<p>We have a family plan with Verizon. DS has had a Samsung Brightside basic phone for about 3 years, and it’s dying. It’s a great phone, sort of looks like a smartphone, and worked well (before it died). Now we’re looking for a new phone for him, and Verizon’s basic offerings look pretty bad. Most of the phones are flip phones. There is one (LG Extravert) that looks good, but according to recent reviews on Verizon and Amazon, it has a fundamental problem that has existed for years and has never been fixed (problems having to do with deleting texts which make texting impossible after a short time). So I’m not sure what to do.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it possible to buy a basic phone that is not among Verizon’s offerings and use it on our plan?</p>
<p>H has an LG flip phone. He prefers it.
Deleting texts is tedious, but he doesn’t send many.
Are you saying your son * doesn’t* want a flip phone?</p>
<p>How does one get a kid who doesn’t need/want a smartphone??? Even almost all the adults I know have them, and the younger generation doesn’t seem to be able to cross the street without one!</p>
<p>We’ve only had a data plan for our phones since 12/2012. Our kids both managed college fine without one but it is a nice luxury having a data plan now. It did signficantly increase our phone bill, but it makes our kids so happy it is worth it to us. It is one of our little luxuries.</p>
<p>Could your S pay you monthly for the data plan? That was how my parents and I (and I know several of my friends) solved that problem. </p>
<p>If you really don’t want to even open that door, I’d agree with looking on eBay/Amazon, but I’d also talk with Verizon first and make sure they’ll allow it.</p>
<p>You could also try Best Buy or similar retailers. That’s where I got my latest phone (granted it is a smartphone), but they sometimes have a few more options.</p>
<p>We have Verizon also, and have replaced several phones with the Brightside model bought on eBay. Just buy the phone, dial *228 and follow the prompts. This way there is no upgrade fee, and the contract date does not rest. Our kids have been told if they want data they have to pay for it and so far none has chosen that route! I not only don’t want the data fee, I don’t want the upgrade fee either. My kids are very happy with their stupid phones that look like smart phones.</p>
<p>Our family is on a verizon family plan, 3basic phones, no data plan, about 72 per month.
DD is rough on her stuff and literally wore her phone out, battery cover wouldn’t stay on, battery kept falling out.
I found a BRAND NEW IN BOX replacement of her exact phone on eBay, 28 bucks. Activated it ourselves, no problem.</p>
<p>DS went off our plan at graduation, bought himself an iPhone at 22, upgraded that after 3 years and now has some kinda samsung android smartphone. Happy he’s happy, but the rest of us like our dumb phones!</p>
<p>We have the AT&T family share…$145 for three smart phones. Unlimited talk and text and 10 gb of data. Two iPhones purchased as part of the AT&T plan, and one moto x purchased from Motorola. Everyone is happy.</p>
<p>We’ve got dumb phones too. S2’s flip phone wore out ( and he hated texting on it), so he found a LG Cosmos on ebay that was compatible with Verizon. No data plan required with that phone.</p>
<p>Smartphones do NOT require data plans. H had one with Verizon several years ago and dropped it since he found he wasn’t using it. You just don’t use all of the features available to you.</p>
<p>That depends entirely on your carrier. We are charged 50-dollars more for a smartphone with AT &T. Both college kids consider it a want, not a need. One has data, one doesn’t, yet.</p>
<p>My adult children would want a smartphone, but don’t want to pay more than the $15/month it costs them to be on our family plan with a dumb phone.</p>