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Verizon Dropping Data Rates, But Current Customers Have To Call
New submitter executioner writes with this news from Consumerist: In spite of Verizon Wireless' recent boasts that it's 'a leader, not a follower,' a new announcement from the nation's biggest wireless company shows that Big V is indeed following the competition down the path of charging customers less for their data plans. However, current Verizon subscribers will need to let the company know they want to save money (or get more data). It's a little confusing, so stick with us for a moment. Verizon MORE Everything customers who currently have monthly data allotments of 1GB, 2GB, 3GB, or 4GB will have an option on how they want to save.They can either get more data for their money by getting 1GB of additional data per month for no extra charge OR they can have their bill reduced by $10/month.So someone with a 2GB plan is currently paying $50/month. If they take the free data option, that goes to 3GB for the same price. Or they can elect to stick with the 2GB and their data bill drops to $40/month.
I live in a different country, and when I lived in the US, I used T-Mobile, but still that brief description was more information than I would need if I were a Verizon customer. So... why is this here?
And in France they have €20/month for unlimited calling, unlimited text, and 3GB of 4G data. We are getting RIPPED OFF here in the USA.
My ISP and Telco have increased my data allowance multiple times over the years. I just get a letter / email / sms saying congrats your plan now has 33% more data!
If I wanted to go to a cheaper plan I would call them.
I know it is cool to hate on the major telcos but isn't being given more for exactly the same cost a good thing? Or am I totally missing something?
I know y'all knock T-Mobile for the pink, but for 5+ years, I've been happy with "unlimited everything".
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Of course, they are not lowering the price of my grandfathered in Unlimited Data plan, so I guess I will just have to be happy with paying $40 a month for Unlimited Data.
/s
Nevermore.
My 10GB shared plan currently costs $80/month. The new rate jumps up to $100 for the same 10GB. In order to get any cheaper than my current $80 I would need to drop down to 6GB for $70. Not a bargain of an idea in my opinion.
Wow, that's $10 less than I pay in the US. (Sprint network via their Boost Mobile brand).
If you're paying twice as much for the same service under the Sprint brand, it may be because you effectively choose to get a 30% interest loan to buy an $800 phone, rather the $129 quad-core you could afford without borrowing from Sprint at ridiculous interest rates.
When I logged into my account on their website, I was prompted with an option to save money:
http://imgshare.in/Nwm9GI
You have to opt-in to any plan changes, that's a LEGAL requirement. They can't change plans on you unless the change was a mistake.
Metering data is something of a 90's era holdback that needs to DIAF.
Then again, Verizon's the same carrier that had to be dragged out of the BREW phone era.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just have it all go across as data and use the voice line sparingly.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
My provider has no data caps (unless using a prepaid card) and unlimited calls + messages + 21Mb 3G internet is 20€/month, the same with 150Mb 4G is 25€. I don't make many regular calls per day nor do I watch youtube videos so I'm paying 10€/month for a slower 2Mb 3G connection - no caps!
Most carriers the cost of a phone is rolled in to your plan. So you keep a phone longer than the 2 year contract, well then that does you no good. Tmobile charges you only if you have a phone payment plan (interest free) if you BYOD or pay off the phone, your cost goes down.
Or, on the flipside if you want a new toy all the time they have a plan that adds $10/month, but lets you trade in your phone every 6 months for a new one. You end up paying a lot monthly (cost of the phone payment + $10) but you can get shiny new toys all the time if that's your thing.
They are the only company that aren't assholes about how they charge IMO.
Also the thing that really sells me is that you don't need network extenders/pico cells to get coverage in hard to reach spots, the phones will do wifi calling. Works great at work since we have wifi in all our buildings, but cell service is non existent in the basements. No problem, phone just hops on to WiFi and it is good signal everywhere.
You log into your account and go to change your plan. It will tell you that your current plan doesn't exist anymore. Then you scroll down and either pick the same data allotment for $10 less or the next one for the same old price. There is nothing confusing about this. What kinda stinks, though, is that the discount isn't applied automatically and you have to make the effort and contacting VZW.
