A Positive Post on the New Shared Plan.

[Duogen]

So I would like to give some figures to everyone, and I wanted to make my own post.

Current Vs New.

Current Family Plan

4 People, 3 Smart phones 1 Flip phone

40 $ for the 4 lines

170$ for the Unlimited Minutes ( just checked, that is what it says for if i changed to unlimited.)

30$ unlimited Texting for all phones

90$ (at least) for data plan. (will assume they have 2GB package for sake of comparasion)

Total = 330$ (we will leave out any other fees as we are just worried about plans)

So I would like to take a moment to talk about the current billing set up. In reality right now, every Smart phone costs 40 Bucks. 10$ for the Phone line and 30 (at least) for data. So the price for a smart phone remains the same in the new set up. The basic phone will be 30 bucks, which is a 20$ increase. As it is now, you have to play for Voice and texting separately. As you see in our current set up, that is a lot of money.  Now lets move on to the new set up.

4 People, 3 Smart phones 1 Flip phone.

120$ for the smart phones

30 for the flip phone

100$ for 10 GB which includes Mobile hot spot.

Total 250$

Bit of a difference there, and in a good way if you ask me. They are getting 4GB MORE than they had before, and it will be shared between EVERYONE. So they now have 4 GB to mobile hotspot their laptops/tablets or whatever. With this pricing, why not upgrade that flip phone to a smart phone for 10 bucks a month and still save money.

You people that are using 10 GB or more are using sites that use Verizon's bandwidth for free. If you truly want to blame this price hikes, blame the services you use. Why do you think Netflix can stream videos to you for 5$ a month? Because they don't bite the bullet in bandwidth pricing. And so many ppl use these services, that it causes Verizon and companies to buy more equipment. This equipment is not cheap, we are talking about single routers that cost millions. You can only fit so much data down 1 strand of fiber.

I am glad to discuss this if you can bring valid arguments!!

[commonsense101]

logic doesnt work on the internet..*rabble rabbble*

[mingan]

You make a valid point however this isn't always the situation people are currently in, and while this new tiered structure may appeal to many people, a large company like verizon should continue to try and appeal to EVERYONE and their own diverse needs. People fail to understand that especially when it comes to business customers are everything, the more people you can attract to your service the more money you make, the more resources you can afford to invest in to draw MORE customers to your service, and the cycle continues. I must ask what about the people who are perfectly content with their current service? What's to stop verizon from continuing to offer unlimited data plans to those individuals who sincerely feel that they need it?

[#4]

Wrong.  A company does not strive to appeal to EVERYONE and their diverse needs.  They try to appeal to their target market segment.  Verizon has a certain amount of bandwidth available to sell.  They can make far more profit by getting rid of the data hogs and selling the bandwidth in smaller increments for a higher price per GB.

[mingan]

I didn't say they did strive, I said they should strive first of all. Second of all of course they can make far more profit by doing this, we already understand that this is their intent, however it's certainly not the best way to win the respect of their loyal customers who might actually be paying more over this change. The point is they need to balance their own profit with the wants and overall needs of the customers and I feel that they might have missed the mark a bit on the "needs of their customers" part.

[rrutl]

      Hello and glad to offer a comparison of my own situation as this whole idea is so relative to each of us :

   my bill right now will be (obscene as it is) approx.  272.00  it includes:

3 smartphones with data:

1 @ unlimited

1 @ 2gb

1@  4gb

2 basic phones (no data)

1 wifi  mobile hotspot device @ 5gb 

700 shared minutes  (which we never exceed)

Unlimited texts     for the record I should say that I have not used more than 2 gb on my unlimited data plan, so for the sake of discussion I will  calculate that we have access to 13 gb  (for all practical purposes)

  Under the new (and improved) plan:

3 smartphones @ 40.00

2 basic phones @ 30.00

1 hotspot          @ 20.00

Data plan with 10 gb = 100.00   

At this point I am looking at: 300.00 and 10 gb data as opposed to:  272.00  for 13 gb

Again this analysis is relative to my own situation and doesn't even consider that I would be giving up my unlimited data, of which I am not an abuser.  In the future I will need to add one additional smartphone and then my total would be similar in dollars but would allow us 5 more gb. 2 of my phones will be teens, and so the restrictive data allowance wold not favor me in the least. So to conclude, I get considerably less data for similar money OR similar data for more money. And in this age of ever more increasing amounts of services that are data-centric, we will feel the pinch. Now I know that people on here will offer counseling as to how I can manage my use of data, but I neither need advice nor counsel as this issue. My hope was that these new plans would be an improvement or would offer some relief, but bring nothing positive to my table. I love a logical discussion and although I can be as passionate as anyone can be, you asked for logic and this is mine.

    P.S. If I were to increase my own data use to the commonly referred level 5 gb (which is where people have observed throttling) then there is 3 more gb lost to this brilliant plan. I only use what I need in terms of data and it varies, so most people find their 'comfort zone' when they consider which plans to choose. Offering unlimited voice to people is a losing proposition as an incentive to get on board this plan. While some of the excitement is from people thinking they will be forced onto the plan, vz at this point has said they will allow existing customers to keep what they have (for now). I despise this company even though I have no other serious option, so I will play hardball and continue to encourage people to stay engaged, fully educate themselves, participate in advocacy efforts, pay attention to Congressional business as relates to both telecommunications and net neutrality.     

