Backup Assistant & Family Share Plans

Well I've seen a lot of people ask about this feature in conjunction with a Family Share Plan and I wish Verizon would re-word how it actually works on their web site as it is kind of unclear as to how other accounts in the plan are handled. It seems to me that if you have My Verizon and you have a Family Share plan with mulitple accounts then the Primary account holder (and only that individual) can have his/her contact book uploaded and ready for download to that Primary account phone or to any of the other account phones. I could be wrong on this and if I am somebody correct me but that is how it appears to me.

However, if this is correct then I would propose to Verizon that they change this so that each account can have their own contact book uploaded and ready for backup in addition to just the Primary. Reason being the Primary account holder may well have some numbers listed that may be private. Also, a family would practically never have the exact same numbers in their respective contact books.

Accepted answers

basspro

Anyone on the Family Share plan can create their own backup assistant account. Go to www.verizonwireless.com/backupassistant and register. The primary account holder will get a text message saying that an account has been opened on one of the lines, and asks if that is OK.

The person that opens this backup assistant account will only have access to their phone info.

All comments

basspro

The person that opens this backup assistant account will only have access to their phone info.

DarkCobra

Ahha! Now we're getting somewhere. First let me say thanks BassPro for the information! The missing link that is NOT mentioned on the provided link is the fact that a text message is sent to the Primary account holder who has to give an OK to going any further. The web site doesn't provide that missing link piece of info and I was going nuts trying to figure things out . . . LOL!

Now, in another similar thread a new poster provided the below information which doesn't include the text message to the Primary account owner asking their OK. I'm not sure if this below method works but this below method isn't found anywhere on the site either. I really wish Verizon would restructure and simplify this whole section. Anyway, below is what the other poster said is another way:

"You can have Backup Assistant for each line on your Family plan, as I do, but Verizon does make it difficult to figure out. First, of course, you need your primary line enrolled in MY Verizon. Next, after you have set up you primary line Backup Asst. you will have to log off and log onto Backup Asst. (register) for each of your other phone lines in your family share account. Either use an id or the cell phone number as the id and pick a password.

The link is https://backupassistant.vzw.com

Once this is set up you can have Backup Asst for each line and the content can be different for each and each user can manage their own contacts.

You can not access all the Backup Asst accounts through your My Verizon but if you access you own and sign out while in the Backup Asst web page you can then log on to one of the othe phone number accounts."

davduck53

I have a family share plan with four lines, my phone being the primary line. All four lines were originally setup with backup assistant and I could access the contacts online. When we got new phones the last time, I got a Q9m which is not compatible with backup assistant. I cannot access the contacts online for the other three lines since I can no longer log in to backup assistant. Is there any way to still access the contacts online for the other three phones ?

DarkCobra

Hi! This does start to get complicated huh? OK, it looks like to me that since you are the primary account holder but no longer have a qualifying device that would even allow you to access backup assistant then indeed you would not be able to see any of the other lines for this reason. The only workaround I can see is to either list one of the other qualifying devices as the primary device. However, this really only give the holder of THAT device the ability to see them all and not you. I suppose the only way around this is for you to get a qualifying device or swap phones with one of the other devices. I could be wrong on this but that's how it looks to me.

mossy

What does this little caveat mean?

Pricing: $1.99 monthly access

Monthly fee waived for all lines on the account when customer is enrolled in My Verizon as the Account Holder