I went to the Apple store on the launch, bought my iPhone 5 and lost my unlimited. Wasn't too worried, I figured its happen eventually. Then I read this topic. I called Verizon, told them the apple guy screwed me out of my unlimited by not doing an alternate upgrade on a different line (there was a lot of smooth talking involved with the young lass) and she immediately without hesitation just gave me unlimited data on all four of my lines even though one of them never had it! So pleased right now. The only bad part is no free wireless tethering like with the Share Everything plans. Until I jailbreak it I suppose?
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Carrier [Confirmed] Verizon Unlimited Loophole
- Thread starter CoolBradG
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Today I received my iPhone 5.
I upgraded my mother's iphone 4 which is already in a 2GB plan, to get the iphone 5.
All I did, was call customer service, they asked for some information on the invoice that came in the package. I didnt even have to open the iphone 5 to do this.
5 minutes later, the iPhone 5 was activated on my Unlimited Data Plan
I like this, looks easy enough and the service on the other line won't get interrupted.
Also, has anybody tried this with two family plan under the same account? I have two different family plan under my name (we have a huge a family and Verizon won't let you have more than 5 phones on the same plan). So I have plan A: with 4 unlimited iphone , plan B: with 3 dumb phone. I read one of the previous post how some people are able to get the phone and activate (without turn it on), but then after a few hour only to find that their unlimited plan was removed? Then somebody commented that if the dumb phone line that was used to do the upgrade is not associated with the UDP line then this could happen. So technically all my lines are associated under the same account, but they are in different plan. Would this affect anything?
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Today I received my iPhone 5.
I upgraded my mother's iphone 4 which is already in a 2GB plan, to get the iphone 5.
All I did, was call customer service, they asked for some information on the invoice that came in the package. I didnt even have to open the iphone 5 to do this.
5 minutes later, the iPhone 5 was activated on my Unlimited Data Plan
I wonder if you could have just bypassed talking to Verizon and just gone to My Verizon and go to the switch/activate device tab and type in the IMEI of the iPhone in under your line.
Just used this loophole to keep my unlimited...I went in used my upgrade on another vacant line I have and then will swap it over to my line...strange thing is that they told me I'd have to wait till Tomm to swap it to my line...said the sim had to be inactive for 24 hours before they could deactivate it on my line...
I had to do the 24 hour dance because they couldn't activate a different phone on my new line without activating the iphone first (they tried). After the 24 hours was up they were able to activate it no problem though. You can do it online yourself if you prefer
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I bought my phone on an entirely different account (and under a different name) than the one I'm using it on and I kept unlimited just fine
I can confirm the loophole worked for me.
I transferred my ULD to a dumb phone, activated the iPhone on the dumb phone, did the reformat technique another thread suggested and called back to Verizon. They activated it back on my ULD line and I kept my ULD.
I transferred my ULD to a dumb phone, activated the iPhone on the dumb phone, did the reformat technique another thread suggested and called back to Verizon. They activated it back on my ULD line and I kept my ULD.
Do u mean u transferred ur upgrade from ur UDP line to a dumb line, got the iPhone 5 then w/o turning on the phone transferred the iP5 back to ur UDP line?
If so, that makes 3!
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I have couple follow up questions, just because I have read so many version of this story now:
1. Did you activate the new iphone directly through myversion on the UDP line?
2. If you did, what happened to the data plan that you had to take on when you use the dumb phone line to buy the iphone? Does the data plane just simply drop away (or since the iphone was never activated on the dumb phone line it never kicked in)?
Thanks for the help.
I activated mine on launch day and still have unlimited. When I got the iPhone I simply called Verizon before turning on the phone and they did everything for me. They activated it directly on my line without touching my data plan and without interrupting or adding a data plan to my mom's line.
Correct, I transferred upgrade from my UDP to a dumb phone. When I got the phone I activated it on the dumb phone line, deactivated, waited until the next day and then called vzw and they activated it, kept my UDP.
Thought I would share the following information.
