Verizon Wireless positions itself as a premium service. They have the biggest 4G LTE footprint, but they also seem to cost more across the board. For people that depend on reliable phone and data service for their work, the extra price is often worth it. However, Verizon just announced a price drop for many of their data plans.
From their press release, Verizon puts it this way:
Beginning Thursday [2/5/15], Verizon’s MORE Everything plans with data allowances of 1GB to 3GB (or from $40 to $60 per month) will include 1GB of additional data for the same price. A new $70 plan with 6GB will be available. […] Verizon is also adding new 12GB, 14GB, and 16GB options to its MORE Everything plans for customers with greater appetites for data and all that it enables, like streaming video or sharing large files.
But really, this is a $10 price drop if you are happy with your current data limits. This graphic from Recode summarizes it best:
However, the real reason I am mentioning all this is that existing Verizon customers must opt in to this “new” plan to get the savings. This a potential $120 a year savings without changing your behavior, but you won’t get it automatically!
To save $10 every month (or get an increased data allowance at your current price), either call customer service or log into your Verizon Wireless account online and pick the option to change your plan. You will be told that your existing plan is “no longer available” and that you must choose a new plan. Verify that your new monthly bill is $10 less than before (excluding taxes and fees).
Side note: If you just want to take advantage of Verizon’s good voice coverage, you can use the Page Plus Prepaid MVNO which uses Verizon towers but may not have the same roaming agreements in certain areas. You can get a Pay-as-you-go plan for as little as $10 every 120 days. They offer 4G LTE now as well, it ends up being big savings for single plans but less so for family plans with multiple lines. If you’re ending a Verizon contract and are still happy with your “old” phone, this may be something worth considering.
Side note 2: Oh, and don’t forget to check if you can get an employee or student discount with just your e-mail address.
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We have Verizon and I would love to get our bill down. We are grandfathered into an older plan that we did years ago during a promotion where they offered double data for a given price. So we have two phones with 700 minutes of calling, each with 4 GB of data, at the (old) 2 GB price. Our total charges are about $130 plus taxes and fees our monthly bill is about $140. I just looked at a comparable data plan (which admittedly has unlimited calling and text) with 8 GB of total shared data, and the cost is $85+$40+$40 ($40 for each line) or $165 before taxes and fees. : (
Thanks for the tip though–I did just check for an employee discount and it says I can get an 18% discount on our access fees, which is $80 per month, so that should get my bill down around $14 per month. I should have checked that out before, but better late than never.
Andy, if you are out of contract and have phones that you’re currently satisfied with, verizon will give you a $25 per line “month-to-month” discount if you sign up for a 10GB or larger data plan. So, your $40 access charge for each line drops to $15. All of their advertising indicates that this discount is only available if you sign up for the edge plan and make montly payments on your phone (yuck), but it works the same if you bring your own phone that is no longer under contract.
I have 6 smartphones and one dumbphone on a 10GB More Everything plan and my bill is about $200/month (they even let me use my 15% employee discount against the data plan cost). The hardest part about this discount is finding someone at verizon who knows that it exists.
I have 3 smart phones and 1 iPad. 2 of the smart phones are new and on the Edge program as well as the iPad ( although the iPad doesn’t get the $25 credit per month). I get the 20% employee discount and I have the 15GB for $110 per month plan. I pay over $320 per month. How are you paying $200 per month with 7 lines?
Like I mentioned above, all of our phones are out of contract, all were purchased outright via ebay, Swappa, amazon, etc. Verizon offers a “month-to-month” customer discount for people who are on the More Everything plan of 10GB or larger and not under contract of $25 per line on smartphones and $10 per line on dumbphones. (This is feature code 80494 if you have an employee add it to your account) So, here’s how it boils down.
1 x $80 x 0.85 = $68 (10 GB data package with 15% employee discount)
6 x ($40-$25) = $90 ($40 access fee on each smarthphone, minus the $25 per line discount)
1 x ($30-$10) = $20 ($30 access fee on dumbphone, minus the $10 per line discount)
Total: $178 + misc taxes/fees brings it to $203/month.
