Buying phone outright to preserve unlimited

[rsarno]

Firstly, is this still the case or has VZW changed it? That if i buy the phone outright at full cost, I will not need to change my current plan?

Assuming it is ... can someone tell me how it makes sense? I remember reading on here that a few folks were considering it, I just dont see how it is even remotely logical.


Right now we avg 2gig per month combined for my wife and I. If we change to the 4gb plan we save like $25 a month i think it is. $500 out of pocket for the upgrades to SG3

If we happen to not only go over our 2gb avg usage, but more than double it .. it will be an extra $15 for the next GB i think? Still a savings of $10 per month.

Now considering addition of LTE, and ability to tether my tablet for free ... im guessing ill use more data. But enough to warrant shelling out $1300 to pay for the 2 phones outright, in order to preserve my unlimited plan?

I just dont see how it adds up, im assuming im missing something. Does my monthly payments go down if i dont subsidize my phone cost into my plan?

What am i missing? $500 vs $1300 out of pocket, is quite a leap.

 

[svensett]

Nothing. Just that there are those of us that value our unlimited plans higher than you do, I suppose.

As hard as VZN is pushing this tiered data, and "encouraging" us to give up unlimited, I just have a funny feeling that voice and texts will become data in the future, and your $40 unlimited voice/txt will become and access fee. Then since you are using more data, you may have to bump up your data package.

All speculation of course, but I don't feel tiered data is a good thing going forward for me.

 

[Dingster1]

Yeah I just picked up a Razr on eBay. Not going to pay retail ever.

 

[dirkbonn]

Firstly, is this still the case or has VZW changed it? That if i buy the phone outright at full cost, I will not need to change my current plan?

Assuming it is ... can someone tell me how it makes sense? I remember reading on here that a few folks were considering it, I just dont see how it is even remotely logical.


Right now we avg 2gig per month combined for my wife and I. If we change to the 4gb plan we save like $25 a month i think it is. $500 out of pocket for the upgrades to SG3

If we happen to not only go over our 2gb avg usage, but more than double it .. it will be an extra $15 for the next GB i think? Still a savings of $10 per month.

Now considering addition of LTE, and ability to tether my tablet for free ... im guessing ill use more data. But enough to warrant shelling out $1300 to pay for the 2 phones outright, in order to preserve my unlimited plan?

I just dont see how it adds up, im assuming im missing something. Does my monthly payments go down if i dont subsidize my phone cost into my plan?

What am i missing? $500 vs $1300 out of pocket, is quite a leap.

The people who consistantly use 10+GBs of data or more per month find that paying full price for a phone in order to keep thier unlimited data plan, do indeed come out saving money. It's the low data users like you and me that find it's not worth paying full price for a phone because we don't use unough data to make it worthwhile.

There is no one plan that is best for everybody. It's the same with cars, women, and many other things too.

 

[Aokusman]

Not all phones cost that much and only a fool would buy at full retail from the carriers.

 

[Rachel A]

Not all phones cost that much and only a fool would buy at full retail from the carriers.

I respectfully disagree. I think there are folk out there who distrust sites like eBay and do not feel comfortable with Web only retailers like Amazon when it comes to purchasing a smartphone - a device that has the tenacity to have issues several months into its life.

Purchasing from a carrier, whilst a more expensive experience, does give these people the ability to take the phone into a store and utilize the warranty that the purchase there gave them.

There are many reasons why people make lots of decisions and to group a subset of them as 'fools' simply because you don't personally subscribe to their modus-operandi is somewhat disingenuous.

Peace of mind is often worth more that a few extra $ can ever offer.

 

[Clementine_3]

For some, like me, it's a wash either way. I have 3 Androids and 2 dumbphones on my family plan; 1400 minutes/no texting/unlimited data. If I switch to the new plan with 4GB shared data it will cost me around $50 more a month. That extra money pretty much negates the cost of paying full price for 3 phones and keeping unlimited data.
~$1800 to buy 3 new phones every 2 years
$50 x 24 = $1200 + $600 subsidized phones every 2 years = $1800
I plan to buy full retail and keep my unlimited. Data is the way of the future and 4GB's now may be fine but in a year from now that may turn into 10GB or 20GB, my bill could increase dramatically. I'm no fool but, for now at any rate, I will pay full retail and keep what I have.
Sure, I could dump the 2 dumbphones to pre-pay and knock $60 off the new plan rate per month (I may do that anyway) but I see no reason to switch everything around and jump through hoops just keep my bill the same and get less data. I refuse to pay the same or more for less. My math and principles tell me buying full retail is right for me.

