It is really no surprise – the carriers are there to make money and lots of it…everybody, including T-Mobile, are not giving us anything for free, nor are the carriers our friends, out to do what is best for the customer. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look into the upcoming changes this October 16 to Verizon’s EDGE and MORE Everything programs. Verizon will try to keep MORE while they EDGE it past us and hope that nobody notices. Carriers do not want to subsidize our increasing more expensive devices and will do anything – like dangle unlimited data – to get us to switch to a plan where we finance our own device over a two-year period. In the end, the customer pays for the entire device and the carrier simply holds the ‘mortgage’ until it is paid off.
According to our source, Verizon is looking to bump their current 20 payments to 24 payments – if you are strictly concerned about the amount of your monthly payment/bill, then you should be happy for the decrease…Total of device divided by 24, rather than 20. But they will also bump up the percentage from 60 to 75 that you must pay off on your current device before you will be allowed to upgrade. So if you upgrade often, then this is not good news for your group. Below are the changes to Verizon EDGE:
The number of payments is increasing from 20 months to 24 months – Customers must now pay off 75-percent (was 60-percent) of their current phone for the privilege to upgrade – or customers can upgrade after 18 months (12 months before change), which ends up being the 75-percent – 500MB to 8GB plans now receive a $15 per line discount with EDGE, which was $10 previously – and 8GB and above plans still receive the $25 discount, which amounts to no change.
Verizon’s MORE Everything plan will also see some tweaks – Verizon will offer a new plan for $20 that will give you unlimited talk and text with 500MB of data…with $15 per 250MB overage and this will be eligible for the EDGE discount. The $60 plan will give you 1GB of data with unlimited talk and text…$15 per 500MB overage and includes the hotspot option and a $15 EDGE discount. The $75 plan ups your data to 2GB with unlimited talk and text…$15 per 1GB overage and also includes the hotspot and a $15 EDGE discount.
Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know what you think of Verizon’s October 16 changes…as always, we would love to hear from you.