Seriously need a second way to authenticate

Just banging a drum that has been banged many times here.

Phone broke, but I had a backup one that my kids use over Wi-Fi with me. Thank goodness!

Except...Verizon wouldn't swap my service over to a different phone because I couldn't authenticate my account on my broken phone.

Luckily, I live just a few minutes from a Verizon corporate store, so this has actually happened to me before and I know just what to do. Unluckily, my phone broke while I was in the Bahamas. No in-store option.

It is bonkers in 2026 that Verizon can't come up with a second way for me to authenticate. I have way more stake in multiple other (financial) institutions that do not create this kind of ridiculous device-specific hurdle for me to access my account. This isn't for my security. This is for them.