 

[jhawkkw]

For some, like me, it's a wash either way. I have 3 Androids and 2 dumbphones on my family plan; 1400 minutes/no texting/unlimited data. If I switch to the new plan with 4GB shared data it will cost me around $50 more a month. That extra money pretty much negates the cost of paying full price for 3 phones and keeping unlimited data.
~$1800 to buy 3 new phones every 2 years
$50 x 24 = $1200 + $600 subsidized phones every 2 years = $1800
I plan to buy full retail and keep my unlimited. Data is the way of the future and 4GB's now may be fine but in a year from now that may turn into 10GB or 20GB, my bill could increase dramatically. I'm no fool but, for now at any rate, I will pay full retail and keep what I have.
Sure, I could dump the 2 dumbphones to pre-pay and knock $60 off the new plan rate per month (I may do that anyway) but I see no reason to switch everything around and jump through hoops just keep my bill the same and get less data. I refuse to pay the same or more for less. My math and principles tell me buying full retail is right for me.

^this
This is dead on in my opinion. With verizon moving to VoLTE in the next year or two, I foresee them putting all voice and texting service as part of the data package and significantly upping the rates. Then suddenly keeping unlimited will seem to have been worth it. Each text message sent or received though is small at about .1kb/message, while I'm not sure about voice, I know VoIP uses at least 64 kb/s. So a basic 700 minute family plan with 1000 sms messages would be approximately (64kb/s*60s/min*700min)/(1024kb/mb*1024mb/gb) = 2.56 GB for the minutes and 100 kb for the texts. And this has yet to include any actual internet usage on your phone. Suddenly that shared 2gb or 4gb data package would seem awfully small. And by the time this goes into effect, who's to say verizon doesn't raise the price of their tiers.

Then again, this could just be the conspiracy theorist in me

Edit: As a side note, You can plainly see how much of a rip off text messages are and how much verizon makes in profit on texting. .1kb/message, means that in order to use 1gb of data, you would need to send/receive (1024kb/mb*1024mb/gb*1gb)/.1kb/message = 10,485,760 messages.

 

[UncleMike]

I got my Galaxy Nexus from the Play Store last week, and will be dumping Verizon shortly, so the rest of this is mute point for me, but...

The problem with paying full retail for a phone, so you can avoid renewing your contract, so you can keep unlimited data, is that you've just paid full retail for a phone that's only usable on one carrier, who can (at any time) change their policy and no longer offer unlimited data to customers who are out of contract. You're basically paying an extra $300-400 NOW (per device), in exchange for what?... a non-binding promise that you'll be able to keep your unlimited data plan until... they change their mind? If you're not happy when that happens, where will you go with your shiny new Verizon-only phone?

 

[Clementine_3]

I could always sell my shiny new phones and recoup some of my money. Plus, I will be off contract and be free to move to another carrier or even go the pre-pay route. My plan isn't perfect but I see no reason to sign new 2 year agreements with Verizon so they can give me less service for more money. Just keeping my options open for the future. It may come back to bite me on the cost of the phones but I wont be paying ETF's on 3 lines either.

 

[GatorLCA]

For me and my business plan, I've tracked our Data and it's hardly anything, we actually have come closer going over on minutes than we would on data under our 8GB shared plan. I use the most data per month but recently most of my accounts (Supermarkets) have free Wi-Fi in the store. With ICS, it'll automatically connect when I'm in a store and I dont have to use my 4G. If Verizon goes to VoIP people will get around it by hooking up to a Wi-Fi hotspot so no harm there (there are always workarounds).

The other reason to go to this structure is you can have more than 5 lines on your account. Under the Business Plan structure I couldn't add more lines unless I went to a higher minute package ($120 more per mo). With the Shared data, I can add up to 10 devices to share the 8GB. This in turn saves more money and I can add either a line ($40) or a Tablet ($10). Plus Hotspot tethering is free instead of being $20 like it used to be.