A friend of mine has a UDP on his line and had a friend with an upgrade on an non-UDP who was willing to let him have the iPhone off his account.
Phone came in on 9/21 and we checked to see the best ways to activate it.
One customer service Rep said the best way to do this without losing Unlimited Data after the next billing cycle, was to activate on the original line the phone came on, deactivate and activate on the UDP line. She said the key was to activate and deactivate prior to midnight EST. She said the system would then update and by 7 am EST the next day, the SIM would be reset and it could be activated on the UDP line without problem.
My friend was finally able to try this yesterday, and we can confirm it does indeed work.
He activated on his friend's line by 8pm an deactivated it. He removed the SIM card from the iPhone, put it back in and kept the phone off (don't know if that helps or makes any difference but thought it might be worth mentioning).
As a test he did keep trying hourly on the Verizon site to see if the phone could be added to the account. It would go through the process, asking him to change his Data Plan (Unlimited was still an option to select) and he got to the confirm button. Once there it would tell him that it couldn't be done at that time.
He tried it again at 705 AM and this time it Activated without problem.
Therefore, I think this particular Rep gave solid information. It isn't necessarily 24 Hours that you have to wait for the SIM to refresh, it just needs to be activated/deactivated on the line prior to midnight and you have to wait for their system to refresh by 7am EST.
A friend of mine has a UDP on his line and had a friend with an upgrade on an non-UDP who was willing to let him have the iPhone off his account.
Phone came in on 9/21 and we checked to see the best ways to activate it.
One customer service Rep said the best way to do this without losing Unlimited Data after the next billing cycle, was to activate on the original line the phone came on, deactivate and activate on the UDP line. She said the key was to activate and deactivate prior to midnight EST. She said the system would then update and by 7 am EST the next day, the SIM would be reset and it could be activated on the UDP line without problem.
My friend was finally able to try this yesterday, and we can confirm it does indeed work.
He activated on his friend's line by 8pm an deactivated it. He removed the SIM card from the iPhone, put it back in and kept the phone off (don't know if that helps or makes any difference but thought it might be worth mentioning).
As a test he did keep trying hourly on the Verizon site to see if the phone could be added to the account. It would go through the process, asking him to change his Data Plan (Unlimited was still an option to select) and he got to the confirm button. Once there it would tell him that it couldn't be done at that time.
He tried it again at 705 AM and this time it Activated without problem.
Therefore, I think this particular Rep gave solid information. It isn't necessarily 24 Hours that you have to wait for the SIM to refresh, it just needs to be activated/deactivated on the line prior to midnight and you have to wait for their system to refresh by 7am EST.
That's really all you need to tell them. I pretty much did the same thing as you, one of the older relative on my family plan give me his upgrade. So I went to apple store to pick up the iphone 5. Took it to Verizon store, told them that I want to activate and use this phone on my Unlimited Data Plan (UDP) on my line. They knew exactly what I wanted, so in 15 minutes I was out of the door with my iphone 5 and unlimited data plan.
I would say from the looks of the Verizon reps, they know all about the loophole (not sure if it's even a loophole anymore), and they don't care much about it.
Nope, you can simply go to apple website check your eligibility and buy one (using the dumb phone line) online at the subsidized price. (This does not mean that you will be able to find one easily at apple store)
Then you can take it to Verizon store and have them activate on the line you want for you. It's really about how the iphone 5 is obtained, not where you got the phone.
cool, thanks! now i just have to find a store somewhere that has the phone in stock, which is not looking good..
Well, that's a good question. According to Verizon, if you remove a line with smartphone and put a dumb phone on it, the system will detect that and it will automatically remove the data plan that was on that line. Doesn't sound like much of a business model for Verizon (hence I have always had doubts).
However, many people here have stated that they have observe the data plan been removed after switch back to the dumb phone. In my case, the data plan was never added to the dumb phone line that was used to do the upgrade. Then again, Verizon's systems is always a few days behind so I'm waiting to see if the data plan will indeed be remove from the dumb phone line. I'm almost confident that this should be okay.