Verizon screwed me over with my prepaid plan.

PChen1

I have a problem here and I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions.

I'm on the Alias 2 and have been since around August last year. I bought it at full price instead of the contract price because I wished to use the prepaid plan so that I wouldn't be stuck in a contract. Now it seems I'm locked into my basic plan and it won't let me switch to the Core plan so that I can take advantage of the mobile to mobile. It seems ridiculous that I have to pay 25 cents a minute just because I can't change plans. 

Needless to say, it's a money sinkhole.

 

I don't know if there was anything in the Terms of Service or instruction manual about not being to use my Alias 2 on a prepaid plan but that's what a customer service rep told me. I'm guessing the prepaid plan isn't the same thing as my current basic plan?

If my phone wasn't suppose to be on a prepaid plan then shouldn't I have been told this at the store when I first bought my phone?

Something to note is that I was fine up until a few weeks ago when I tried to change my plan. I've been using it for about a year and had no problems with plan changing between the Core and Plus plan til now.

unknown

As of January 18, 2010, you must subscribe to a $9.99/month data feature (which provides an allowance of 25MB) to use the Samsung Alias 2 with Verizon's postpaid service, regardless of whether you are under a contract, or paying for service month-to-month. 

 

With this change, the Alias 2 and other "3GMM" phones became ineligible for use on Verizon's prepaid service, because they do not allow any device which REQUIRES a data plan on postpaid service to be activated on their prepaid plans.  It sounds like your phone was active before this change went into place, so you are currently grandfathered in, but changing your plan will lose you your grandfathering.

 

At this point, you have four basic options:

 

1) Activate the Alias 2 on a postpaid account, since you own the phone outright, you DO NOT have to sign a contract.  You can simply pay for service month-to-month.

 

2) Purchase a phone that will work on Verizon prepaid, this includes older phones released before January 18, 2010 that are not "smartphones" and current and past phones that fit in the "Feature" phones category.

 

3) Keep everything as it is now.

 

4) Look elsewhere for cellular service.  I will tell you that Verizon's prepaid plans are over-priced compared to their competitors, and some of those competitors actually use the Verizon network, so some research here may net you significant savings.