I jsut don't see how people use 8-10GB per month via LTE. There are so many hotspots available that it would be more useful to use Wi-Fi than LTE. I connect to Wi-Fi whenever possible because it's faster and theoretically free.

For me, shared data saves my business money over the next 2 years until my contract is up.

 

[euph_22]

I respectfully disagree. I think there are folk out there who distrust sites like eBay and do not feel comfortable with Web only retailers like Amazon when it comes to purchasing a smartphone - a device that has the tenacity to have issues several months into its life.

Purchasing from a carrier, whilst a more expensive experience, does give these people the ability to take the phone into a store and utilize the warranty that the purchase there gave them.

There are many reasons why people make lots of decisions and to group a subset of them as 'fools' simply because you don't personally subscribe to their modus-operandi is somewhat disingenuous.

Peace of mind is often worth more that a few extra $ can ever offer.

If you buy a phone from Amazon, you still get the warranty serviced by Verizon. In some circumstances you can even get warranty service on used phones (they may not legally warranty phones bought through Ebay or craigslist, but if it's an obvious defect, you often times can still get an exchange).

 

[Aokusman]

For me and my business plan, I've tracked our Data and it's hardly anything, we actually have come closer going over on minutes than we would on data under our 8GB shared plan. I use the most data per month but recently most of my accounts (Supermarkets) have free Wi-Fi in the store. With ICS, it'll automatically connect when I'm in a store and I dont have to use my 4G. If Verizon goes to VoIP people will get around it by hooking up to a Wi-Fi hotspot so no harm there (there are always workarounds).

The other reason to go to this structure is you can have more than 5 lines on your account. Under the Business Plan structure I couldn't add more lines unless I went to a higher minute package ($120 more per mo). With the Shared data, I can add up to 10 devices to share the 8GB. This in turn saves more money and I can add either a line ($40) or a Tablet ($10). Plus Hotspot tethering is free instead of being $20 like it used to be.

I jsut don't see how people use 8-10GB per month via LTE. There are so many hotspots available that it would be more useful to use Wi-Fi than LTE. I connect to Wi-Fi whenever possible because it's faster and theoretically free.

For me, shared data saves my business money over the next 2 years until my contract is up.

There may be lots off free wifi in your city, but its not the same everywhere.

 

[Aokusman]

I respectfully disagree. I think there are folk out there who distrust sites like eBay and do not feel comfortable with Web only retailers like Amazon when it comes to purchasing a smartphone - a device that has the tenacity to have issues several months into its life.

Purchasing from a carrier, whilst a more expensive experience, does give these people the ability to take the phone into a store and utilize the warranty that the purchase there gave them.

There are many reasons why people make lots of decisions and to group a subset of them as 'fools' simply because you don't personally subscribe to their modus-operandi is somewhat disingenuous.

Peace of mind is often worth more that a few extra $ can ever offer.

I see your point when one considers eBay. I have bought and sold smart phones on eBay with no issues. However, I've been using eBay for a decade so I know what to look out for. There are other cheaper alternatives, like amazon ,etc. You get full warranty from amazon as its an authorized retailer of whatever it sells. The carriers will keep the launch price on a phone which has been out for 6 months, and has had its value drop. I guess what you don't know won't hurt you.

 

[GandalfTehGray]

For me and my business plan, I've tracked our Data and it's hardly anything, we actually have come closer going over on minutes than we would on data under our 8GB shared plan. I use the most data per month but recently most of my accounts (Supermarkets) have free Wi-Fi in the store. With ICS, it'll automatically connect when I'm in a store and I dont have to use my 4G. If Verizon goes to VoIP people will get around it by hooking up to a Wi-Fi hotspot so no harm there (there are always workarounds).

The other reason to go to this structure is you can have more than 5 lines on your account. Under the Business Plan structure I couldn't add more lines unless I went to a higher minute package ($120 more per mo). With the Shared data, I can add up to 10 devices to share the 8GB. This in turn saves more money and I can add either a line ($40) or a Tablet ($10). Plus Hotspot tethering is free instead of being $20 like it used to be.

I jsut don't see how people use 8-10GB per month via LTE. There are so many hotspots available that it would be more useful to use Wi-Fi than LTE. I connect to Wi-Fi whenever possible because it's faster and theoretically free.

For me, shared data saves my business money over the next 2 years until my contract is up.

