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Verizon Plans $20 Upgrade Fee Even If You Pay Full Price For a Phone (macrumors.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to a memo leaked by MacRumors, Verizon is planning to introduce a new $20 upgrade fee starting next week. The new $20 flat rate charge will begin next Monday, April 4, and will be applied to smartphones purchased on a Device Payment financing plan, or at full retail price. The premium will also apply to those who take advantage of Apple's new iPhone Upgrade Program. Verizon cites "increasing support costs associated with customers switching their devices" as a reason for the new fees. The new fee is in addition to the existing $40 upgrade fee for customers renewing a two-year contract with a new device.
I will never go back to Verizon after having went over to T-mobile. Much better prices, free tethering/hotspot, Pandora doesn't count against my data cap (and soon Youtube too), and customer service that doesn't treat me like they're doing me a favor by letting me use their service.
All Verizon has is a good network, and even that is now irrelevant unless you live way out in the boonies (or travel there a lot).
AT&T similarly charges $15 per smartphone added or upgraded with AT&T Next, and "bring your own" devices. Sprint also charges an upgrade or activation fee up to $36 per device. T-Mobile does not have upgrade fees.
You can always tell who's behind in the market, can't you?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Went to Ting, which subcontracts with Tmobile in my case. I average 14 bucks a month. Perfect for people like me who have light phone usage and rare data usage. I hate multi year contracts for anything.
In the UK, upgrade fees are unheard of. You're being ripped off.
I've always just bought my phone on my own because I have an inexpensive plan and put the SIM the new phone. Turn the new phone on and it just works. When I've needed a new SIM because the size changed I've just gotten a new one for the new phone and changed the SIM for my phone number on the website.
Verizon uses CDMA. There is no SIM card (except for the one used to provide LTE data, where applicable).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There are two main systems for providing cellular voice communication in the U.S.: GSM and CDMA. GSM, as used in most of the world, uses a SIM card to determine which cell towers it should connect through, and then uses a database that maps the SIM card's identifier to a subscriber account. CDMA uses an MEID, which is an identifier that is baked into the device itself (similar to an IMEI). The towers/billing systems then use a database that maps the device's MEID to an account number. As a result, your account is quite literally tied to a specific physical device, not to a card that can be moved from device to device.
To add further complexity, many CDMA-based devices do actually have a SIM card, but it is used exclusively for talking to the LTE portion of cell towers (or when roaming overseas) and is not used for primary voice communications or for 3G data.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Well...CDMA requires a record change at the carrier side, not just a SIM swap. So you have to call a 3rd-rate call center, repeat your phone number and personal identity info a half dozen times, half to a machine and half to a human, and talk to someone who's never even seen a non-GSM phone try to follow a script to find out the IMEI number of the new phone. They will fail at least once and may need to involve a supervisor. That costs them at least $1.30. The rest is pure profit.
You've identified the problem here. CDMA can be made to work with removable cards, but there aren't any providers in the US who choose to do it that way. Unsurprising, since there's nothing forcing them to do it that way, and this makes it more difficult for customers to switch phones or service providers.
Canadian French has a number of peculiarities and anachronisms compared to Parisian French, but the two dialects are as intelligible to the other as Australian English is to North American English.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wahoo as a native speaker of the Swiss version of French, I never had any trouble to talk with Quebec people or fail to understand them in a conversation (and I can tell you that I had lengthy workshop over the phone). Except from their weird usage of bonjour to say goodbye or their use of the French quatre-Vingt Dix to say nonante (ninety) and of course their funny accent, you get used to it.