months ago and my child can use their phone at all hours now. And all the other options only work if the child has VerizonSmartFamily on their phones. The child can simply delete VerizonSmartFamily and all bets off. I still keep VerizonSmartFamily because it does show me when/who my child calls/texts (even if my child deletes their app... although it only shows for the phone’s basic Call/Text and not if my child uses WhatsApp or other apps) and I can block numbers if needed (again, only for Call/Text).

THE GOOD:
This is a good app if you would like to locate, filter data/web content and games for your child. You can see phone numbers of receiver/recipients for phone calls & texts. Some minor improvements to these functions can make VerizonSmartFamily great. When the location on VerizonSmartFamily isn’t working properly, it shows you where your child is within a 1/2-1 mile radius. If you live in the NYC area, it looks like your child can be in a different borough. I live in Queens and some times VerizonSmartFamily shows me that my child is either in the Bronx or Manhattan. I can’t begin to tell you the anxiety I feel.

THE BAD:
Pairing the child’s phone can be challenging when your teen won’t let you physically take their phone or give you their passwords to install app or install it themselves. When you want to pair the child’s phone, VerizonSmartFamily sends a text to the child/teen with instructions. If you manage to pair your child’s phone and your child decides they don’t want VerizonSmartFamily anymore, all they have to do is simply delete VerizonSmartFamily , disable the VPN, and Location, or reset phone. Just like that, what you paid for is gone and you are back to where you started. A lock or password on VerizonSmartFamily would help a little.

We researched options and VerizonSmartFamily had all the features we wanted to limit and monitor our child’s first phone. Would have been worth the monthly fee if it had worked well. Unfortunately, it was glitchy and attempts to re-pair it with my phone were usually unsuccessful. We would follow all of the prompts to pair it with my phone and get stuck in a glitch. Verizon tech support was unable to troubleshoot the pairing issue. Three representatives in one day were unsure how to resolve the issue. All were friendly but could not fix what seems to be a straightforward problem. Decided to stop using VerizonSmartFamily during the call with the third rep. Also, child received regular notifications from Verizon that their information was being shared with my phone which provided a link that would walk child through the steps to stop sharing. Child received first of these messages the day after VerizonSmartFamily was installed. Verizon assured me there would be no more. Child continued to receive them. Providing the child a means to stop sharing with the parent’s phone undermines the point of VerizonSmartFamily . The glitches make it too inconvenient to continue paying for a service that isn’t working. Really disappointed, Verizon.

VerizonSmartFamily has potential, but it tends to log me off and it doesn’t always block calls like it’s supposed to during restricted hours.
Update: I decided to delete VerizonSmartFamily. It is not a good choice for families who need flexibility. I am unable to track my teenage daughter using our original tracking app Life 360, which is not only a safety hazard for both of us but it causes a complete disconnect between family members. My daughter needed to use her GPS so I tried to turn VerizonSmartFamily off but for some reason, during the day, when I am off wi-fi, I am unable to access VerizonSmartFamily to make any changes. Though I am added as a trusted contact, she is not able to FaceTime or text me. She is only able to call, which again, when I am at work, receiving calls is not possible and we generally communicate through text. VerizonSmartFamily also did things to my phone that made it run slower and made it difficult for me to access certain apps that utilize Internet or Wi-Fi. To top it all off, VerizonSmartFamily did not block the things that I wanted it to block such as Internet access and games installed on the phone. It did, however, block things that we use on a daily basis such as GPS and music apps. VerizonSmartFamily needs some serious help.

Since the last update I either HAVE to agree to allowing Verizon to access EVERYTHING on ALL of our phones in order to access the Smart Family app or it will not allow me in. This is going way beyond an invasion of privacy for all of our lines (of which none are children) but this update does not allow you to bypass or opt out of this ridiculous feature. If this does not get resolved soon I will pack up our 10 lines and go back to Sprint. Here is what they are wanting subscribers to agree to which is unacceptable and unnecessary for a phone company to need:
Parental consent for Collection of Data
“In order to provide services, Smart Family collects information from the phones on your account, including those used by children under 13. By tapping “Agree,” you consent to the collection and use of device identifiers, geolocation, web browsing and app activity from designated child lines. We and our service providers use this info only to deliver Smart Family services to you and do not use or share it for any other purposes.” .... [you either “agree” to it or you have the option to “disconnect your service” or not access VerizonSmartFamily period. fix this or we are gone.]

