I've spoken today face to face with an Verizon Authorized Retail Store owner/manager for a half hour. He indicated the following.
According to him this push is phase 3 of some yet unconfirmed 5 phase process to eliminate UDP altogether. Phase two was the most recent $20 price increase and phase 1 was the change in plans that was forced when you used Verizon's subsidized upgrade programs which started I believe it was a year ago or more.
Actually Phase 1 was when they discontinued unlimited. Unless you used the BB method you could not get a subsidized upgrade. You had to switch that phone to a tiered plan. Last year they started forcing the all phone off unlimited data if you wanted any changes.
According to him, phase 4 will be another $25 per line increase to be expected sometime between December and April, and then the final move, phase 5 will be the complete elimination of all UDP plans, even his employee plan which has UDP. He said that should come about this time next year and every remaining UDP subscriber would be told they have 30 days to convert to a then current tiered pricing plan. These plans will carry higher data limits, comparing today's 25GB with what he's being told will be 40GB for the same cost 25GB is now.
And at that point they can take a hike. Losing a large number of subscribers won't do well for stock price. If/When they do this, short the stock.
If those UDP subscribers don't transition at the end of 30 days they will be terminated. If they decide they want to buy back in they can recover their phone numbers if requested within 60 days of termination as long as they take one of the tiered pricing plans at that time.
No problem. Port out to google. Short the stock.
He also said that the additional $5 for Safety Mode in all but the Large, XL and XXL plans will go away and instead all plans will come with Safety Mode automatically and free. They will also have the "Carryover Data" feature as well, to then be more closely aligned with AT&T and other providers' plan offerings.
Yawn.
Now I can NOT attest to the validity of this information but I will say this gentleman was adamant that it's true. He was also very knowledgeable and his answers to other probing questions I asked about plans and various phones including the Moto Z, to "test" him were spot on.
I have no proof that what he's said is either true or fabrication so I'm going to call this a rumor.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
It may or may not be true.
One thing is true. They won't keep the people that have UDP.
A loss of 1% of the 100 Million + subscribers won't be good.
If they do this, I'll be shorting the stock right before earnings when they announce they lost between 300-900 thousand subscribers.
And it is a big deal, look at the last earnings report where they are hyping the fact that they gained about 800K subscribers.
I'm good until Nov of 2017. My contract runs out on all lines.
We'll see what the FCC/FTC says about eliminating users of a single particular class.
I have no problem with kicking everybody off UDP. But while you are at it make *EVERYBODY* sign up for new plans.
