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Mandatory Data Plan (Forced Data Plan) or the Crappy Simple Feature Phones

I am so upset about this issue that I am posting and reposting this.......

I believe what Verizon is doing is called "Tying" Tying is the practice of making the sale of one good to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). It is often illegal.

Emailing the CEO or complaining on the forums will not do any good as they fall on deaf ears. (As per my phone conversation with the Excutive in Relations he ended the call with "Let's just agree to disagree on this issue") Which tells me nothing is going to be done about this.

Complain to the Federal Trade Commission https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/ and the FCC http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm.

Comments

hotpinkx3

"crappy simple feature phone". Correction: their good quality phones. YOU just may not like them. If you had the 3g multi-media phones its very easy to access the internet. They added the data plans to those phones because why pay $20.00 in overages , when for $10 you can get 25MB of usage (approx 800 web pages/month). Seriosuly sick of people complaining. I understand the frustration. From Verizon's side and the customers. But once you start using the internet, you'll get hooked. i NEVER used to use the internet. ever. then i got an unlimited plan and the convience is such beauty.

hsmmq

hotpinkx3 wrote:
"crappy simple feature phone". Correction: their good quality phones. YOU just may not like them. If you had the 3g multi-media phones its very easy to access the internet. They added the data plans to those phones because why pay $20.00 in overages , when for $10 you can get 25MB of usage (approx 800 web pages/month). Seriosuly sick of people complaining. I understand the frustration. From Verizon's side and the customers. But once you start using the internet, you'll get hooked. i NEVER used to use the internet. ever. then i got an unlimited plan and the convience is such beauty.

I have a EnV2 which is still considered a 3g phone. I could access the internet if I want to now with my phone. The reason I bought the phone was because I liked it and it had the qwerty board and it was an mp3 player plus camera in one. Not because it could access the internet. If I would have purchased the Env3 in December I would not have had to have the data plan which I never use or want to use. But buying the same phone now "requires" a data package is a joke!! I for one never have accessed the internet and I have it blocked. I really do not want my 2 teenagers to have full access of the internet on their phone. Block it Verizon says, well than if I block it why would I have to still pay for it to begin with? That is $40.00 extra a month or $480/year of something I do not or will not use. If I wanted to access the internet I would buy a smartphone with a data package not a 3g phone. How much data do you think is used if you check your emails 2 - 3 times a day? I don't know because I don't use data on my phone but I can pretty much guess that 25MB of data usage is probably not sufficient so the same problem happens-overages.

This is equveliant to wanting to buy a new camaro but in order for me to purchase it I have to purchase a GPS system or an Onstar subscription. The camaro can still work and be driven without the GPS or Onstar but you can't have it unless you purchase a GPS or Onstar. Oh you want choices, we have a station wagon with or without woodside panels that don't require a GPS system or Onstar which one of these do you choose? What a joke!!

The whole point of the matter is that responsible customers are not given a choice now to buy a phone they want and are "required" to have the data plan (which is not essential for the phone to work anyways only an extra luxury that I don't want) which again I say could be illegal if it is in fact "tying".

Rocko73

hotpinkx3 wrote:
"crappy simple feature phone". Correction: their good quality phones. YOU just may not like them. If you had the 3g multi-media phones its very easy to access the internet. They added the data plans to those phones because why pay $20.00 in overages , when for $10 you can get 25MB of usage (approx 800 web pages/month). Seriosuly sick of people complaining. I understand the frustration. From Verizon's side and the customers. But once you start using the internet, you'll get hooked. i NEVER used to use the internet. ever. then i got an unlimited plan and the convience is such beauty.

I am sick of simple minded people who think it's no big deal. Who cares if people pay overages becuase they don't know how to control themselves, it's not my problem and I shouldn't have to pay for their inadequacies. :manmad:

cthunder067

The simple solution to this would be for Verizon to go back and make the Env 3 what it was before the January. The Env 3 was billed as a text msging phone, with a music player and decent camera. As most customers see the Env 3 as exactly what they want in a cell phone. Not only would Verizon appease their customer base, they would still be raking in the dough as the Env3 is one of their popular selling phones. Too bad corp greed has to weed out rational thinking.

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