Ok folks, direct from Verizon supervisor at their tech support number. In order to get the full subsidized price of a new phone you must activate a new phone number AND a new 2 year contract. You can attempt to bypass the system and l port your old phone number to the new number contract and move the new number over to your old phone number contract, at which time you can pay the ETF and final balance on the old phone number and terminate it but it does require activation of a new phone number.
However, what the supervisor told me was that in this process sometimes the system catches this and what it does instead is it reinstates your old phone number if it's within 50 days (essentially as if you simply suspended the service), refunds you the ETF fee on that original number, puts you back into your old contact, and then terminates the new number (and if after 14 days charges you an ETF on the new number), and then charges the balance of the full price of the new phone on your subsequent bill so you lose the subsidy on the new phone. So in other words, Verizon is wise to this and they are putting systems in place to circumvent it, another loophole like I described earlier that they're trying to close.
I was told that the only way to be 100% sure to prevent this phone number activation / deactivation reversal is to continue paying the monthly fee on the new phone number as though it were your old phone number and of course continue paying on the new phone service as well. Obviously this means paying for two lines of service which really makes this far more expensive than the EDGE program, the preferred phone subsidy process for existing or new subscribers from Verizon
As was described to me, the subsidized price of a new phone is tied to a NEW LINE OF SERVICE. A Line Of Service is described as a new phone number AND a new 2 year contract, not one or the other. This is not a system to reward existing lines of service, by simply signing on for two more years and simply keep the same number of users and move sideways in revenue at an added expense. That's a job for retention and if you talk to retention they can provide some incentives but it's not going to equal what a new line of service will bring.
This incentive is designed to increase the number of active phones and monthly revenues by bringing in new customers off the street and from other carriers, and increasing the number of lines existing customers carry as their families and number of devices grows. To do what is being suggested earlier in the thread would be a sideways move and a net loss as they are banking that you'll stay anyway. Why reward someone for doing what they're already doing without additional rewards?
