Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
GalaxyClass
Master - Level 1

A fourth-quarter jump in the customer turnover rate underscores the increasingly volatile environment for wireless carriers that even Verizon can no longer avoid. VZW is offering a few more carrots to customers will you be nibbling ?

Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise - CNET

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Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
Snn5
Legend

It only makes sense that Vzw would concede a little in the way of promotions.  Afterall, even being the biggest and strongest isn't always enough.  A little deal-making here and there goes a long way for some customers.  I know Vzw wouldn't slash rates and buy out ETFs, but the $10 off plan promotions and data additions to some plans were a good start.  Sometimes customers just need a little incentive to make them feel good about their choice in carrier.

Even with a turnover rate a bit higher than before, I can see where Vzw would care about quality of customer over quantity.  Afterall, a customer with great credit is more likely to stay, and that means they can bank and depend on that money coming in so that they can better forecast and even advertise and create different tiers for different demographics like the low credit or prepay crowd.  I can see them not competing on loyalty customers due in part to those people already being a low number crowd where some are on the loyalty plan due to being unsatisfied, unable to pay for More Everything, or whatever other reason.  The bigger picture is still More Everything over Prepay and Loyalty.  Besides, "Loyalty" is just a term used for people who think they deserve to have the same benefits based on tenure and time with Vzw. 

I do believe that switching carriers isn't like changing clothes and that it would become costly and inconvenient for customers to do so.  There's an entirely different crowd that practices this method of jumping ship for this deal or that deal on a regular basis.  And, with Verizon one cannot simply just bring any phone, and one cannot simply bring a Verizon phone to another carrier.  So, between the seemingly great deals plus the unexpected fine print some jumpers experience, the whole thing can go sour. 

I believe in keeping the plan details simple and not bogging it all down with seemingly confusing data tier prices.  Yeah, a lot of folks understand how the promotional plans work, but a lot of people don't get the idea of how 10GB is the same price as 15GB this month and next month 8GB costs more than 12GB.  A lot of the customer service issues are related to trade-ins and shipping/receiving problems in regards to being charged full cost for a returned phone that was never processed.  Not to mention the "free" equipment on promotions like tablets and other things that people don't understand.  Yes, the customer reading the agreement is a huge part, but so is the representation of services made by the salespeople.  That goes from online to in-store to chat sales. 

I suppose in the end though, unless Verizon just refuses to at least stay even on services and pricing, Big Red will exist for a while longer.  After all, if a customer has no service with another carrier they will switch back to VZW.  But, I think the best policy is to do just a little more to keep them from jumping ship at all, even if it is only for 14-30 days.  Saves a LOT of hassle on both ends.

Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
GalaxyClass
Master - Level 1

When someone comes to me with the standard question , "what carrier should I go with"?  And then their follow up, I found this low cost unlimited data plan with .....bla bla. I simply say to them, what good is this great plan if you can't get a signal and use your phone?   End...of story.

Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
Snn5
Legend

I tend to look at coverage maps and then subtract one "shade" of coverage area to get a more realistic idea of the coverage to be experienced vs expected.

Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
Not applicable

4th quarter results were released a month ago. This is kind of old news. Churn rate was 1.14% not very high( higher than the 1% it was in the 3rd quarter ) and still less than T-Mobile's 1.73%. Hmmmm.

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Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
GalaxyClass
Master - Level 1

I did not do the write up but the results are clear, Verizon is staying in the game big time.  

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Re: Verizon's subscriber growth continues to hum, even as defections rise
Not applicable

As long as T-Moible and Sprint leave 50 million potential customers on the table for Verizon an at&t to have all to themselves of course they'll be fine.

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