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I was grandfathered in on unlimited data

H

HotPepper

Well-Known Member
Whenever they did that. I have an upcoming upgrade so i was thinking of giving up my bionic and going to the iphone. If i get the iphone at the discount price to i still keep the unlimited data?
 
Only if it's an upgrade option on your current contract.

Given the networks are trying their darndest to kill unlimited data, I would guess they're going to at least make that an expensive option. Of course, if you're in the market for an iPhone, money is clearly no object :)

Might be worth taking a close look at your actual data usage, see if you really need unlimited data.
 
If your line is the primary line (individual contract or prime on a family plan) and you upgrade using subsidized pricing you will lose unlimited data.
Depending on how much you do actually use and what you are currently paying the SE plan may not be so bad, it does work out for some folks. Compare the difference in cost (figuring in the subsidized price) and see if helps or hurts...
 
i use about 8~ gb data a month. i pay 30$ for unlimited

hoe much is the 10gb data?

im on a family plan and im not the account holder line
 
Are all the lines on your family plan smartphones? If not, the share everything plans will most likely be more expensive. You will lose unlimited if you exercise your upgrade. However if someone else on your plan has an eligible upgrade and doesn't have unlimited, you can upgrade their phone to the device you want, then reactivate their old phone back on their line, then transfer the new phone to your line. It's about the only way you could get subsidized pricing for a phone.
 
Wait a second....lemme see if I understand this right. If my line is NOT the primary line on a account, of a family plan I last altered in 2011, at the request of parents, I CAN upgrade my phone normally and keep my unlimited data? Cause I got a Thunderbolt then, while unlimited data was still available. I just want to confirm this. Assuming my phone number isn't the primary.
 
JnEricsonx said:
Wait a second....lemme see if I understand this right. If my line is NOT the primary line on a account, of a family plan I last altered in 2011, at the request of parents, I CAN upgrade my phone normally and keep my unlimited data? Cause I got a Thunderbolt then, while unlimited data was still available. I just want to confirm this. Assuming my phone number isn't the primary.
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No, you wouldn't keep unlimited if you update the line with the unlimited on it, but you also would not be switched to the share everything plan. You would get moved to a single tiered data plan.
 
Ok, fair enough. I guess by the time I have any kind of money, I'll just be buying off ebay one of the hot phones from now, except by the time I have money, it'll be MUCH later this year and if I'm lucky I can find a newish phone for like 3-400 bucks. I'm just worried if I did the whole dumbphone/smartphone swap trick something would go wrong.
 
HotPepper said:
Whenever they did that. I have an upcoming upgrade so i was thinking of giving up my bionic and going to the iphone. If i get the iphone at the discount price to i still keep the unlimited data?
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Hi. I work for Asurion. I am in a department called Mobile Tech Support. We are who you get when you dial *611 and have TMP (Total Mobile Protection) on your device. I get this questions pretty regularly.

The answer is no. If you get a phone at a subsidized price AT ALL, then you will not be able to keep your unlimited data. HOWEVER, there is a caveat that I can make you aware of. You may, if you'd like, add or upgrade a line on your account. You can then remove that phone and add any other available product from VZW that you may have. Smartphone, flipphone, netbook, tablet, etc. After you have added that to the line you just upgraded you may then have that device added to the current line with unlimited data.

I would recommend calling in to have this done, as doing it online may not yield the excellent results you are hoping for. They are supposed to tell you if any change will occur during activation, especially if you might lose that unlimited data. Good luck. =P
 
I'm in a similar position. Me and my wife have 3 lines (one is a ghost line). She has a fruit phone with minimal (limited) data use. I have unlimited, but when I upgrade, I would have to lose it and go 12 gb shared, because I use 4-8 per month. Our bill would actually go up a bit to do that, so I don't see the harm in just paying the $13 per month (after all taxes and fees) with the ghost line and staying off contract since it's cheaper anyhow. I can't think of a good reason to lose unlimited even if I don't need it, if it's more money since we have the ghost line anyways.
 
