Verizon online shows an "more everything" plan for a basic phone for $20/month access and $5 for 700 minutes. The $20 is shown as a discounted price from a "normal" $30/M access. Bottom line: Even though this discounted price has been on the website for some time, Verizon says it is a mistake and will not honor it.
I found this out because of this: We had a family shareplan for many years, with 2 lines. The plan was tied to a primary phone number. In July 2014 I decided to change and tie the plan to our second phone number, in art because we were contemplating changing our provider for one phone, and we wanted to transfer that number to the new provider. Verizon's customer service walked me through the steps online (because without help you could never figure out how to do that), and it looked like that worked. About a month later we suspended that phone number and transferred it to a new provider. Everything worked so far. I wanted to go through these steps accurately because Verizon does not offer that "family shareplan" anymore to new customers, but I did want to retain the plan if at all possible.
I then monitored the account to check and whether Verizon picked this change up on the billing side. The first month it did not, but I since the transfer occurred a few days into the billing cycle, I decided to wait a month and see if it was subsequently adjusted. The second month's paper bill (ending 10/20/14) reflected the dropped line, but did something strange -- it charged me for the second line access fee, but did not charge for the monthly plan. Exactly the opposite of what should have happened. On Friday 10/24, I checked the bill online and it was still showing that billing status. I decided to re-look at new plans since it looked like Verizon might not be able to figure out their own billing mistakes, and I didn't want to continue the problem. Prepaid basic (no contract) was $35/month for 500 minutes and 500MB of data (why data, with a basic phone?). Single line plans did not seem to be available for a basic phone. The "more everything" plans did allow basic phones, and for the $20/M and $5M price combo mentioned above, for 700 minutes (and no data). It states the $20/M access 4 places on the web page. However, when you try to continue, it tells you that it cannot complete the transaction online, and refers you to a customer service.
Calling customer service, he looked at the current bill/plan and said that I had $62 of overages. What?! I looked, and sometime in the 2 days since Friday, the online bill had changed to include these overages through 10/20. How can Verizon unilaterally change my plan, and then retroactively add charges? Because verizon had cancelled my plan and charging me The rep recognized the problem but could not change it without talking to a supervisor. I mentioned then that I would be willing to go to the $25 more everything plan if that would help with the resolution. He said that it would help, but the $20/m access charge was not correct, and Verizon would not honor it. If I wanted to keep my old plan and get the overage charges reversed, he would have to submit a ticket to a verizon "offline" group, but he could not guarantee the result.
Summary:
Verizon has unilaterally cancelled my plan, with no notification.
Verizon retroactively charged me (and continues to charge me) 45 cents per minute.
Verizon will not adjust my bill, nor change the billing for my phone, until some "offline" board decides whether they want to allow that or not (there is no clear access to this entity or process).
Verizon refuses to honor the "more everything" online price for monthly access for a basic phone ($20 + $5 for 700 minutes).
