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Need advice! - Getting out of AT&T, moving to Verizon, and iP5 w/ Unlimited Data Plan
- Thread starter vbman213
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OP, there seems to be a lot of conflicting answers and fighting. I suggest you call verizon and ask them directly. Tell them your situation and I'm sure they would be glad to help.
edit: also, post back to clarify the situation to everyone else as well.
My spin, I am a sprint customer. Unlike ATT and T-mobile, CDMA carriers have to approve and activate your phone each time you change phones. As a result, some carriers (sprint) take advantage of this fact to force customers to change to newer plans (more expensive!), however whether verizon will do this is unclear. It is up to who ever is performing the upgrade (phone esn swap) as to whether the plan changes or stays the same. This is why some claim that verizon will change plans on you when you swap phones. However, I personally have seen no evidence that verizon will force you to change plans. In fact, the particulars to Verizon's tiered data plans are still unannounced. You may not get a definitive answer to your question until that time.
Your best bet is to call VZW and hope they honor their promise if they tell you that it will be grandfathered or just accept that tiered data is what you'll have to work with.
edit: also, post back to clarify the situation to everyone else as well.
My spin, I am a sprint customer. Unlike ATT and T-mobile, CDMA carriers have to approve and activate your phone each time you change phones. As a result, some carriers (sprint) take advantage of this fact to force customers to change to newer plans (more expensive!), however whether verizon will do this is unclear. It is up to who ever is performing the upgrade (phone esn swap) as to whether the plan changes or stays the same. This is why some claim that verizon will change plans on you when you swap phones. However, I personally have seen no evidence that verizon will force you to change plans. In fact, the particulars to Verizon's tiered data plans are still unannounced. You may not get a definitive answer to your question until that time.
Your best bet is to call VZW and hope they honor their promise if they tell you that it will be grandfathered or just accept that tiered data is what you'll have to work with.
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While I agree Verizon will likely grandfather unlimited data as AT&T did, you have absolutely no proof of any guarantee that this will happen and some Verizon rep in the store telling you they will means jack s$&t, as they have no clue what is being planned. You are placing far too much faith in Verizon--IMO, least trustworthy of all US mobile providers.
An option if the OP wasn't trying to save money--going to cost $200-$300 more for unsubsidized iPhone.
Sorry but a note on the account by a rep means absolutely nothing if Verizon decides to change their policy.
You: "What do you mean I no longer have unlimited data"?
Verizon Rep: "well sir, when you activated your new iPhone, you reset the data plan on your account and Verizon does not offer an unlimited data plan for the new iPhone."
You: "But I was assured I would be able to carry over my unlimited data--the rep even said they would leave a note on my account stating so..."
Verizon Rep: snickering..."I'm sorry sir but I don't see any such note on your account and as I stated, Verizon doesn't offer an unlimited data plan for the new iPhone."
Haha a note on your account won't do anything. Just because some employee is not educated on the policy writes a "note" (ooo0o0 big deal) it doesn't mean anything.
You don't know how Verizon operates clearly.
Yeah, that's not true at all. Take a look at Verizon iPhone 4 prices on eBay and then figure in what you'll lose (~$100) when the iPhone 5 comes out. You're going to get around $400 for it.
Let me explain, the GSM phones retain their resale value better partially because they can be unlocked and are carrier independent. They are more desirable for this reason. As an example the HTC hero GSM still costs $300+ on ebay because it can work on any GSM carrier. However the Sprint HTC hero and the Verizon HTC eris can be found for less than $100 easily. This is because those phones only work on one carrier without resorting to commit a felony. The Verizon iPhone 4 is only worth as much as it is because it is still a relatively new phone and has no other competitors within it's space (no other CDMA iPhones). Once the iPhone 5th Gen comes out, I predict its resale will tank just like any other CDMA phone.