What city you live in? Only places here that run wifi is a few fast food restaurants and the college campus. Other than that all business' usually have their locked down.

 

[Eryl Flynn]

Edit: As a side note, You can plainly see how much of a rip off text messages are and how much verizon makes in profit on texting. .1kb/message, means that in order to use 1gb of data, you would need to send/receive (1024kb/mb*1024mb/gb*1gb)/.1kb/message = 10,485,760 messages.

Actually it is more of a rip off, currently they are using wasted space in the signalling, much like robbed bit T1s do. So text messaging from you to the carrier takes up something that they can't use for anything else. In effect they cost Verizon nothing.

 

[Cares]

I respectfully disagree. I think there are folk out there who distrust sites like eBay and do not feel comfortable with Web only retailers like Amazon when it comes to purchasing a smartphone - a device that has the tenacity to have issues several months into its life.

Purchasing from a carrier, whilst a more expensive experience, does give these people the ability to take the phone into a store and utilize the warranty that the purchase there gave them.

There are many reasons why people make lots of decisions and to group a subset of them as 'fools' simply because you don't personally subscribe to their modus-operandi is somewhat disingenuous.

Peace of mind is often worth more that a few extra $ can ever offer.

I bought my phone on Amazon and had it replaced by Verizon without a problem. Maybe they missed it or it's just okay to do...I'm not sure.

 

[GatorLCA]

What city you live in? Only places here that run wifi is a few fast food restaurants and the college campus. Other than that all business' usually have their locked down.

I'm in Sarasota, FL. I'm a sales rep that works a lot in Publix Supermarkets around the area and they recently outfitted all of their stores with free public Wi-Fi. Other than that, the places that I frequent all seem to have free Wi-Fi. Almost all the sports bars in the area or quick lunch places all offer free Wi-Fi, even the gyms have Wi-Fi. The only thing I use often that's not on Wi-Fi is Pandora and that's my last resort when I'm driving.

Call myself lucky I guess but today I was on my route and everytime I tried to use Chrome on my phone, I was connecting to a Hotspot. Only thing I would say is run your phone with the Wi-Fi on and when it says there's a signal available, check to see what pops up. That's how I find most of mine.

The new Verizon data Share plan obviously works out in my favor for everyone on my plan.

 

[redwood66]

I only pay for the certified pre-owned. Just before the 28th June we bought a certified pre-owned Razr for $369 from Verizon to change out the DroidX my hubby uses. It carries their replacement warranty. We don't need the brand newest phone as I have a Razr from launch date and it is plenty fine. I would buy a refurb through Verizon rather than buying one elsewhere just for the replacement benefit if I have a problem. We will keep doing this in order to keep our unlimited plan until Verizon figures out some way to nix this grandfathered way of keeping it.

FYI if you talk to a CSR on the phone they have access to more phones than are available online. Online did not even show a refurb Razr available when we got ours. Now I see them and they are $420.

We use a lot of data as we live in the country with no DSL or other high speed available. 12-22 GB per month. Definitely is cost beneficial to keep the unlimited and buy the phone outright. And besides I don't need a new phone every two years if mine is working fine.

 

[jamor]

I got my Galaxy Nexus from the Play Store last week, and will be dumping Verizon shortly, so the rest of this is mute point for me, but...

The problem with paying full retail for a phone, so you can avoid renewing your contract, so you can keep unlimited data, is that you've just paid full retail for a phone that's only usable on one carrier, who can (at any time) change their policy and no longer offer unlimited data to customers who are out of contract. You're basically paying an extra $300-400 NOW (per device), in exchange for what?... a non-binding promise that you'll be able to keep your unlimited data plan until... they change their mind? If you're not happy when that happens, where will you go with your shiny new Verizon-only phone?

That isn't the whole story. Us single users are also paying A LOT more with the shared plan.

If I had to switch, my bill would go from the 80s to the 120s.

Huge difference.

I will definitely be getting phone full retail and paying the extra.

If they cancel unlimited, I'll void the contract, switch carries, and sell the phone on Ebay.

Verizon is phasing out its single user customers. Which is completely bizarre to me.

 

[wurf]

i'm on an unlimited data plan. i usually use just about 4gb/month of data. the few times that i've clearly exceeded the 4gb threshold i think there was throttling. since it was only a few times, the sample size is low. has anyone else noticed this?

thanks.