Dex said:
Hi. I work for Asurion. I am in a department called Mobile Tech Support. We are who you get when you dial *611 and have TMP (Total Mobile Protection) on your device. I get this questions pretty regularly.

The answer is no. If you get a phone at a subsidized price AT ALL, then you will not be able to keep your unlimited data. HOWEVER, there is a caveat that I can make you aware of. You may, if you'd like, add or upgrade a line on your account. You can then remove that phone and add any other available product from VZW that you may have. Smartphone, flipphone, netbook, tablet, etc. After you have added that to the line you just upgraded you may then have that device added to the current line with unlimited data.

I would recommend calling in to have this done, as doing it online may not yield the excellent results you are hoping for. They are supposed to tell you if any change will occur during activation, especially if you might lose that unlimited data. Good luck. =P
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Let me see if I understand this correctly. I'm currently on a family plan, through my dad's corporate discount, with my mom, sister and grandparents. My mom, sister and I all have unlimited data plans that we were grandfathered into.

I currently have a DroidX that the screen is dieing so I need to upgrade in the next week.

As I understand it from a previous phone conversation with a VZW rep, if I upgrade my phone through the subsidized phone upgrade the whole account gets upgraded to the new shared plan.

However, it sounds like what you are saying is only my personal line would be? Also, that a way around that would be to add a new line, with the new phone I end up choosing, then switch that phone to my line, and then?? continue to pay the extra $10 for that line, or?

I'd like to keep the unlimited, but it also does not make sense to pay $3-400+ on an unsubsidized phone.
 
TinCanFury said:
Let me see if I understand this correctly. I'm currently on a family plan, through my dad's corporate discount, with my mom, sister and grandparents. My mom, sister and I all have unlimited data plans that we were grandfathered into.

I currently have a DroidX that the screen is dieing so I need to upgrade in the next week.

As I understand it from a previous phone conversation with a VZW rep, if I upgrade my phone through the subsidized phone upgrade the whole account gets upgraded to the new shared plan.

However, it sounds like what you are saying is only my personal line would be? Also, that a way around that would be to add a new line, with the new phone I end up choosing, then switch that phone to my line, and then?? continue to pay the extra $10 for that line, or?

I'd like to keep the unlimited, but it also does not make sense to pay $3-400+ on an unsubsidized phone.
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You say you have unlimited for your line, your mom's and your sister's. What about the lines for your grandparents? Are they dumb phones? If so, and THEY have an available upgrade, you could use their upgrade to get the phone you want. They would then get the $30/month 2 GB data plan. You switch the smart phone to your line and reactivate the dumb phone dropping the 2 GB plan. You keep unlimited.
 
nomarsgirl said:
You say you have unlimited for your line, your mom's and your sister's. What about the lines for your grandparents? Are they dumb phones? If so, and THEY have an available upgrade, you could use their upgrade to get the phone you want. They would then get the $30/month 2 GB data plan. You switch the smart phone to your line and reactivate the dumb phone dropping the 2 GB plan. You keep unlimited.
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Yes, that is correct, the line for my grandparents is a dumbphone.
There *is* an upgrade on that line currently.
so that is awesome!

Now, lets say, in 3mo my mom or sister want a new phone, can we apply another line upgrade to the dumb phone line and do the same thing, or do the upgrade transfers not work that way?

thanks!!
 
TinCanFury said:
Yes, that is correct, the line for my grandparents is a dumbphone.
There *is* an upgrade on that line currently.
so that is awesome!

Now, lets say, in 3mo my mom or sister want a new phone, can we apply another line upgrade to the dumb phone line and do the same thing, or do the upgrade transfers not work that way?

thanks!!
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No. You can only upgrade a line that does not have unlimited. Do your mom and sister need unlimited? As long as it isn't the primary line, it can get the 2 GB for $30 without switching everyone to the share plan. If they don't use much data, it's not a problem.
 