[Derek32880]

I have said this on another topic on this subject in this forum and I'll say it here too  the pricing structure for unlimited talk text and 4gb data  for $70 a month is a really good deal I would be willing to jump ship on that offer (or even the $80 for 6gb)  because for the most part I use wifi and have never even used 1gb any month but I can't really see paying a $40 smart phone charge on top of it cause I only have 1 phone on my account and of course I would be paying less on either of those plans than what I pay for unlimited talk and text now HOWEVER (this I didn't mention before cause i didn't think of it till now)  most people don't have 4G speeds in there area yet  and the ones that do I'm not sure how much data they use if they never use wifi but I'm pretty sure it's more than someone who uses 3G speeds  cause it's faster  which means  more data is being used.  now if someone has say 5 smart phones on there account and have unlimited talk text and data, with this new plan there going to end up paying $100 for the 10gb plan plus $200 smart phones fees  for a total of $300  now this 10gbs is going to be shared between all 5 so if all 5 uses we'll say  6gbs each that's 30gbs they'd be 20gbs over  @ $10 a gb so add $200 onto that $300 there now paying $50 more (plus extra taxes and fees on top of that) than what they was before and this is why people are complaining

Now I also want to add (even tho this really has nothing to do with the subject at hand but it's to prove a point as well) I had a Verizon rep tell me awhile back (maybe 6 months ago maybe a year ago I can't remember) that before long  voice minutes/text messages will be so low  that you will be paying pretty close to nothing for them and just paying for data. Later I read that starting in 2013 (which is not that far off mind you) Verizon was gonna start testing and maybe using voLTE (voice over LTE) for minutes and texts  so it could be possible for them to start selling unlimited talk and text for  say $10-$30 a month (for the 2 not each and mind u I'm not saying it will just saying it's possible)  HOWEVER  if this is the case  they will start changing the prices of the data for smart phones yet again...  and we could end up paying the same as the ones using the computer data  $80 for a measly 10gbs  of course  by using the voLTE   that 10gbs could be reached in a matter of days if you are big time talker and use A LOT of minutes so you may end up paying $1000+ a month in the long run cause of overage charges especially if you are sharing the data with other phone lines

[marienabend]

Well, I've done my homework and it's not the WORST thing in the world. Here's what my family of 5 is looking at:

Current plan:

4 smartphones 1 dumbphone

1 unlimited data plan, 6gb total for other three smartphones

2000 minutes

unlimited messaging

With my employee discount and insurance on 4/5 phones we currently pay $273.49 (not including taxes and fees)

New plan:

4 smartphones, 1 dumbphone

unlimited text and talk

6gb of data

Hotspot

Insurance on 4/5 phones

Without employee discount (I've heard employee discounts won't work with this new plan) we would pay $291.15 (not including taxes and fees). edited to add: If we got my employee discount I think it would be $276.75.

We would lose an unlimited plan and get more talk minutes. For my family, this is okay because we always come close to using up our 2000 minutes. My mom has a home business and uses her cell phone to operate it, so the unlimited talk is a benefit. My mom is also the one who was lucky enough to get an unlimited plan before they stopped, but we got her unlimited as a safety. We figured she wouldn't know how to switch between wifi and 3g and would go past any limit, but over the past year, she's never gone over 1GB a month. When she discovered youtube, she almost hit 2GB.

The included hotspot is also a pretty nice perk, but I wonder if we would really use it since it uses a lot of data and we'd only have 6gb. But, I could see it being handy at airports.

So, I'm not particularly sad about losing the unlimited plan since it wasn't really being used. Also, my mom is definitely going to upgrade her phone and lose it anyways. Now I would have to hope 4 people can work on 6gb of data, otherwise we have to go up to 8gb and that would be $20 more. Since I and my 2 siblings live on college campuses that have wifi everywhere, but it could work. But, time will tell, my mom is the one getting screwed over.

Basically, the plan isn't a savings for even a large family, but it's not a horrible change if your circumstances are just right.

Ok, I have to confess: Before I typed all this up, I was all "It's a small savings! I think I'll switch", when I did the preliminary (40x4+30+data) math. but now I realize my family would be paying so much more once you factor in insurance and other such fees on top of this shared plan. I can keep it how it is, pay less and not have to worry about going over 6gb each month....I tried to be positive....

[marienabend]

If you want to get more depressed about it, I checked out what the price would be if I didn't upgrade my brothers to smartphones:

Currently if my bros didn't have smartphones:

2 smartphones, 3 dumbphones

2000 minutes

unlimited text

2gb data and an unlimited data plan

insurance on 4/5 phones

with employee discount

We pay $213.49

If we went from this to something similar on the shared data:

2 smartphones, 3 dumbphones

unlimited talk and text

4gb data

insurance on 4/5 phones

hotspot

We pay $261.15 without employee discount, $248.55 with employee discount (if it transfers)

Is it worth it to pay about $50 more for hotspot and unlimited talk while losing an unlimited data plan for 2gb?

No.

[marienabend]

Found a positive!

If I switch to AT&T, my family will pay about $9 more than what we pay now, but we'll have 9GB of data instead of 6 and 2100 minutes instead of 2000. The new shared plans are still a worse deal than AT&T ($280 for 5 phones with 12GB of data and 2100 minutes/unlimited text vs. $276 for 5 phones with 6GB of data, unlimited talk and text)

I'd rather go with 12GB of data over unlimited talk. Contract expires next year, can't come soon enough.