Droid X Mobile Hotspot Plan & Fair Terms of Service

[MBD]

Verizon's Droid X Mobile Hotspot Plan is $20 month with a 5 GB cap and ( 5 cents per MB = $50 per GB overage charge).  I am glad to hear that it is a 5GB cap and not the 2GB first reported in many of the news reports.  5GB is a minimum requirement for me. Not because I expect to use more than that very often, although I would like to on occasion, but because when I do need to use more than that, I do not expect to be charged ten times the going rate by a company whom I am paying top dollar for their premium products and services. Smartphone customers are wireless provider's premium customers. Pretending that  overage fees are justified to protect 97% of customers from bandwidth hogs is just a  lame excuse to justify predatory pricing. Verizon can easily protect us from bandwidth hogs by throttling throughput or stopping service as soon as a customer reaches their cap or demonstrates regular abuse of their data usage. That is what Sprint's and  T Mobile's policy is, and that is the kind of fair terms of service we should be getting from Verizon. Instead Verizon sets customers up for unfair charges, by  deliberately refusing to implement steps that protect customers from unknowingly exceeding these caps. To keep Verizon from charging you 1,000 % more than the rate at which you have agreed to service, Verizon offers "Parental Controls" at  $5 per month  to keep Verizon from letting you blow past your cap without warning. Just loading CNN's homepage is 1.5MB . Three and a half minutes of video news clip on CNN 23 MB,  10 minute video clip on CNN, PBS News Hour, etc. is 60 - 65 MB. I have been on the Internet an  hour and a half now, viewing the Verizon WWW site, Droid X Review Sites and watching and reading the news. I have used 100MB. That works out to 112 hours per month or 3.75 hours per day. That is a decent amount of time per day, and more often than not more than enough. When it is not enough why must Verizon rip you off while continuing to let you blow past your cap? Why not offer customers who are approaching their cap the ability to purchase an additional GB for $10 (ATT seems to feel that is a fair price) up to 3 additional GB per month. That protects the network from Internet hogs, allows Verizon's Premium Customers to get their work done, without being treated like the weasel who rips off children in the Ally Bank Commercials:

"Even kids know an offer should not come with ridiculous conditions"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suBGbef5p3g&feature=player_embedded

[SavannahsMommy]

you are right, it is a rip off.  We have a internet card for our PC and it costs 59.99 per month and I called to make sure it is unlimited usage and it is the same deal you told me about for that too !!  Unbelievable, $60 is TWICE what I pay for high speed internet at home, it is ridiculous !  Hopefully,, more competition will force Verizon to lower their pricing !

[MBD]

Not only the pricing, but there needs to be legislation or some kind of government regulation (if Verizon will not exercise fair business practices on its own) that requires wireless carriers to only offer the amount of service you have agreed to and paid for. Overage charges are a racket, particularly in light of the fact that Verizon can alert you when you are approaching your cap, but chooses not to unless you pay them. Either $5 per month for a heads up, or in predatory rates that are clear examples of exploitation, and cross the boundries of good ethics in my view.

Regarding the pricing, your data useage is what it is regardless of which devices you have connected to your phone. You pay for X GB of data per month, period. That cap without adequate safegaurds has kept me from upgrading. As I stated before, Verizon can and should alert customers and then halt or reduce service as the cap is reached. They have every right to protect their capacity and charge for additional service ONLY if you agree at that time to pay for additional service. Just because they have gotten away with the way they have been doing things does not make it right. This is a business that cleary needs tighter regulation and oversight.