If you’ve had cell phone service with any carrier for a number of years, you’re probably familiar with the idea of activation fees and upgrade fees, at least, if you’re the person who owns the account and are privy to this kind of information. If you’re merely a user on the account you probably had no idea they exist as you likely aren’t the ones paying for the bill, or at the very least had no idea what they cost. Some carriers have done away with fees for activating new lines of service or upgrading existing ones, some other carriers like Verizon Wireless still implement them. For those of you that are already Verizon customers or are thinking about switching to their network at some point down the line, it should be noted that Verizon Wireless is raising their activation and upgrade fees starting on February 5th.
Activation fees and upgrade fees are nothing new, they’ve been around for the better part of a decade and for some carriers they may never go away. This is a good reason to always be aware of what these fees are with your chosen carrier so you aren’t hit with any surprises when you go to either add new lines of service or upgrade any existing lines when picking up a new phone or switching to a new plan. For the activation fees, Verizon is altering the price to $40 up from $35, which doesn’t sound like much as it’s only $5. This can start to rack up though if your activating multiple lines of service and you’re factoring this cost into the overall price you’re paying up front for devices, accessories and anything else.
For those who are already on Verizon Wireless and will merely be upgrading to new devices or plans after Feb. 5th, upgrade fees will be jumping up from $30 to $40. It may seem odd that Verizon is raising the prices for upgrades $10 instead of $5, but they likely want to keep the prices the same for both sets of customers among other unknown reasons. As to why they exist in the first place, it has always been the notion that they help offset operational costs that Verizon has. This may not be a big deal to many customers, but it’s still worth mentioning so they know what costs are associated with activation and upgrade changes to their plans.