Verizon: we're gonna make you a deal you can't refuse

[Mtneer]

I'm pretty sure the grandkids of Milo Minderbinder now work at Verizon. They send me a text that essentially said $700 credit for trading in my iPhone 8, which I bought in 2017, and renewing the contract if I act right away.

I'm skeptical but yesterday we're at Tractor Supply in Lafayette and the Verizon store is blocks away so what the hell. My wife and I go in, fully expecting that we're going to get a bait-and-switch. Dude pulls up our account and says yep, it's legit. And if you renew your contract, your monthly rate will go DOWN by $30/month.

So you're going to give me $700 for an old cell phone that might be worth $250 on the used market and then cut another $720 off our contract over the next 2 years? There had to be a Catch-22 but we couldn't find it.

Now have an iPhone 12 Pro in hand (cost me $300) and wife has a 12 Pro Max on order (no trade in deal but it's what she wants). FWIW she was a Samsung S7 girl but it was crapping out and no longer supported. She decided the new Samsungs are lame so switching OS is a big deal.

[blacklabel]

What's your monthly bill? I have a hard time beating $47 a month for Xfinity (VZW towers) and $400 for a mid level Samsung phone.

[FoxtArt]

I do under $30/month per phone for total wireless (also verizon towers) and BYOP. Which I just get refurbs off Amazon. I think that's with something like a 15GB data cap. So I'm curious about the monthly bill too. About the only minor annoyance is any crap service that requires sms messaging to enroll (and uses email to text as a backend) won't work with the small guys. Outside of that I've never seen the big guys be competitive with some of their subs.

[MrPrena]

Thanks. I am going to look into total wireless.
I have boost and it is no longer owned by Sprint after m&a.

I was thinking about cricket as well.

[colorider]

It’s all about getting you to sign a 2 year contract. Usually with a nice phone payoff fee if you break the contract.

[mahkcod]

you might check mint mobile as well. We have been using them the last year been paying $15 a month per phone.

[funkymonkey1111]

I'm pretty sure the grandkids of Milo Minderbinder now work at Verizon. They send me a text that essentially said $700 credit for trading in my iPhone 8, which I bought in 2017, and renewing the contract if I act right away.

I'm skeptical but yesterday we're at Tractor Supply in Lafayette and the Verizon store is blocks away so what the hell. My wife and I go in, fully expecting that we're going to get a bait-and-switch. Dude pulls up our account and says yep, it's legit. And if you renew your contract, your monthly rate will go DOWN by $30/month.

So you're going to give me $700 for an old cell phone that might be worth $250 on the used market and then cut another $720 off our contract over the next 2 years? There had to be a Catch-22 but we couldn't find it.

Now have an iPhone 12 Pro in hand (cost me $300) and wife has a 12 Pro Max on order (no trade in deal but it's what she wants). FWIW she was a Samsung S7 girl but it was crapping out and no longer supported. She decided the new Samsungs are lame so switching OS is a big deal.

the catch 22 is you signed a contract.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I have 2 phones. My primary phone with unlimited data is on AT&T. My spare phone is on Ting. The spare costs me about $7/mo since it's really just for emergency or privacy (it has the phone number I provide to travel companies and overseas trips and is kept on airplane mode with wifi most of the time). Since I also use DirecTV, the AT&T account gives me free access to HBO (which I don't use much) and HBOMax (which I am using sporadically). I expect it will get even more use if Crunchyroll is rolled into HBOMax as some media observers are predicting.

I used to enjoy the free use of AT&T wifi hotspots when I was traveling but I honestly haven't seen any of those in ages. Then again, I tend to turn wifi off when I'm away from home because I don't want my phone trying to bounce between wifi and 4G or to latch onto hotspots set up to sniff out your info. If I was trying to optimize my budget, I expect I could drop DirecTV, shift to a single phone on Ting (or even both phones on Ting), and subscribe to one or more streaming services and still save somewhere in the neighborhood of $70-100 per month. I haven't done this because I still enjoy DirecTV's variety of options and occasionally watching a movie on HBO or HBOMax and there was convenience (particularly when I was traveling a lot) in knowing I had unlimited bandwidth available via my phone.