More info on the month-to-month discount here:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29255178-Pricing-Customer-action-required-to-get-new-off-contract-discount
Thanks for post Johnathon, just saved $10 on my phone bill by switching to GEICO, I mean Verizon new phone.
PagePlus service is good, but the customer service & activation process is awful. Call center in India (you can request a US call center if the problem is beyond help from India), and they seem to not understand porting numbers very well. When I had the service activated finally, there were no issues with call quality. You definitely want to just put the top-up cards on automatic refill so you don’t have to deal with customer service.
Another option to take advantage of Verizon’s good voice coverage is Ting. They use Sprint towers where available and fallback on Verizon network when needed. In SF bay area I notice this when we visit remote parks or drive along the coast. Their customer service is excellent. They got the highest “Reader Score” in the latest Consumer Reports (February 2015). If you decide to try them out please use my link to get a $25 credit: https://zei5n62l5h5.ting.com/
I’ve been with them for over a year, ask me any questions.
just looked it up. four phones with unlimited text, unlimited calling and 2gb of data each… omg that is expensive. 245 a month! what the blue blazes? edge apparently means they cut you deeply each month.
Thanks! Just saved $10 a month.
They have been offering 15mb of data since october , however i see that option is no longer available. It would actually cost me $30 a month to upgrade to 16 mb
the 15mb plan is for $100 a month, no longer available
Last month, 10GB was $80 and 15GB was $100. Now 10GB is $100 and 15GB is gone (but would likely be $125 in the new price structure). Both would be a 25% increase.
When I did the change it showed the old data package (3gb, $60/mo discounted to $48) with my discount but the new package (3gb, $50/mo) didn’t reflect it.
The totals at the bottom of the screen indicated that my monthly price was increasing from $128 to $130.
Interesting – seems like it’s a little bit more of getting more for same value as opposed to saving money. Unless you wanted to use that extra data each month, then you would be saving that money and less restricted with data!
It’s nice to see that all the competitiveness in the wireless market is starting to bring some pressure on prices downwards, or introducing things like “data rollover” to get more value for your money.
Jon
It seems that Verizon is playing some tricks. Those new rates are actually higher than the ones that were available to me last month. I’ve got unlimited text/voice with 80 Gigs. Maybe it was due to the fact that I have been a long long time customer. Knowing Verizon, this is probably a way to recapitalize on legacy customers, who have been playing lower rates. And maintaining new customers by giving the apperance. lower rates.
I came across this over the weekend while checking out my bill. I started a chat to see what I could do to lower my monthly bill and the rep immediately started pushing the Edge plan for someone whose family had updated three phones in the last four months. I opted out of the Edge plan when buying the new phones because it would have cost me more money then, and signing on to Edge would have required us to buy new phones. The rep said I had “no other options” to lower my bill – until I pointed out the new lower rates staring at me from the screen.
I would have preferred to stay at 1GB/mo at $30 down from $40… but at the time i didn’t know of the $10 reduction and here’s how they got me to upgrade…
for the past yr or more I’ve always averaged 500 to never more than 750MB/mo… all of a sudden i start getting vzw alerts warning me that I will exceed my 1GB allowance before the next cycle; then I get a notice to upgrade my allowance from 1 to 2GB for FREE, which I accepted. Now I imagine my usage will suddenly fall back to 500 to 750MB/mo.
@Shelby – I’m pretty sure you can just downgrade back to the 1GB level by contacting them or going online.
I am still grandfathered into unlimited data. I have my parents on a family plan, I wonder if I’ll be able to apply the discount to their lines without harming mine? I can’t risk losing unlimited as I use upwards of 20/gb a month
I just spent over an hour on a chat on My Verizon. All I wanted was to get the $10 off and keep everything the same on my plan. They offered several other deals before I finally made it clear what I wanted. Frustrating, but I got it. Glad I was given the information, too bad it didn’t come from Verizon.
Thanks for the info…the CSR dropped my plan 15$ for BOTH lines total of $30. We are still receiving the state worker discount of 15% as well. I don’t know how it happened and I dont know what buttons she pushed. We are paying $97 for two iphones sharing 2GB of data….we were paying $128 before….YMMV….thanks Jonathan.