I have to say that T-Mobile seemed the fairest provider to me because I travel overseas. Their European roaming coverage is better in a way than their US coverage. (Also I had a Galaxy I liked with a European version of Android Kit Kat and they were very cool to let me BMOD) Four lines at $100 (all in the family) Each gets 1 GB high speed, which is enough for me since my pattern puts me onto wifi a lot and I don't use the 3G that much just moving around. And there is free music streaming. (That data does not count against the 1GB) And world wide free texts (over 100 counties) Free roaming web speed data (Not 3G) in over 100 counties (This is nice. Data roaming in Europe has been notorious (it is better now). The free data in Europe has been fast enough to stream tunes and check emails and read my news feeds. As I said I travel internationally and T-Mobile is a great fit. Long Distance calls from overseas to the US are charged at 10 cents a minute with no roaming fees. Not awesome, but not like the bad old days of Euro roaming. When they gave me the run down on their roaming plan I could hardly believe it. Basically a world phone for four people for 25 bucks a month. Had to be a catch thought I. As it turns out...There is a juicy profit center for them. Long distance out of the US to overseas. I made the mistake of simply replying to a call from Kiev from DC. Ouch! I won't do that again. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Oh and I like their data rollover deal. Unused data does not evaporate at months end it rolls and accumulates. I really am a happy customer and not a shill. But this T-Mobil experience was simply good enough to pass on. Also I get a kick out of their foul-mouthed in-your-face CEO. Can't say why.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
This company is notorious for changing terms on customers. Not that they are the only one. If you have ever left Verizon for a reason don't let this "ambiguous bone" make you forget why.
You seem to be misinformed. I haven't had any trouble in the 10 years or so I've had Boost, and their web page confirms it:
http://www.boostmobile.com/sho...
So now that you know the salesman lied to you and you're paying extra for nothing, are you done wasting your money? Perhaps it's worth it to you to keep paying the extra $40 / month so you can pretend you were right. No skin off my nose either way.
I moved to T-Mobile (from Verizon) late last year, it has been fantastic. A little worse coverage outside cities but I finally have a bill that is the same month to month, even when traveling internationally... ANYONE who travels internationally should without question use T-Mobile just because of the free international data aspect (it's a lower speed, you can opt to may more for a faster data rate but even the lower speed is pretty good).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had a call from them about three weeks ago, out of the blue. They offered to change my plan to add two more GB for $10 less/month. My big concern was that it would reset my contract date, and I'd be on the hook for another two years, but nope, nothing else changes. I'm not super-happy with their pricing, I'm paying through the nose for phones, tablets, and mobile hotspot, but at least it all works.
wtf? does t-mobile have to run an ad campaign encouraging verizon customers to call in to verizon to save money?
Late last year, my daughters ran our 6GB family plan to very near the limit. Just as it was about to exceed the allotment, Verizon sent me a text message offering to increase it to 10GB for no charge, which I accepted. The only problem now is that my daughters are using all of the 10GB.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
If stories like these didn't get posted on here, then you couldn't post pretentious douchbag posts about how much better you are than us plebs. We don't care you aren't American and we don't care you use tmobile.
When will Verizon boost its DSL speeds?
45 a month for prepaid everything except data. Put it on autopay and get 1 GB a month and unlimited everything else. 4G speeds. for $20 you get a 3 GB bridge plan that lasts up to 3 months. Do the math and you end up with something like 2 GB a month, unlim everything else for around $53 a month. That is what I do.
Mark
Living in a highly urban area, I have the 250MB plan and only use Wi-Fi. Haven't even used more than half of it in the 5 months I've had it. Article doesn't mention it.
Not trying to troll but I hardly use 250 MB of data on my android tablet. I guess people like taking selfies and uploading them to Facebook and Instagram. On a more serious note my Verizon flip phone has bad reception in residential neighborhoods. Never had a problem with using my brother's Boost Mobile USA. I guess Verizon doesn't have lots of towers in the suburbs. I actually might switch to Boost Mobile.
... sure enough, the guy at Verizon, via chat, said the discounts just came out today.
Thanks, /.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Tracfone uses Verizon's CDMA network where I live. TF used to have pretty crappy phones but the "bring yer own fone" program works for some phones and they just started selling a Moto-e phone which isn't that bad. Yes, it's third world cellphone but for the price, it does it for me.
you can save even more, off your cell phone bill, and off aspirin and/or booze that is needed whenever you'd have to call verizon or open a verizon billing statement, by switching to a competitor like tmobile or a 3rd party reseller that uses that same verizon network.