You realize that you can't compare resale value of any other brand of phone with an Apple product right? Any Apple product will have a very high resale value comparably; it doesn't make sense, but that's how it is. Not to mention the phone will still be relatively new in a few months when the iPhone 5 is released.
I also think you're underestimating the amount of people who want an iPhone on Verizon and are either 1) on contract for at least another year or 2) have some kind of aversion to signing a new two-year contract. The price for used CDMA iPhones will be less than GSM, but not by an overwhelming amount.
Buy iPhone 5 -> Sell iPhone 4 to recoup a lot of the cost. There's no etf because you're not cancelling your Verizon contract. People have been doing this on AT&T for years.
he is correct though, there is no ETF if you are simply switching/upgrading handsets.
by buying the iPhone 5 off-contract and simply activating it in place of an existing phone does not require you to cancel your contract and sign a new one. I know this because I've upgraded phones in the past within the duration of my contract and not had to do anything other than have the Verizon rep activate/deactivate the phones. In fact I just did it a few months ago with a Palm Pixi I bought off-contract. All I did was walk in, tell them I wanted to switch to the new handset and they said ok. I signed the paperwork to add the data package to my account and that was it. No changes or anything to the account other than the data plan. I did not have to re-up for another 2 years, nothing else other than the data plan being added and the phone associated with my number changed that day.
Also once you have switched to the iPhone 5 , the previous iPhone 4 will have a clean ESN and therefore be able to get a much better resale value.
I think that the OP it's talking about his current At&t contract, on which he has to pay an ETF.
I was using this line of thinking about the OPs question:
- Sell GSM iPhone 4 to recoup loss from AT&T ETF
- Buy Verizon iPhone 4 to gain unlimited Data Plan
- Buy Verizon iPhone 5 when it's released
- Sell Verizon iPhone 4 to help recoup price of iPhone 5
i can't say if att does it the same way but verizons unlimited data is tied to the phone not to the contract. i went and got a droid 2 days ago to try and keep unlimited data on a month to month so i could get the ip5 on unlimited data...they explained that it was only the phone not the contract.
Your Verizon SIM?Nope Wrong! If you have a VZW unlimited LTE phone you will be grandfathered into Unlimited LTE 3G/4G data.
The guaranteed way is to just buy your phone full price and Just put sim into NEW LTE device! Too bad att won't have unlimited LTE!
i would like clarification because i have a similar situation. i have verizon now (family plan) with unlimited data. my mom is due for a new phone (and needs one asap as her bb curve is broken) and is asking what phone to get. we were planning on all getting iphones (me mom sister brother maybe dad later down the line) but i advised her to wait until the newest one comes out (and use her work phone in the meantime) because we will be locked in for 2 years and the IP4 is already a year old. i like android but prefer the iphone for stability and compatibility (apps like pages, keynote, etc) with my ipad and MBP (which i use for school). i was waiting to get a new phone since mine still "works" even though my contract was up 2 months ago hoping that some of the android features would be adopted in the next ios and iphone update.......but i digress.
anyway, my question is this....if we both wait until the next iphone comes out, will we still be able to get unlimited data when we renew? im presuming that the effective date for these proposed changes is before the announced release of the next iphone model (4gs or 5 or whatever) but i havent been able to find a published "effective date" for the changes. should we avoid this by switching to unlimited "iphone" data plans now? i was told on more than one occasion by more than one verizon person that "each smart phone has its own 'data package'). for example, when i switched from bb storm to palm, i had to drop the "blackberry data" and add a diff plan. and when i switched to my droid from my pre plus i had to sign up for the "android data package".
does having unlimited data on an "android data package" right now get me unlimited data on an "iphone data package" later on? if not, then i think we will scrap the iphone idea since unlimited data on an android phone is more useful to me than being able to edit or create keynote and pages docs on a phone with limited data. i currently stream pandora while im driving and this would put me over if i were on a limited data plan.
whew!! sorry for the length. i guess its a convoluted situation.
thanks for your help!!