[Scanker19]

The catch might be is that the $700 is a bill credit applied over 24 months, and if you pay that phone off early you have to pay full price.

[Jer]

I used to think those types of deals were good too. After a year of $12 per month TOTAL for two lines on Xfinity Mobile (Verizon network, as stated already) I laugh at such offers. The same usage even off-contract cost us nearly $80/mo. The difference is $68/mo so at 2 years to get the "deal" would cost me $1,632 extra just for service. Even I can do that math.

[blacklabel]

you might check mint mobile as well. We have been using them the last year been paying $15 a month per phone.

I tried Mint but the service was horrific. During peak times my data usage wasn't even second on the list. Talking dial up speeds.

[CO Retriever]

I used to think those types of deals were good too. After a year of $12 per month TOTAL for two lines on Xfinity Mobile (Verizon network, as stated already) I laugh at such offers. The same usage even off-contract cost us nearly $80/mo. The difference is $68/mo so at 2 years to get the "deal" would cost me $1,632 extra just for service. Even I can do that math.

Agreed - We have 4 lines now and pay slightly more per month with Xfinity than we did for 2 lines with Verizon.

[MrPrena]

Still checking out on MINT and TOTAL mobile.

biggest concern is the
1. mobile device compatibilities and approved list. Boost has their own approved lists from Sprint back then.
2. wifi call like xfinity? or pure mobile network rented?


I currently have boost for $30/mo and i think it is time to change. sprint no longer owns boost after M&A with TMUS.

[Bailey Guns]

Verizon is offering an unlimited package for about $11 more per month than I pay on their 2gb plan. My service would cost about $51 per month as opposed to the current $40. I'm pretty limited in my choices here, too. The upside is, with unlimited 4g data I can use my phone as a hotspot and cancel my AT&T internet service that costs $60. So I'd net a $49 per month savings.

AT&T only offers 18mbps internet here. The 4g service I have was giving me just a hair under that...about 16.5mbps during streaming from Netflix and YouTube. It might be a worthwhile upgrade.

[hurley842002]

Verizon is offering an unlimited package for about $11 more per month than I pay on their 2gb plan. My service would cost about $51 per month as opposed to the current $40. I'm pretty limited in my choices here, too. The upside is, with unlimited 4g data I can use my phone as a hotspot and cancel my AT&T internet service that costs $60. So I'd net a $49 per month savings.

AT&T only offers 18mbps internet here. The 4g service I have was giving me just a hair under that...about 16.5mbps during streaming from Netflix and YouTube. It might be a worthwhile upgrade.

Verizon's highest unlimited plan offers 30GB's of 4G, but after that it slows down to 600kbps, so depending on how much streaming you are doing per month, you could blow thru that fairly quickly.

[Gman]

I currently have boost for $30/mo and i think it is time to change. sprint no longer owns boost after M&A with TMUS.
Yeah, Dish owns Boost Mobile now. I think they have access to T-Mobile's infrastructure for 7 years as part of the deal.

[MrPrena]

Yeah. I had to do network reset (Dial ##72786#) 3x this year after M&A. Of course boost did not tell us this and I almost bought a new phone thinking something went wrong.

[Bailey Guns]

Verizon's highest unlimited plan offers 30GB's of 4G, but after that it slows down to 600kbps, so depending on how much streaming you are doing per month, you could blow thru that fairly quickly.

I'm using about 60 - 75 gb of data per month on my AT&T plan. I'm still on the fence with the swap but that's something to consider.

[Jer]

Thanks. I am going to look into total wireless.
I have boost and it is no longer owned by Sprint after m&a.

I was thinking about cricket as well.

