I've been a Verizon customer for almost a decade and today I went to get a new phone. I wasn't aware that most of the phones I had been looking at now require that $9.99 data plan, but I'd been thinking about adding data anyway, so I went with it. The sales rep was kind of pushy and obnoxious when I was undecided between the data and non-data phones. He kept saying that 25MB is a usable amount of data, and that looking at email, or web pages would just use a few kbs of data. I was pretty skeptical, but I wanted that phone and wanted to try data, so I did it.
I bought the phone this afternoon. I've used data once: I opened Twitter, logged in, scrolled down to the bottom of the page, and then shut it off. According to the Verizon website, I've now used a total of 1.35MB of data. I'm completely flabbergasted and very upset. How on earth could I have used THAT much data in less than 30 seconds, on a site with no pictures, nothing fancy, etc?
I did go to My Account on my phone, and looked around for a minute. It said that I wasn't being charged data usage, but was I? I haven't even USED my new data plan and I'm already down almost 1.5 MB.
I'm annoyed at the sales rep for lying to me, and I'm really annoyed that if I want to cancel the data plan (which I do), I'll have to return my new phone. Like I said, I've been with Verizon forever, but this is really ridiculous.
Can that total be right for that usage? Did the sales rep totally lie to me? Any advice would be greatly, greatly appreciated.
There is so much content on a web page now days,, I would suspect 25MB would last maybe at most an hour of continious browsing.
I fell Verizon did this switch to eliminate the complaints from customers who do not use data yet keep getting charged a phantom $1.99. Verizon will still have to deal with current customers (who have not changed their plan or phone) complaints. But as people upgade and such this issue will disappear.
The $9.99 25MB data is a joke and the $29.99 data for 3g phones is a robbery. If you want to use data I suggest you move up to a smartphone or blackberry because getting a 3G phone with unlimited data is a joke and you are very limited in what you can do. Sadly this is reality now and most companies are milking customers $$$ but if you want to start using data then use it on a phone that is worth it.
The sales rep probably just wanted to finish the sale as quickly as possible and get the next customer w/o taking the time to explain most of the stuff for you. Next time just do some research or jump on boards like this to find help and then go to the store to get a phone.
My experience with the 25MB is similar to yours.
Two weeks ago I went in to get a new plan with four phones. I was looking at the env Touch and thought it would be fun to have web access while waiting for my kids to get out school, events etc. I also thought it would be nice to able to check my email (which I found out *later* that I can't do with my current email account.) I wouldn't do this everyday, and only for a few minutes at a time when I did. We decided that 25MB would be fine. A young salesman there had the same phone and said he loved it and never came close to using up his data. He showed me how to use his phone and I thought "hey, this is great". He wasn't in on the whole sale, and I really think he was talking about something other than the 25MB plan (he was a nice guy and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt). Well I quickly ran up 13MB in three days by simply checking my favorite blog TWICE and visiting a few websites. I was on the web for very little actual time and I was totally shocked at how fast I went through the MB. Plus it is very hard to keep track of usage. My Verizon is at least 12 hours behind so I think it would be near impossible to get an accurate count. I posted on this forum and a fellow member suggested I switch to the Connect plan for virtually the same price but I would get unlimited data. Thank goodness I looked into it and did it on Thurs because by the next Monday the plans had changed. The connect plan no longer exists and I would be paying $29.99 more, plus all our phones now require the data pkg so my total bill would have been almost $60.00 a month.
I can't believe that anyone who uses the web can get by with the 25MB plan. In fact I find this so ridiculous that I'm hanging around these forums just to see if I'm right. If you can't check your data usage accurately, and I don't see how you can since there is a lag, and if you can't have it automatically stop at 25 MB there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. The only thing then would be to add unlimited data for $29.99 and have your bill backdated. Or return your phone since you can't have that phone unless you get a data package with it.
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