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No because I upgrade every year under a 4 line family plan; 2 per year. I would have to buy each phone outright and pay the same monthy cost that everyone else is paying. If you upgrade your phone every year that ends up being $900 more just for one person in a 2 year period. Yup, Verizon got me.

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They can stop offering that plan. You didn't sign a contract with them, therefore they are under no obligation to keep offering that plan. We're not saying they'll drop *you*. We're saying they can drop that plan at any time. They can completely discontinue it whenever they wish and tell you that you'll have to pick another plan that is available.

Imagine all the faces that paid full retail. Eventually Verizon is going to flip the switch once all those 2 year contracts are up. Only choice is crappy Sprint or a half baked T-Mobile solution.
 
I did. I kept my unlimited, and Happy I did.

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I did. I kept my unlimited, and Happy I did.
 
$450 extra that your paying to purchase the phone full price broken down over 20 months (normal subsidy timeframe) comes out to an extra $22.50 per month that you're paying to keep unlimited! :eek:

No way in hell that would be worth it for me to pay that much more to stream movies on a 4-inch screen.

For some people, losing the unlimited will also ADD costs onto their plan. Mine would be $40 per month more. So, if I paid the extra $22.xx per month as a broken down phone cost, I'd still be saving money and features.
 
how much?

I did and I haven't regretted it. I used almost 2GB of data on the first day!
Here in the bay area, CA, its incredibly fast.

I am a bit pissed that the reps at VZW lied to me on launch day saying they wern't selling retail phones, only new customers and upgrades. And they almost strong-armed me into giving up my unlimited data, what a bunch of jerks.

I'm hoping to slam them this month with my data plan,
i sure as hell didn't buy the phone to keep it on wi-fi only!

How much did you pay outright for your phone??
 
I did and I haven't regretted it. I used almost 2GB of data on the first day!
Here in the bay area, CA, its incredibly fast.

I am a bit pissed that the reps at VZW lied to me on launch day saying they wern't selling retail phones, only new customers and upgrades. And they almost strong-armed me into giving up my unlimited data, what a bunch of jerks.

I'm hoping to slam them this month with my data plan,
i sure as hell didn't buy the phone to keep it on wi-fi only!

$450 extra that your paying to purchase the phone full price broken down over 20 months (normal subsidy timeframe) comes out to an extra $22.50 per month that you're paying to keep unlimited! :eek:

No way in hell that would be worth it for me to pay that much more to stream movies on a 4-inch screen.

I use 25-30 gb per month, worth it for me? When you start getting huge overage charges I'll be :popping popcorn:

Op: i didnt buy iphone 5 full retail but you better believe I will be buying galaxy note 2 full retail ;)
 
$450 extra that your paying to purchase the phone full price broken down over 20 months (normal subsidy timeframe) comes out to an extra $22.50 per month that you're paying to keep unlimited! :eek:

No way in hell that would be worth it for me to pay that much more to stream movies on a 4-inch screen.

Moving to the new plan would have cost me $23 a month, plus I would have lost unlimited data. I would have gained unlimited talk and text which mean nothing to me. I can stay under my limited just fine.
 
No because I upgrade every year under a 4 line family plan; 2 per year. I would have to buy each phone outright and pay the same monthy cost that everyone else is paying. If you upgrade your phone every year that ends up being $900 more just for one person in a 2 year period. Yup, Verizon got me.

This is exactly what the bean counters at Verizon know already.

Sure if you have one or two lines, you may suck it up and buy full price.

But once you start having 3-4 lines, the cost vs. benefits of keeping unlimited data diminish and I am sure 2 years down the road, probably less than 10% of people on Verizon (on family plans with more than 4 lines) will have unlimited data.
 
like someone else posted, If you have unlimited LTE you could dump your home internet and just tether. Now that would save you a lot of money.

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Moving to the new plan would have cost me $23 a month, plus I would have lost unlimited data. I would have gained unlimited talk and text which mean nothing to me. I can stay under my limited just fine.

he is just talking about $23 for the price difference of the phone, not data. The way he is looking at it is that you are paying for your data plus an additional $23 for the phone.
 
I once pulled ~70 GB in a month on Verizon. Nothing untoward happened.

^ Well that is not entirely true...

I have the ULD plan, cost me $88.38 a month (450 min, unlimited text and data). So i will be paying full price to keep the ULD plan. If i move to one of the shared plans i would need more then the 2GB plan so my cost per month would be higher (around $115). So paying up front for the phone is about a wash for me.