There used to be a page that allowed a parent to see all the lines listed and limits listed and change limits from that list. Now I have to purposely open each line individually to see or change data limits. My monthly to do list just got longer because it can’t be done at a glance. So if I added or subtracted data from one line or another, I can’t see that unless I open that line’s data list from VerizonSmartFamily . I want the old overview. Line A has x gb, line B has y gb, line C has a gb... etc. it’s not only inconvenient (when it does not have to be), but it’s not free with my plan. Also I hate pairing devices to block content. I should just be able to set age limits without pairing. Please fix!!! Lastly, the phone numbers my kids are calling/texting should be listed by their contact name in my family base, not by last four digits. I have no idea who these numbers are. Please list them as the contact name in the phone. That would really help. Then if an unknown number comes up, I know it is a “stranger”. This is particularly critical with teens, to know which texts are random and which are friends. Safety first!

I see reviews from a year ago and there’s still no fix to the problems stated. Come on Verizon!! For no more that what you offer, I can take her phone and find out for myself what you told me since you don’t offer more details. And to have to add this on my kid’s phone for it to work is asinine!! Figure it out how to do what the parents are asking for! Give me the option to dig further And bugs needs to be worked out! Hangs up all the time and won’t let you view precious days info. I do like the fact that I can see the websites, apps and phone calls/texts daily, but there’s no option to look further into what an app is or what she viewed from that website or what that site is exactly. Who’s number is that that keeps texting or calling? I want to go deeper and this is not possible. This is only with half the cost IMO! Parents of tweens that have a phone should be able to do more because they kids are still so young. The peer pressure today of all the kids having phones put intense pressure on our relationship. Earn good grades, get your phone on the weekends. I like the idea of the family share app, but this mom needs more so I can make sure my daughter is safe.

This is absolutely rude for kids privacy. As many of my friends have time restrictions and I used to have one, I absolutely hate VerizonSmartFamily. All it does is let parents spy on you constantly and doesn’t give any trust towards the kids. This is just an app psychotic parents or wifes apparently (first review) use to slyly watch what their kids are doing. Or what their husbands are doing. It’s absolutely terrible that you can’t just have a boundary with your kids and husband and have to do this. And you have to pay for it?? if you are really trying to figure out why you’re kids/husband don’t like telling the truth or do something rebellious just think that you are putting a spying app on their phone and breaking even more of a bond with them that you could so easily have. Just be honest with them and try to talk to them, it’s not that hard. Even if your kids lie sometimes. Think about what you did as a kid. Many, many people got married young, got pregnant at their age and did all sorts of drugs. If you kid is looking at social media. Who cares. They could so easily be going out and doing cocaine if they really wanted to. Just simply talk to them.

I was so excited when I found out the Verizon came out with the kid plan. I purchased two phones for my kids in October. VerizonSmartFamily keeps crashing, location wouldn’t wok and was being charged $10 extra each month when it was suppose to come with the plan. I was on the phone with Verizon IT multiple times for hours which all they would do is have me uninstall and the reinstall the companion app and the smart family app every time. The kids could make calls for about a day and then it would start acting up again, I could never get the location services to work. I finally called and asked to switch plans for them since the phones won’t work on them and they wanted to charge me a fee for changing the plan and an additional $40/month for the new plans when I was already paying $55/month/phone for the kids plan. I am leaving Verizon over this. Verizon doesn’t care about their customers and refuses to fix their problems and makes their customers pay for their device/plan/app issues.

On the plus side, I really like VerizonSmartFamily’s ability to 1) put a limit on how much data my kids can use on a monthly basis, 2) restrict their allowable use hours for contacting friends outside of specified people, and 3) show me who they’re communicating with and how often.

But, on the negative side, I have had repeated issues with VerizonSmartFamily placing an erroneous limit on one of the parent lines. I don’t know this has happened until I get the following text msg, “Data transport is disconnected because the monthly allowance has been reached.” I can’t get into VerizonSmartFamily to remove the limit on the parent line until I have WiFi access, which is not always available. It doesn’t appear that this issue has been addressed in any updates - I keep looking. I went to a VZW store and they ‘corrected’ it, only to have it start up again a month or so later and continue ever since. Wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same thing and hope the developers can address this bug in an upcoming update.

Update: Star rating remains the same. The help center was of no help. The main website was of no help either. We cancelled our subscription. See the end of this review for how we are solving this ourselves. /// We purchased VerizonSmartFamily to help with our daughter’s behavior. Trusted contacts are suppose to be available for calls & messages. When imposing a time restriction, she or I cannot text or communicate with each other. Phone calls don’t always go thru during restrictions as well. This is vital - if she is permitted to go somewhere, we give her the phone with restrictions to let us know if she needs us for anything or to check in with her. This is not possible unless the phone has no restrictions/time limits and does not provide the security we had hoped for. For the price of $5/month- we can keep her phone whenever she’s restricted & set up check ins & contacts while she’s away, and keep our money.

