I recently switched from an older 5 GB plan ($59.99/mo with overages at $0.25/MB) to one of the newer plans 5 GB plans ($50.00 with overages at $10.00/GB.)
This week, I went over 5 GB and my speed slowed WAAAAAAAAAAY down. I saw some threads about "unlimited" customers not really getting unlimited service and seeing slow speeds over 5 GB, but I'm PAYING for my overages, which any any given month might be 1-2 GB. We're not streaming movies or downloading tons of music, just surfing on two computers.
Anyone else experiencing this?
Verizon shouldn't be throttling speeds for overages that are being PAID for. Either throttle or charge, but not both. If this is what they are doing, then they are going way over the line of ethical business practices.
To be clear, I am not nor am I looking for an unlimited plan - I know those are no longer available.
However, I had read some threads about people getting restricted speeds over 5 GB on those "unlimited" plans. This week, when I exceeded the base usage of my plan, my speed seemed to slow way down. The timing with going over the 5 GB included in my base plan seems highly suspicious based on the comments in those other threads.
Today, my billing cycle rolled over and I'm back to full speed. I did call into tech support yesterday and tried some troubleshooting, but was then not online again so don't know if today's higher speeds are related to the tech fixes or the new billing cycle.
Getting slowdowns (throttled) over 5 Gig on "unlimited" plans is certainly plausible and quite likely, as all carriers are very loosely defining "unlimited" as unlimited access, but reserving the right to throttle (way down in many cases) data transfer speeds if a base limit (2 Gig, 5 Gig, whatever the plan stipulates or is implicitly assumed) is exceeded.
The thing is, strictly speaking, there can be NO unlimited data plans in terms of data amounts transferred, since users a billed on a term basis (30 days) so ultimately there is an upper limit to the monthly data consumption, even if the plan is marketed as unlimited. So doing away with unlimited data is really more of an issue of semantics more than anything else, so I wish they would just quit the practice and clearly specify monthly consumption limits in the terms of the plan. That way, we know just how much we are being gouged (poor value for dollar) when we think our rates are too high.
Thank you everyone for the contributions!
We do not slow data down when you reach the 5GB allowance. In extreme cases regarding the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users, we may reduce the speed intermittently during peak times to allow other customers access to our high-speed connections. This is only in extraordinary cases.
I do not believe this is the case in this situation. We can take a further look into this with you, if you would like to contact us or PM me directly. Read more about Data Optimization here.
Have a great day!
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