I won't hold my breath for this to be extended to us prepaid folks on Verizon, who are still treated with the same suspicion and distain as drug dealers and the homeless.
Citation: when I make a call, I first have to listen to "The time remaining for this call is... unlimited." If it's unlimited, why bother saying anything? Oh, that's right; how else to express their derision and lack of respect for someone that deigned to opt-out of an overly-expensive multi-year contract than to make them feel like low-rent trash with every call.
Land area of France: 640,679 sq km
Land area of U.S.A.: 9,826,675 sq km ---- even removing Alaska (1,717,854 sq km) one still has a much larger area to cover
Population density of France: 119.37
Population density of U.S.A.: 34.06
It's not surprising that a service which requires one to build infrastructure is more expensive in the U.S. than in less densely populated countries --- and that's w/ a significant portion of the country still not having service.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
...so they can kiss my bits.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I was surprised when they called me last week offering to double my data plan from 2GB to 4GB at the same price. I asked the lady why they didn't just upgrade me automatically, but she didn't have a good answer - something nonsensical like "because that's the way we have to do it". This is the second time they have doubled my data plan, but I'm certain they didn't ask me last time - it just showed up with a notification message.
I almost told her "No" because I was concerned it was a phishing scam - I didn't recognize the phone number, there was lots of noise in the background on the call, and the idea that they would have to call me first seemed unlikely. But it seems to have turned out OK, the extra data was added a few days later with no other effects.
Use your phone in data-only mode and ditch all the high dollar plans. Since Verizon allows moving 4G SIM card between devices, activate a SIM on an IPAD like device and then transfer that SIM into your phone. Use Google hangouts to place and receive phone calls and texts....my monthly bill is $32
I got an automated text message about a month ago for this, where Verizon doubled our data for free.
Land area of France: 640,679 sq km
Land area of U.S.A.: 9,826,675 sq km ---- even removing Alaska (1,717,854 sq km) one still has a much larger area to cover
Population density of France: 119.37
Population density of U.S.A.: 34.06
Land area of Finland: 338,424 sq km
Population density of Finland: 18
We have cellphone plans with 200 minutes of talk, 200 SMS messages, and unlimited data at "up to" 50Mbps for 20euro/month. BTW, in rural Finland 400km north of Helsinki, I have unlimited (no capacity limits, no blocked ports, etc.) 100Mbps symmetric fiber to the house at home, and it costs 42euro/month.
Blithering about population density is a poor self-justification for getting ripped off.
Perhaps also showing population density differences for some major US cities vs Paris might help illustrate more of the point.
My guess is that most US cities have much higher population densities, which also makes deploying cellular networks more expensive (more towers are needed as each tower can only support a maximum number of people).
Each cell tower can cover 50km (at 3G, I believe 4G has a shorter range), but in cities, they turn the signal strength all the way down and overload the number of cells to cover the number of people.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
that gets me unlimited 20/5 mb/s LTE where i live. it's less than half of that (9â) for 9GB at 4/2 mbits (with unlimited 64 kbit/s after those 9gb). don't you have (the service provider) Three in the UK?
I have a 2GB/mo 450min 100 texts plan that costs me 87$ a month. Its crazy and I hate it. unfortunately I have to stick with Verizon as they are the only ones that offer decent reception in my area
I have 4GB of shared data on a shared everything plan. I got a call from Verizon months ago informing me that the price was going down. They asked if I wanted to pay the same price and go to a bigger data plan (6GB, I think), or if I wanted to save money and keep the 4GB plan. I opted to keep the 4GB plan.
Thus, my PERSONAL experience is that Verizon contacted me about the change.
Disclaimer: I work for Verizon, but at the time did not get the Verizon Wireless discount. I doubt this affected my treatment, but it is possible, I suppose.
I see the goon squad are out in force
Here at my work camp in North Korea I can get 10Gb of data and unlimited voice and texting for $6 a month. You americans and your cell service suck! Also i get free food and clothing. and i only have to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. suck it!
You fail in your response to address the size of the area to be covered. If the US was half the size of Texas (read: Finland... and to save you the trouble, Texas is 696,241 km), infrastructure could have been finished years ago. Size matters, in this instance, and in bed. :)