I am also not too worried about Verizon ending the ULD plan, it would suck, but i can always sell my 5 and recoup my money pretty easy.

... now the quote above ~70gb a month i do believe that something untoward did happen. The ULD was ended, i think heavy users like that is what led to ULD being ended. The carriers could have kept the ULD as an option on the shared data plans but priced it very high. I do think it is because of the heavy users that made that difficult for them to sustain.
 
like someone else posted, If you have unlimited LTE you could dump your home internet and just tether. Now that would save you a lot of money.

Yes, but if you have a family of 4-5 lines. Try buying 4-5 lines outright. The costs become too high cause you have giving up a $400 subsidy per line X4-5 lines. That's $1200-1600 in subsidies you are giving up every 20 months. Cable internet is usually $30-$50 a month depending if you bundle the cable internet with cable TV and phone.

Lets see, even on the high side of $50/month for cable x 20 months. That comes out to $1000 for cable internet.

So you aren't saving anything if you have 4-5 Verizon lines with unlimited data you are desperately trying to save by paying full price.

Like I said, it may make sense if you have 1-2 lines. But Verizon knows 60% of it's customers are on family plans. And more and more are on 4-5 lines family plans.

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^ Well that is not entirely true...

I have the ULD plan, cost me $88.38 a month (450 min, unlimited text and data). So i will be paying full price to keep the ULD plan. If i move to one of the shared plans i would need more then the 2GB plan so my cost per month would be higher (around $115). So paying up front for the phone is about a wash for me.

I am also not too worried about Verizon ending the ULD plan, it would suck, but i can always sell my 5 and recoup my money pretty easy.

... now the quote above ~70gb a month i do believe that something untoward did happen. The ULD was ended, i think heavy users like that is what led to ULD being ended. The carriers could have kept the ULD as an option on the shared data plans but priced it very high. I do think it is because of the heavy users that made that difficult for them to sustain.

This is entirely false. It's what the carriers want you to believe. Even on ATT's congested 3G/UMTS/WCDMA/HSPA plus, it's already been determined heavy users do not impact network performance.

The real reason for moving towards tiered data has nothing to do with "congestion".

It has to do with money. There is no money growth in voice or texting anymore.

Data is the main money maker these days. That's the real reason for tiered data so they can squeeze and extra $10-20 here and there from consumers.

It's funny that 3 years ago when both Verizon and ATT put every smartphone user on a $30 data plan. Their excuse was "we want customers not to worry about how much data they are using"

That was the excuse in 2009 to tact on $30 unlimited data plans.

Well in 2012, it's "we need to save the network from data hoggers". That theory has already been proven false. Cause most data hoggers consume data are off peak times.
 
Yes, but if you have a family of 4-5 lines. Try buying 4-5 lines outright. The costs become too high cause you have giving up a $400 subsidy per line X4-5 lines. That's $1200-1600 in subsidies you are giving up every 20 months. Cable internet is usually $30-$50 a month depending if you bundle the cable internet with cable TV and phone.

Lets see, even on the high side of $50/month for cable x 20 months. That comes out to $1000 for cable internet.

So you aren't saving anything if you have 4-5 Verizon lines with unlimited data you are desperately trying to save by paying full price.

Like I said, it may make sense if you have 1-2 lines. But Verizon knows 60% of it's customers are on family plans. And more and more are on 4-5 lines family plans.


agreed. But if you have that many lines the shared plans are actually cheaper, so it is a win win.
 
like someone else posted, If you have unlimited LTE you could dump your home internet and just tether. Now that would save you a lot of money.

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he is just talking about $23 for the price difference of the phone, not data. The way he is looking at it is that you are paying for your data plus an additional $23 for the phone.

What I am saying is that moving to a new shared data plan would cost me specifically $23 more a month. If the phone costs $649, then over 20 months that is $22.45 extra every month ($449 more than what you would pay subsidized, over 20 months until you can get your next upgrade). My wife did not want a new phone so the choice (for me) was get a subsidized phone and pay $23 more a month and move to the shared data plan, or pay essentially $22.45 every month (for a new phone) and keep unlimited data.
 
I thought about paying full retail to keep my wife and I's unlimited plan, but being realistic, we don't come close to using any amount of data that would warrant an "unlimited" plan. I'd rather get the phone at a discount and switch plans. I like the sound of unlimited, but don't really take full advantage of it. Even with LTE I don't think I'd really ramp up my usage. Even if I doubled my current usage I think I'd still be fine with a "limited" plan. Most places I spend a significant amount of time have wifi.

