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Verizon Businesses The Almighty Buck

Verizon Boosts Price of Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans By $20 (theverge.com) 176

nicholasjay writes: In November, Verizon Wireless is going to start charging its customers with the grandfathered "unlimited data" plans an extra $20 for the data. This is obviously an attempt to get people off of the old unlimited data plans. Even though a Verizon spokesperson confirmed the change, I'm hoping they won't go through with this plan — but right now I'm weighing all my options.
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Verizon Boosts Price of Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans By $20

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  • by nicholasjay ( 921044 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:03AM (#50693131)

    This is being reported all over. Here's a link from CNN Money.

    http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/0... [cnn.com]

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Went over to Sprint from Verizon recently because they were offering cheaper unlimited data then my limited data plan with Verizon. When i was signing up the sales person mentioned that they used Verizon's towers as backup for their network with no roaming charges. So far I havent seen a spec of difference between the two carriers in terms of quality (spotty areas near where I live are spotty for both carriers) but I have yet to travel out to any real rural areas or do any real travel with it.

      Of course Spri

  • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:06AM (#50693151) Journal

    Those bastards!

    Grandfathers are usually on fixed incomes.

  • I'm not even in an area where I have good service with T-Mobile (it's actually not that bad although I'm in a remote area with less service coverage than most people would desire- ie no 3G/4G/5G) and yet I still stick to T-Mobile. Verizon is the equivalent of Comcast in the cellular industry. They've done all sorts of horrible things from cooperation with the NSA to crippling phone lines and landline internet services to prevent users from switching *back* to services they are legally required to offer (ie

    • Seriously? Who uses Verizon?

      More than 1/3rd of the US population.

      • They're the only provider with decent coverage in rural areas. If I wasn't on Verizon, I'd have spotty or no signal every time I drive outside the city limits (which is often.) I hate Verizon, but they're my only choice.
        • by chmod a+x mojo ( 965286 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @12:23PM (#50694245)

          U.S. Cellular roams off of Verizon towers, and vice versa. I switched about 2 years ago from Verizon, where I had the grandfathered unlimited data plan... and had been a Verizon customer for 10+ years, when they wouldn't let me upgrade phones without either losing my unlimited data plan or paying $600+ for a phone.

          U.S. Cellular _IS_ a little spottier in some very remote areas of my state, and roams on VZW towers anywhere ~1-2 hours north of my hometown, but otherwise is pretty comparable to VZW coverage... with a ~30+% reduction in my bill every month.

        • Not really... You can always sign up for a cheaper provider that allows roaming onto Verizon's network. But personally, I'd try carrying a portable signal booster and see if that improves the signal enough for another carrier to function in those areas.

  • by enjar ( 249223 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:13AM (#50693205) Homepage

    "Even though a Verizon spokesperson confirmed the change, I'm hoping they won't go through with this plan"

    I hate to break it to you, but they are going through with this plan.

    • In the past companies have reversed their decision based on public outcry; it's not unprecedented.

      • by enjar ( 249223 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:35AM (#50693391) Homepage

        Verizon has also been shown to not give a damn.
        I'd expect all the other telcos to follow suit pretty much immediately.

        • Exactly. Verizon would likely prefer losing these customers rather than trying to appease them. The whole point of this action and all the previous ones is to get people to cancel their contract.

      • Only an immensely tiny minority of their current customers can still have these grandfathered plans. Even if all of those users left, Verizon would still have more than 130 million subscribers.

        • Only an immensely tiny minority of their current customers can still have these grandfathered plans. Even if all of those users left, Verizon would still have more than 130 million subscribers.

          Assuming that's true - and I have no reason to doubt - then the amount of money Verizon stands to gain off these users is relatively small and the only reason for Verizon to dick them over is simply because they can.

          • Sure, that is the whole point. They are purposefully making the terms onerous to get peope to cancel their contract.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Yes but the 'public' consisting of a relative small number of cellular customers who have a plan that has not been offered in five years or so is a pretty small public. Even if its a public of atypically noisy early adopters.