TinCanFury said:
I'd like to keep the unlimited, but it also does not make sense to pay $3-400+ on an unsubsidized phone.
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This is what it boils down to.

If you don't wanna pay 600 bucks for a fancy new phone, then ditch the unlimited and pay 300. You will FOREVER have to pay full retail or use upgrades of other lines/other accounts if you wish to upgrade without laying down that much scratch.

I ditched the unlimited and went to a Share Everything plan because after tracking our data usage for 3 months I realized that none of us used more than 2 GB on average anyways. We always connected to WiFi at work or home. Sometimes I get CLOSE to 2 GB, but that is normally when I am traveling and streaming music. The only real reason I'd keep unlimited would be if I added the 30 dollar hotspot feature to it. Other than that, just figure out your usage and move to a new plan that makes sense for everyone else.
 
It is true that most people don't need it. If the nexus 4 was on Verizon at Google play prices, buying retail would be so painful.
 
It just depends. For some people it's not necessary to keep unlimited when they don't need it. However for me and my wife, it's cheaper to keep our ghost line to upgrade my phone and keep my unlimited by staying off contract. It's pretty pathetic really that it's cheaper to keep an unused phone line (ghost line, for those who don't know the term) just to use it for upgrades, while keeping me unlimited until they yank it away....
 
Amazon has a sale on phones right now, ones Verizon subsidizes at $200 for $50. I'm wondering if the "swap" will work with this sale (ie use it to buy a phone for one of the "dumb phone" lines, then registering it on my line and re-registering the dumb phone back to that line?

anyone know if this should work?

thanks!
 
TinCanFury said:
Amazon has a sale on phones right now, ones Verizon subsidizes at $200 for $50. I'm wondering if the "swap" will work with this sale (ie use it to buy a phone for one of the "dumb phone" lines, then registering it on my line and re-registering the dumb phone back to that line?

anyone know if this should work?

thanks!
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Amazon has their own early termination fee. Read the fine print very carefully. You may incur charges if you swap the phone.
 
nomarsgirl said:
Amazon has their own early termination fee. Read the fine print very carefully. You may incur charges if you swap the phone.
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that is correct the phone must stay on that specific number for 6 months before it can be moved to a different phone. I tried this very method when the Charge was out and learned what would happen.
 
There are ways of keeping your unlimited data on a Verizon plan. Depending on what kind of account you have, how many lines are on it, and how many have unlimited, the method will change. I'm not entirely sure if we're allowed to discuss this here so if we're not, staff feel free to remove the following:

Verizon has an option within their system to do an "alternate upgrade". What this basically means is that you can use the upgrade from another line to upgrade the phone you have. Given this, there are two ways to keep your unlimited. If all the phones on your account have unlimited and you are eligible for a new line, you can add a new line to the account, get a basic phone for as cheap a plan as you can get, alternate upgrade that basic phone using the upgrade on the unlimited line, and just put the new smartphone on the unlimited account and put the new basic phone back on the added line. This will usually cost you between $10-$30 more per month depending on how many lines you started out with.

If you have an account that has x amount of lines with unlimited and at least one line that doesn't have unlimited, you can just do an upgrade/alternate upgrade from the line that doesn't have unlimited and put the new phone to the unlimited line.

The biggest issues here are finding someone who knows how to do it, finding someone who is willing to do it, and being willing to pay that much more for something you may or may not need.
 
that post is reasonable shadowspawn, but the method is different from what i have done:
start a new line with whatever phone you want, transfer phone to unlimited data, tell vzw to put a dummy line on the new line, all you pay is $10 extra a month. it's what i have done, and will do in august.
 
I understand I could buy a phone from Verizon for their unsubsidized price and keep my single user unlimited data plan.

But what about BYOD?

Can I buy/get a phone off eBay or wherever and activate it on Verizon?

Does it have to be a Verizon branded phone?

Specifically could I do this with my Sprint Galaxy S3?
 
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