My 2-year contract with Verizon
just expired six days ago. If I decide to stay with them and upgrade through them, I will make them work for it. IOW, they'll have to start refunding these little fees they've been overcharging me each month, and waive other fees, or I will bolt straight to the competition. Not like Sprint is any better, but they are the only other serious player in town here with decent nationwide coverage.
I don't buy that my "unlimited 4G" is going to stay that way either. Months ago in this forum, there was talk of them throttling your data speeds for a month if you went over a certain amount of data used. Plus, the fine print most likely has a clause stating that they can end your plan at any time without notice. Look at how banks can change your "fee-free checking" to a $12/month account (Bank of America, anyone?) with nothing more than mailing you a notice telling you it's already a done deal.
Damn it, I love Verizon's coverage and level of service. But I dislike their nickel and diming me to death every month with various fees, these constantly changing policies, the thread of "unlimited but maybe not unlimited" service on my Unlimited account, and now that I think of it, 4G coverage that fails to work about 50% of the time I want to use it. (I can't even get 4G at home and we are in a major metropolitan market; head a mile and a half southeast down to the lake and I get screaming-fast 4G.)
As I mentioned, I'm sick of the games and the growing and uncertain bills every month. I'm shopping it, and they're going to have to work really hard to keep me. I don't want their free phones, I don't want anything...just good reliable service at a fair cost.
BTW, I'm not so certain we will ever see the end of subsidized phones. Most of us here are well off enough that we could probably swing a decent smartphone if we needed it, but there are many others who scrape by, and those "free" or $50 phone deals draw in a lot of traffic for these cell carriers. You can get last year's model dirt cheap or free, and it may not be much off from this year's latest and greatest. It's like the old razor game: Gillette sends you a free razor in the mail, since they know you'll go out and buy the expensive refills.
Verizon will give us the free razor (or RAZR as the case may be
) with the stipulation we buy their "refills" (monthly access fees) for two years.