      • In the past companies have reversed their decision based on public outcry; it's not unprecedented.

        My guess is that Verizon loses money on the handful of grandfathered plans that remain. You can stomp your feet and pout but it's like the old "sure we're losing money on each item but we'll make up for it on volume."

        Getting people to quit is the *point* of this move. They want people to quit so that they stop wasting their attention and resources on a handful of entitled customers that they no longer want.

    • TIL Darth Vader works at Verizon: I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further.

      I always kinda expected it because once I had a phone that didn't work well(dropped 50% of calls within a few minutes), yet Verizon wouldn't bow out of the contract. Verizon made me pay for a phone that didn't work because contracts only benefited them and not the customer.
      • by enjar ( 249223 )

        Exactly. I gave up on the stupid contracts years ago, when pay as you go phones were only marketed to criminals and old people. Buying a cheap GoPhone and plugging the SIM into an iPhone I picked up cheap worked just fine, all you had to do was change the APN, that took two seconds. When AT&T finally figured out what was going on circa 2013 and jacked up the rate for pay as you go, I happily jumped ship to Ting. Sure, I had to pay for the phone, but at this point I've saved quite literally thousands of

  • BAHAHAHA! GOODBYE! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I've been hanging around on my old grandfather'd Verizon plan for ages because of the unlimited data. I had been recently considering switching to Google Fi. This just dropped a 50 ton weight on the other end of the see-saw I've been balancing on. Good bye and good riddance Verizon!

  • Used to mean the price was the same too. AT&T has been telling people they're tethering on their unlimited plan to boot them (even though there is no proof in many cases), Verizon is upping the price of their unlimited grandfathered plan to get people to switch to a more lucrative plan for the company, and then there are T-Mobile and Sprint. T-Mobile changed their unlimited policy to not raise when they throttled data and only during heavy load times, and Sprint has unlimited everything for like what $
  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:35AM (#50693385) Journal

    Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

    Verizon: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

    Kind of hard to tell them apart if you ask me.

  • I was a founding joiner of Sprint. Worked for Qualcomm, got a good deal on a Qualcomm candy bar. Anyway, I had unlimited data and a pretty good price on Sprint for about 10 years. Then they let me know they are moving me to a 3 gig plan and I get to pay a bit more for it. I said no thanks and moved to AT&T. That was 10 years ago. Sprint has spent time and money trying to woo people like me back. I think of the 1000's of $ that Sprint did not make off of me in an attempt to gouge every last cent

  • My wife and I were on the AT&T unlimited data plan which got grandfathered once they dropped that plan. AT&T was very interested in pushing people off of that plan which they achieved by throttling people who used too much data. My wife received notice that her data was going to be throttled for the remainder of the billing period for going over around 3 GB. This happened right around when T-Mobile started their "un-carrier" plan which included unlimited data, voice and text. We left AT&T shortl

  • My phone is paid for by the company I work for, so data is Someone Else's Problem for now. My wife's phone is paid for by us, and she's been on the AT&T unlimited plan for ages. Every single time she's done equipment swaps, upgrades, any plan changes whatsoever, they very subtly try to sneak her out of the unlimited data plan. She's extremely savvy when it comes to this stuff, but it's amazing how slick they are when describing the change, and once you sign for the changes, you lose access to the old pl

  • Google Fi is pretty darned awesome. It doesn't have unlimited data, but it's a flat $10/GB (only pay for what you use), and you pay the same rate roaming in 60 countries, albeit at 3G speeds.
  • ...in the ass.

    They claim that less than 1% of their customers still have unlimited data. As if nobody remembers this time last year when they were talking about throttling grandfathered LTE service. Let me see if I can find the info from then...There it is. In August of 2014, they claimed that 20% of their customers still had unlimited data and 95% of those customers use less than 5 gigs of data.

    So I'm supposed to believe that they've managed to cull 95% of their grandfathered customers in the last year?

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