Why isn't Xfinity Mobile a consideration? Do you not have any of their other products like internet service?

[BushMasterBoy]

Tracfone $88 a year. Renew every 90 days. I live on corporals rations.

[MrPrena]

Why isn't Xfinity Mobile a consideration? Do you not have any of their other products like internet service?

I do have their internet service, but our plan cannot be integrated with other plan and I will most likely keep this plan forever.

I just checked that xfinity has a prepaid plans. I just need to put imei # to see my phone is compatible.
Prepaid plan was/is probably the biggest factor.

[Jer]

I do have their internet service, but our plan cannot be integrated with other plan and I will most likely keep this plan forever.

I just checked that xfinity has a prepaid plans. I just need to put imei # to see my phone is compatible.
Prepaid plan was/is probably the biggest factor.

To qualify for Xfinity Mobile the only stipulation is that you are already a customer with at least one of their products. Since you have their internet you would qualify and I see no reason you'd need to change your current plan at all. In fact, they're billed separately and are seemingly entirely separate as best I can tell. The Xfinity internet just unlocks the ability to sign up for Xfinity Mobile. When I price compared Xfinity mobile was not only cheaper than prepaid (unless you throw the phone in a drawer and literally never use it but why even have one?) but quite a bit cheaper than those other post paid options you mentioned plus Xfinity uses VZW towers when not on WiFi. Not sure why anyone who qualifies for Xfinity Mobile would even consider the others unless you have some very specific use case in which case I'm curious for details. Like I said in a previous post, we pay $12/mo for our phones. Both phones. Period. Unlimited talk, text and the only thing you pay for is data.

My wife and I manage to stay under the 1GB shared data (she uses her phone sparingly and I work from home) so we have the cheapest option. If we exceed that 1GB of data one month it's $24 is all up to 2gb. If you're going to regularly use 3GB or less they have a plan for $30/mo. That's the one we signed up for because we regularly used like 4GB of data on VZW. I wish I had signed up for the 1GB sooner because we ran through months @ $30/mo where I was happing to be saving $50+ over VZW when we could have been saving like $70ish per month instead. You bounce around on those plans too if you want and if you exceed any of the plans it just automatically bills another $12 for the next 1GB for that month. I don't mean to sound like a commercial but it really is as good as it seems from someone who was skeptical about it over a year ago before we made the switch. Now my only regret is that we didn't do it sooner.

Once Pulse is built out in Loveland I'm going to have a difficult decision to make about our internet/mobile solution which is exactly why they're offering this at such a good rate for existing customers. Suddenly the Pulse gig (symmetrical... no bandwidth caps) internet for $75 doesn't seem like such a good deal if I get gig (download, 40 upload and 1TB cap per month) internet for $70 from Xfinity (got a sweet deal a while back) and then our mobile phones are $12 but only because we have both. Once Pulse is here we'd have to consider other mobile options to save $5 and I'm not sure it's worth it based on the other mobile options out there.

[MrPrena]

Thanks for the info.Will check it out as well.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Ting now has plans. Existing customers aren't forced to transition to the new plans but it doesn't look like new customers will have the choice of paying by the unit like their past system.

The new plans are Flex ($10/mo/phone with unlimited talk & text, $5/GB of shared data), Set 5 ($25/mo/phone with 5GB data on LTE/5G), and Unlimited (22 GB data on LTE/5G). They say your data doesn't get cut off but is reduced to 2G speeds after your monthly limit. All phones on the same account must use the same plan so you can't have one phone of Set 5 or Unlimited and a second phone on Flex without putting them on different accounts.

[Irving]

I need to check my data usage while working. At home it'd probably be easy to stay under 2gb a month, but when I'm working and using my phone as a Hotspot, I think I go over.

[Aloha_Shooter]

In their Ask Ting section of the community forums, one of their customers created a spreadsheet on Google Docs to estimate costs under the new plans (and even compare it to the old rates). You can put in your data usage month by month and see what plan is best for you.