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Verizon Wireless plans

S

srbishop78

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 16, 2013
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I am looking into purchasing iPhones for my parents who are currently on our Nationwide Talk and Text Plan with Verizon. The problem I see is that I have to purchase a data plan for each phone or switch to the share plan. We don't need a lot of data. As in, virtually never do any of us access anything using data. We might use wifi for some things, but mainly I want the phones to have the camera and video quality, not to surf the web or play music or videos and also because it is easier for my mom to text from a smartphone than from her current dumbphone. We call each other a lot and text a lot, so the plan I am on now is great but for the upgrade to the smart phones.

Is there a workaround to this? Does anyone know which plan would be better for us? Currently, we have four dumbphones and one smartphone on the plan. Ideally, I would like two dumbphones and three smartphones on the plan.

Thanks.
 
Calculate your costs with each type of plan (share plan vs individual vs family), and go with the cheaper one.

With everything being cloud based (including storing and sharing the pictures and videos you take), you will still be using some data without actively surfing the web.

I would assume the newer share plan (2gb) might work out best in your situation.
 
We switched to a family share plan for 2 iPhone 4's. It includes unlimited domestic calling & texting; these features of family share are very useful to us since we call a lot still & have increasingly used texts as well. We currently have a 4 GB bucket of data to share, which is comfortably more than we need, and a 1000-minutes-a-month bucket of Canada minutes. We were previously on NW + Canada 1400 minutes a month with 250 texts per line per month & the 2 unlimited data lines.

Overall, our monthly bill went down by about $10 with this plan change but I expect that to go lower when we upgrade to iPhone 5 models because we're going to dump TEC Asurion which will lower our bill by another $20 a month or so. Will probably go with AC+ and keep the old iPhones for backup use in the event of loss or theft.

NB: The ability to call to/from Canada economically was as important if not more important to us than unlimited data. Since VZW counts SMS to/from Canada as domestic texts, they are unlimited as well, which has saved & will save us some bucks too.
 
We switched my family to a share everything plan on AT&T. And it reduced our cost. I looked into verizon too and if you really don't use much data the share everything is usually cheaper than paying for data and a line charge for each iPhone.
 
I would think of you talk and text a lot, the new share everything plan would be the best deal. If you really don't use much data, 2 gb or 4 gb should be enough. My family has 3 smart phones, an iPad, and a dumb phone, and we use about 6 gb with heavy usage. If my mom gets a smart phone, we'll probably need to increase the data amount.

You should also know that they will most likely make you sign up for a share everything plan when you add the iPhones. We had to when my mom got her iPad for Christmas even though we had been grandfathered previously. For us, I think they're about the same price, and we also had the 1400 minutes before.
 
As least as far back as last October, you could add iPhones onto an existing family plan for $10 plus the data charge. The catch is that the smallest data plan offered was 2GB for $30. Pretty sure they didn't have a 150MB plan like AT&T does.

We've switched to AT&T, so I can't check on the Verizon website anymore. You best bet is to login to you VWZ account and see what you upgrade options are regarding smartphones and minute plans. Just don't pull the trigger until you're sure you want to go through with it.
 
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