We have tried this service twice now. Thinking they had improved it we decided to try again. Loaded for 24 hours it reported a lot of incorrect web usage from my 13 yr old daughters phone. Using screen time I already had restrictions set and know every app on the phone. I have control of VerizonSmartFamily Store and every aspect of this phone. However, smart family reported that she had used apps that aren’t even on her phone. And had visited web sites that don’t even exist. These were only reported to me as my husbands report of her phone did not show those. They were serious accusations on behalf of VerizonSmartFamily that would cause consequences for actions my child that she did not commit such as pornography and gambling!! Cancelled the service. Deleted VerizonSmartFamily . Again. Verizon was unable to explain how this happens after two hours on the phone and multiple tech coaches. Stick with what works. Pick the phone up and read the contents. Screen time let’s you dial back their ability to access inappropriate content. It will have to be good enough for now.

If you have this call Verizon and request a credit. I was paying for the premium at $10/month and at first thought this is great and exactly what I wanted until I learned it is so easily defeated by the child. The problem is it uses a VPN to supervise your child’s iPhone which in and of it self is no big deal until your child realizes that all they have to do is open settings on their phone and toggle off the VPN. Once the VPN is turned off any time restrictions you have set are bypassed, this also goes for pausing internet feature. I have spoken with Verizon and they do not have any fix for this issue. Apple also has no way to restrict the VPN from being turned off. If there was a parental control feature on the IPhone that would allow the settings for the VPN to not be changed by the child then VerizonSmartFamily would be great but since there isn’t VerizonSmartFamily is completely useless. I can’t believe a company as large as Verizon is charging its customers for something that doesn’t work as advertised. In my opinion that is the definition of a scam.

My oldest brought this to my attention today, we have Spectrum for our internet provider since the cellular coverage in our house is garbage. Needless to say it was easy for them to see a difference once I had gotten the VPN set up, we figured out that once the device successfully connects to a WiFi network while still connected to Cellular data, it doesn’t just keep the connection to the VPN server, it completely pauses the Cellular connection to the server, restricting everything (requiring WiFi) and attempts to connect through the new network before lifting the “lockdown.” This process is incredibly lengthy, taking 7-10 minutes on average, which for the quality of our internet provider makes absolutely no sense, every device without the VPN connects to the WiFi just fine and has pages loaded in a split second, so why should it take nearly 10 minutes to connect to the VPN server? And to add insult to injury it occasionally goes on “lockdown” seemingly at random, forcing the process to restart (I can only assume because of a stutter in the WiFi causing a brief moment where connection to the VPN server faltered). This apparently has frustrated my kids since we got the VPN a month ago but up until today we hadn’t tested to see if the VPN and the WiFi cutouts were connected. I can’t believe I paid for this to begin with, and will be taking my kids off this plan when we make our next monthly payment unless this issues are addressed.

On the plus side, I really like VerizonSmartFamily’s ability to 1) put a limit on how much data my kids can use on a monthly basis, 2) restrict their allowable use hours for contacting friends outside of specified people, and 3) show me who they’re communicating with and how often.

But, on the negative side, I have had repeated issues with VerizonSmartFamily placing an erroneous limit on one of the parent lines. I don’t know this has happened until I get the following text msg, “Data transport is disconnected because the monthly allowance has been reached.” I can’t get into VerizonSmartFamily to remove the limit on the parent line until I have WiFi access, which is not always available. It doesn’t appear that this issue has been addressed in any updates - I keep looking. I went to a VZW store and they ‘corrected’ it, only to have it start up again a month or so later and continue ever since. Wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same thing and hope the developers can address this bug in an upcoming update.

I was previously subscribed to VZ FamilyBase and loved the service & app. Recently VZ changed it to Smart Family, without notifying me of the change. The new base Smart Family is the same service & features of the old FamilyBase, but now they offer a premium service, for double the price, that allows tracking/locating capabilities. The problem I’m having is that after my child’s phone reaches the time restrictions for use, I’m no longer able to locate my child’s iPhone with the native Apple IOS features, unless it has a WiFi signal. This didn’t use to be the case with the old FamilyBase. Before, I could locate my child even after time restrictions started. I can’t help but feel Verizon intentionally did this to force people to subscribe to their premium service. This is a huge safety issue with me, & now I will be looking for another parental control app that doesn’t disable my native IOS features. Shame on you Verizon for putting kids at risk to make a few bucks.