I'll wait until my contract is up and then decide if I want to stick with Verizon or go to AT&T. The only way I'd pay full retail would be to take it to T-Mobile, which has excellent coverage in my area. And in that case I'd probably just pick one up from eBay or Craigslist.
 
What I am saying is that moving to a new shared data plan would cost me specifically $23 more a month. If the phone costs $649, then over 20 months that is $22.45 extra every month ($449 more than what you would pay subsidized, over 20 months until you can get your next upgrade). My wife did not want a new phone so the choice (for me) was get a subsidized phone and pay $23 more a month and move to the shared data plan, or pay essentially $22.45 every month (for a new phone) and keep unlimited data.

Same here... my costs for the subsidized phone would end up costing me more than paying for the new phone.

My actual decision was to pay $399 for the 64GB phone, start a new line. Move the phone to my line with unlimited data, and put a dumb phone on that new line. It'll be about $14 per month with that new line without any data.

So, $400 + $14/month/two years.... $736.

If I had done it with the changing plan to the fam share...
$400 for the phone, $40/month/two years.... $1360; and I would lose the beneficial features. I wouldn't gain any features that are wanted or needed.
 
I did it to keep my grandfathered plan on Verizon. I sold my iPhone 4 for $250 which helped. Here is what I keep by buying full price. I get a corp. discount.

450min voice - $33 a month
250 text - $5
Unlimited data - $23

Also when needed I can get unlimited hotspot for $23 a month.
 
I did any happy with it. In the first 9 days on this billing cycle I've used 6gb. I sold my 4s for $300 so between that and keeping unlimited data paying $750 for the phone was no problem. :)

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I did it to keep my grandfathered plan on Verizon. I sold my iPhone 4 for $250 which helped. Here is what I keep by buying full price. I get a corp. discount.

450min voice - $33 a month
250 text - $5
Unlimited data - $23

Also when needed I can get unlimited hotspot for $23 a month.

Yes that's really cool. I can add the hotspot as well anytime and its unlimited! I'm also on a corp discount. It's nice to have that ability. :)
 
I did any happy with it. In the first 9 days on this billing cycle I've used 6gb. I sold my 4s for $300 so between that and keeping unlimited data paying $750 for the phone was no problem. :)

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Yes that's really cool. I can add the hotspot as well anytime and its unlimited! I'm also on a corp discount. It's nice to have that ability. :)

Yup, I love being able to add that hotspot when I need it. We road trip a lot to visit family and I usually will add it for the weekend so our kid can used the iPad in the car. I then deactivate it when we get back. Since it is pro-rated it is usually just a few bucks for the weekend.
 
$450 extra that your paying to purchase the phone full price broken down over 20 months (normal subsidy timeframe) comes out to an extra $22.50 per month that you're paying to keep unlimited! :eek:

No way in hell that would be worth it for me to pay that much more to stream movies on a 4-inch screen.

Piece of mind and no overages. Keep the phone and extra couple years and the savings will get averaged out...
 
$450 extra that your paying to purchase the phone full price broken down over 20 months (normal subsidy timeframe) comes out to an extra $22.50 per month that you're paying to keep unlimited! :eek:

No way in hell that would be worth it for me to pay that much more to stream movies on a 4-inch screen.

When I travel I plug my phone into the hotel tv and enjoy Hulu and Netflix at full resolution. Hotel wifi is a lot slower then 4g so that is one way it is worth it as we'll
 
I have two main lines that have upgrades that will not ever be used as long as it negatively affects my costs and service/features.

That's not what I mean.

I can see paying full retail to keep unltd if you have 1-2 lines.

A coworker has 4 lines and what he does is upgraded all 4 lines at once around Christmas as part of presents.

Pricey to upgrade 4 lines at full retail. He was always ok upgrading at $200'ish each.
 
That's not what I mean.

I can see paying full retail to keep unltd if you have 1-2 lines.

A coworker has 4 lines and what he does is upgraded all 4 lines at once around Christmas as part of presents.

Pricey to upgrade 4 lines at full retail. He was always ok upgrading at $200'ish each.

The more lines you have the more the new share plans actually make sense.

I have a single line. A 4GB share plan would be almost double what I pay right now. Paying retail and selling my old phone was well worth it to keep my old plan.
 
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