The holidays are all about giving, and Verizon wants to “give” as much as they want to help you do the same. Yesterday Verizon Wireless announced a slew of Black Friday deals with savings on tons of different devices like smartphones, headphones, and other mobile related products, but they also announced the capability to actually gift the data needed to use some of those mobile devices to their full potential. As of now, Verizon Wireless subscribers can give the gift of data to anyone they wish for a nice holiday surprise. This seems like an odd thing to allow, but when you think about it there are plenty of people who could use a little extra data on their plan.
To gift someone data, it will cost whoever is doing the gifting a $10 charge, which shows up on their next monthly phone bill following the purchase. That $10 gets you, or rather the person you’re gifting it to an additional 1GB of data on their plan (“giving a gig”). Verizon doesn’t explicitly state that recipients need to be on the same plan to receive the gift, so anyone can send 1GB of data to anyone else regardless of being on separate accounts it seems like, which makes for a nifty and quick little present for friends and family members.
Verizon has two methods to complete this process for subscribers, including through the updated Verizon messages app which started rolling out as of yesterday following the initial announcement, and through the My Account page at the Verizon website. Both options allow the sender to attach a personal message to the gift, for example, “Happy Holidays” or “Best Wishes,” or virtually anything you desire. For the recipient, redeeming the free 1GB of data is fairly simple and the data can be claimed through a text message no matter which method was used by the sender, however, if the 1GB of data was gifted through the website, the recipient can redeem the data offer through their own My Account page if they choose to. Verizon doesn’t list any sort of time frame for how long they’ll be allowing subscribers to gift data, but as this is a holiday promotion it’s likely that it may only last through the holidays.