Verizon iPhones are unlocked due to one of those government settlements. So they’ll be easy to move to a different carrier if you want to.
You can get discounts on the data portion of your Verizon bill if you work for some large companies and a lot of government agencies. I think with a 15% discount we’re paying about $100 plus tax for 3 lines that share 6GB on Verizon. Adding another line would be $15-$20 more.
The campus our son is at has so much wifi coverage all over that he barely uses any data there.
@collage1 I’m assuming the $300-$350/month you’re paying includes phone payments - you’d have to subtract those out to compare to a prepaid operator using the Verizon network. From what I’ve read, you might get lower priority on calls and data with prepaid, but how much of an issue that really is is probably location dependent.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Consumer Cellular (think AARP ads) which is on the AT&T network and gets very good reviews. Coverage/quality wise probably about the same as Cricket but with supposedly better customer service if you have any problems.
I’m not smart enough to figure out cellphone plans! Seriously- how complicated can it get? Every time you think you’ve found a better deal, there is some hitch and all of a sudden you are in something you didn’t want to be in!
My employer subsidizes my phone somewhat (not much). We have our son on our plan and last month he had some unusual data usage and killed our data bank. I was in a business meeting getting these alerts from ATT about what percentage of my data was left and it rapidly went to 0. They kindly automatically give you another GB which also dropped rapidly to 0 (more alerts). I texted my husband and had him call ATT and re-do the plan. We should be OK now. I gave up my unlimited data plan a few years ago for the privilege of being able to use the phone as a mobile hot spot. I still think ATT is the way to go- at least for our family. We are bout $211 a month for the 3 phones and 20GB of data. There are a couple of phone payments in there, I think. Never, ever had a data usage issue until last month.
We have 4 phones on T-Mobile Simple Choice plan that cost just over $100/mo for all all four lines. T-Mobile customer service has been excellent. Son is now in Germany on exchange visit and my wife called T-Mobile customer service to help him get his phone working on their German network. Got it fixed right away. And with the Simple Choice plan, we can access many foreign country’s networks for no additional charge. We did that in Canada/Alaska last year, and will be doing it in Iceland/Denmark/Sweden this year.
Different types of customers vary in terms of how they buy (e.g. prepaid versus postpaid, cell phone store versus Walmart / Target, etc.), what features they want (e.g. amount of talk, text, data, international roaming), and how price-sensitive they are. Targeting different brands, configurations, and prices of the service to different markets can allow them to maximize revenue for a given amount of service that they sell.
For an analogy, consider the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade large SUVs (though no separate company is involved). Or the Nissan NV200 and Chevrolet City Express small vans.
OK, thanks for the clarifications to those who responded to my post. I’m starting to see the light. Like MOWC, though, this is all so complicated! I don’t think I have it in me to try to subtract out our phone payments, comparison shop, make sure dh would be happy, make sure d3 in upstate NY wouldn’t be negatively impacted or d2, also across the country. Just too much of a headache!
We are on the “More Everything” plan, but when we signed up for it there was a way to get the per-line fee discounted from from $40/month to $15/month (I don’t remember what is was), and they were running a promotion that got you 15GB of data for the price of 10GB. So for us it is better to stay on the "More Everything"plan - for the same price as the Verizon plan we get 3 more GB of data.
Total Wireless looks interesting… for four lines it would be $100/month for 15GB of data ($95/month if you automatically re-up every month), which is about $80/month less than what we are paying now. And extra data is $3.33/GB instead of $15/GB. We do have a 5th device, a tablet, and they don’t have any 5 device plans.
I checked the terms of service and they don’t seem to prohibit using your phone as a hotspot… hmm.
Service is an issue as well. DD’s iPhone got soaked in nasty storm, and it took 3 (!) tries to get a replacement that worked for more than a week. Each time, she walked into a Verizon store and either walked out with a phone or got one in the mail the next day. DW has gone into the Verizon store numerous times for various issues.
Where do you go if you are a Total Wireless subscriber? Walmart? Are they really going to be able to provide a high level of service?
The college analogy works also. Financial aid and scholarships are used for price discrimination for typical students. Colleges also sell courses through extension divisions and MOOC distribution to reach alternate markets.
Verizon business account here – 4 lines, all phones paid for at the beginning, all from Costco deals, including a no-waiting-in-line, 15 minutes from purchase-to-activation for the then new iPhone 6 on release day 1. Also, my then-new Samsung S5 after Costco rebates and a price match was just $50, while Verizon still had it for $299+.
2 have grandfathered unlimited data, 1 with 6GB and 1 with 2 GB data plan.
Each line is just under $40/mo.
We continued on an old $100/mo Nationwide Talk & Text with 1400 shared talk (never over 600 min/mo due to the family share phone numbers); Unlimited text.
We pay $246/month after 8% business discount, and we always look into new plans but so far, this one has been the cheapest for all the features we have.
To keep the unlimited data on the two phones, we will probably buy refurbished unlocked phones when these are no longer working. Data use on those range from 2GB to >7 GB. Verizon is the best network for our family in terms of service areas.
When we have screen breakages (grrr college kids) we use their NSSI student personal property policy with $25 deductible for >$100 repair bill. I was told after they graduate, they can keep the $130/yr policy in force!
For free hotspot service to use my tablet or laptop in “no free wifi” areas, I use an app called PDANet+ on my Android phone. We don’t subscribe to Verizon’s hotspot service.
@ucbalumnus:
“AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, while Verizon and Sprint use CDMA. So, unless a phone is capable of both, there will be different versions of the phone for GSM and CDMA. Note that most other countries’ cell phone networks use GSM.”
“Son is now in Germany on exchange visit and my wife called T-Mobile customer service to help him get his phone working on their German network. Got it fixed right away. And with the Simple Choice plan, we can access many foreign country’s networks for no additional charge.”
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My really old, unused “candybar” cellphone works both here and abroad. I was really surprised to find that out. The VM phone did NOT work abroad, something we were stuck finding out about the hard way.
Last year we discovered that my current flip phone, an old grandfathered T-mobile Samsung prepaid with no internet access works just fine all over Europe. Blew our minds.
@youcee: " From what I’ve read, you might get lower priority on calls and data with prepaid, but how much of an issue that really is is probably location dependent."
Yes, this is a concern that has me trying to read the fine print.
I spent some time reading reviews of Total Wireless on Walmart’s web site… it’s a pretty mixed bag. Many complaints about problems setting up the service, porting numbers, and dealing with offshore customer support.
I found this on a website called bestmvno.com (MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator, which is what all these companies who piggyback off of other company’s networks are called):
I could not find any mention of this on the TW website. I typically see speeds many times faster than this on my phone.
@Waiting2exhale - I have an app on my phone called Speedtest.net that I downloaded a while ago and run every once in a while, because I am a nerd. It can test the current speed of both your cellphone data and your WiFi. This can consume a fair amount of data so don’t use it on your mobile network too much.
Performance varies depending on a number of factors like signal strength and congestion, but I often see 20-25 Mbps with Verizon. For comparison I’ve seen over 80 Mbps on my phone using WiFi if I am sitting right next to the router.
One tip I’ve seen mentioned in a few places - if you have multiple lines in your account, and you decide to switch to a new provider, port the secondary lines first and wait until they are all working properly before porting the primary number.
Apparently when the primary number gets ported, your old company may immediately close your account, and you can lose access to the numbers on the secondary lines if they haven’t ported yet.And once they are gone you can’t get them back.
