re: Verizon kills off service contracts, smartphone subsidies

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It is all about data these days. Texting and voice calls are nothing anymore.

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I liked it better when it was the other way around. The overage rates were high, but at least you were just billed by the minute/text rather than having to buy a whole new chunk of minutes/texts. Isn't it absurd that we happily buy stuff without using all of it every single month? Or how about the fact that it's possible to burn through $30 worth of data in 5 minutes? Is that service worth $300+/hour? You can even burn through the $80 "x-large" package in under an hour. I didn't see in the article what happens if you go over... do they bump you up to the next tier automatically, or do they double charge your chosen package, or what? However they handle it, you are essentially guaranteed to waste some of what you've purchased. How has everyone been convinced that this is ok? Btw I'm not criticizing anyone, as I do the same thing. Google's Project Fi is a step in a good direction in this regard, charging by the byte with no crazy overage charges, but the rates are still absurd when you think about it. Especially considering the fact that there is really no telling how many bytes that next click is going to cost you.

Eventually, we have to reach a point where data is ubiquitous and practically free, right?

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I just went through the process last week. Got a bag full of goodies, doubled my data, and my bill went down by about 20 bucks

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What all was in the bag of goodies? Was it some kind of promotional thing?

So, just watched the commercial for the 12gb data for 80 bucks/20 per line deal. That would be 140 per month for me (3 lines). If they offer the corporate discount that att does for me and my wife, I would get 24% off of that as well. However, I am not sure if the GSM LG G3's me and my wife have would work on their CDMA platform. Haven't checked to see if the G3 has both radios in it. My phones are unlocked. One is a D850 ATT and the other is a D851 TMobile (mine).

If I had to get new phones, I'd prolly buy mine out right when the nexus 5 2015 comes out. So she would prolly get something on a payment plan.

That is not bad considering we pay $150 for two lines sharing 12 gigs. This should drop now that a phone subsidy should be taken out though.

So I logged into verizon today just to look, and they're giving me an early upgrade special. I went through all the steps. Added a pair of 64GB iPhone6 to the cart. Selected the 12GB plan, and before I could check out, it gave me some business about sending back the phones I have now, or be charged a $300 fee. My normal upgrade date is September 24th. What's odd is, I have the 5C on my line, but for my wife, we have an older 4S that we bought on Craigslist to replace the 5C she drowned in the laundry. They wanted that one back too. Just seemed odd to me. We didn't purchase it from them. I was planning on keeping the 5C I have and letting my daughter use it as an ipod, so I didn't go through with it. Just curious if anyone here has made an attempt to upgrade early and ran across this. They wanted me to switch to the monthly payment for the phone, or buy it outright, but still wanted one back that I bought from them on subsidy pricing.

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Wtf

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I honestly have no idea. I know a guy that works for Verizon, and I'm going to ask him. I'll probably just end up going to his store to buy them now anyways. There's no way I'm going to ship them a phone back that I've been paying for almost 2 years now. Another month and I could sell it as unlocked and make a little money on to put towards the new one. I doubt I'll get much for the 4S, but even $50 is better than nothing. I just found the whole thing odd, because when this thread was started, I logged in to see my upgrade date and the new plans, and it was still offering 2 year contract pricing, but said I wasn't eligible for upgrade yet.

Also, existing customers on older plans (more everything or nationwide) can still upgrade on a 2 year contract. Only new customers or customers on the new S/M/L plans MUST go with device payments. However, as stated many times, for most people Device Payment works out better, so do the math. Happy to help if anyone needs it.

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This includes $80 for "Line Access" and $60 for messages/minutes/data/account access.

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So the 60 bucks is for your 6GB of data (plus unlimited talk and text)...the 80 bucks if your line access.....Line access is $40 bucks per phone if you own your own device or paid the subsidized rate up front. If you are on the Edge program (paying monthly for phone) the line access would go down to $20 bucks per phone.

Now I didn't see in the original new plan docs where it said the line access was $40 for owned/subsidized phone but when I did my analysis that was all I could some up with since my wife's line access was $40 bucks (she has a subsidized iphone contract up in December) and mine was $20 bucks (I have a S6 on Edge).

ETA I suppose it is possible that I am wrong on phones you outright own. In that case I would expect the 80 bucks to go down to 40 bucks when your contract ends.

ETA2 Verified that current subsidized phones will keep the $40 line access until the subsidy is paid off (aka contract ends)....so to answer your question when your contract is up your bill will go down by 40 bucks total for both phones.

yep found it in their FAQ's :

"You can switch to The Verizon Plan anytime, but the monthly access charges for all devices on 2-year contracts will remain at $40 until each device contract expires. Once each device contract expires, the monthly access charge will automatically drop to $20."

so i will eventually be able to get 12gb for less than my current 8 after my plan is up. until then, no point in switching.