Recently we ditched our VoIP plan with the plans of either using Skype or our cell phone for bidness calls. We thought we'd save hella money. Instead, we got our Verizon Wireless bill a few weeks ago and it was 250 dollars!! Despite almost everyone we know being a Verizon customer (free mobile to mobile minutes) we still racked up more than 300 minutes with people on landlines -- mom!
When we hit up the Verizon site to see how we could avoid problems like this in the future we discovered that Verizon was now offering clients like ourselves the same kind of deal T-mobile offers -- fave five numbers. We were suddenly allowed to pick five non-Verizon numbers we call the most to be include in our free minutes. Thanks for letting us know Verizon!
Despite the fave five feature we still decided to up our minutes just in case. Haven't gotten our next bill yet to see if it made a difference, but we did find this super informative article on when and when it's not beneficial to change your calling plan. Looks like you can get f'ed over if you switch things up at the wrong time...
Consumer Reports writes:
Stepping up to a higher-minute plan could cost you an additional $20 on your monthly bill at Verizon, for example. But that's cheap for the 700 extra minutes you'd get. If you bought them as overage, at 45 cents per minute, you'd pay a heart-stopping additional $315 on your bill that month.But switching to a new plan, whether it increases or decreases your total number of minutes, can actually add overage charges to your bill if not done right—in other words, if not done at the optimal time of the month. One Consumer Reports staffer—me—switched from a Verizon 1,400-minute plan to a 2,100-minute plan midway through my 30-day billing cycle. Imagine my surprise when I received a $162 bill for overage minutes.
What went wrong? In short, I hadn't accounted for pro-rating of the included minutes in my plan. I switched about halfway through my 30-day billing cycle. So my original plan's 1,400 minutes were pro-rated to only 768 allowed minutes up to that point in the cycle. Unfortunately, I had already used 1,174 minutes as of the change date, 406 minutes over—even though I'd just signed up for 2,100 minutes and only used 1,770 over the entire month. At 40 cents a minute, those 406 minutes added up to the $162 extra charge.
Luckily for the writer, when he complained to customer service, Verizon adjusted the bill. He warns that you can inadvertently create overages via pro-rating so be careful on when you make your changes. We'll let you know what happens to our bill.
Photo: Froglette via Flickr
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Comments (6)
you guys missed the whole fav 5 commercials that verizon has been pelting everyone with?
I think you must only talk on the phone and never turn on a TV. You can't go an hour on any channel without seeing Verizon's ads about their family plan.
One thing to be aware of is special plans that you can get grandfathered into. I have been without a land line phone for about seven years. About 5 years ago, I was working from home and needed to increase my minutes, so I lucked into 1000 minutes for $49 (500 minutes plan doubled actually). Even though I only use 200-300 minutes nowadays, I don't want to switch from my grandfathered plan, since they are unlikely to offer it again.
Verizon obviously doesn't like me having this plan, because I have been told that I will have to change plans (and pay more money for less minutes) if I want to get a new phone. So, I limp along with my 4 year old phone, while holding on to my good plan.
Dang, I always mute the commercials. As a customer it would have been nice to get an email, though maybe I got one and muted that as well... as in junked it.
BigD, that's an amazing plan. I would limp along with my 4 y.o. phone as well!
Who watches commercials?
BigD, I would expect that to ONLY be true if you bought a phone with them subsidizing it. If you could find one, buy it without a contract and then have them activate it, it should work. I'd ask customer service but couched like this: Go in looking for a new phone as a new customer. As the rep if, say, you dropped your phone in the toilet, could you buy a new one somewhere and have it put on your active plan instead of your old one? I bet they say yes. Your contract isn't locked to the phone, so if you got a new phone, you could have them activate it and deactivate your old one (or claim you dropped it in the toilet).
I second Tiamat for BigD, I'd done this same thing on a grandfathered plan with Sprint once.
Then again I switched to Verizon for a year (maybe 2005?) and I found that I could never anticipate the bill, it was always different, rarely in a good way. I successfully had them remove charges a few times, but it was definitely not worth the effort.
Now with AT&T since the iPhone was released and my bill never fluctuated more than 2-3 dollars in 2 years.
Also be sure to check and see if you are affiliated with any organizations (alumni, assocations, employer) that have a deal with your phone company, I get 10% off by giving my university email.