The Public weighs in on shared data plans

[rrutl]

      Hello . . . hello . . is there anybody in there . . smile if you can hear me . .is there anyone at home ?  Well, after another day in paradise I wonder if the suits have realized there is 'poo on their shoo'  ?  OK so if any people reading this have seen a significant number of people respond positively to the new plan would you reply so I  can see why it is a good thing. I have searched the internet(s)  and even 'Dubya'  doesn't like it.  Aside from a few wall streeters,we all seem to be asking  "what were they thinking"  Please I need a pep talk there must be someone who can say good things about bad ideas. Seriously I would welcome info showing where one could find some good debates or even analysis of the plans. All vitriol aside, just plain talk and discussion is what's needed in this time of concern.  Please would someone at verizon offer a compelling argument in favor of the plan. Speak now .. as they say.  This plan is mostly a deal breaker in terms of actually being acceptable to the majority of existing customers, from all indications that I have seen. Once the people who live under rocks weigh in, then we will have some form of consensus. The horse ain't dead yet, so let's keep beating away, can anyone spell REPUDIATE ?  Maybe they actually have internet service at 666 Corporate Tower,  verizonville.  Pete Townsend once wrote  "Give blood . . .  and they'll tell you that it's not enough"  vz it looks like you just gave birth to an orphan. 

[rrutl]

      I must say in a very serious manner that I had hoped to benefit from the new plans, but it just ain't in the cards. Anyone who would should chime in so there is a little balance to the discussions. 

[#3]

If you're on a family plan where everyone uses a ton of minutes and texting and very little data yeah you can save money. other than you're paying more.

[Duogen]

Also, if your get discounts (like work discount) this will save you more.

As it stands now, you only save money on 1 feature (Data). Family plan may have 2 Datas.

As it is now, I save 17% off the 30 data plan, the other data plan i pay full price. Which this change I will save on the full price, which equals more savings for me. Instead of 17% of 30, it will be 17% of 70.

[rrutl]

when you go to this plan, there won't be any employer discounts (as I was advised by VZ cs rep)

[PJNC284]

And that would once again be a clueless rep.  Discounts will only be applied to the monthly account access charge.  So if you had the 4GB Share Everything plan, it would apply to the $70 for the unlimited talk/text and 4GB of data.  It wouldn't be applied to the individual $40,$30, etc line access charge.

[marienabend]

Even with an employee discount you don't save money. With my Employee discount now, my family pays $213, if we switched to shared data with a work discount we'd be paying $248. See:

Currently:

2 smartphones, 3 dumbphones

2000 minutes

unlimited text

2gb data and an unlimited data plan

insurance on 4/5 phones

with employee discount

We pay $213.49

If we went from this to something similar on the shared data:

2 smartphones, 3 dumbphones

unlimited talk and text

4gb data

insurance on 4/5 phones

hotspot

We pay $261.15 without employee discount, $248.55 with employee discount and we lose the one unlimited data plan.

edited to add:

also, the way my employee discount works, I get 18% off monthly access and 20% off a feature on an additional line. so my mom's unlimited data is only 23.99+30 for my 2gb=53.99. Under the new thing, I would only get the 18% off monthly access on the data, so it would be $65.60 for 4gb.

[soulstice_x]

Totally agree! I thought that prices on data would be more reasonable. When I saw $50 for 1Gb, my jaw dropped. That's what I pay at home for 250Gb. LTE is supposed to be very efficient at handling data, so the costs should have decreased somewhat from 3G which at the time where about $50 for 5Gb and $80 for 10Gb. I see a very serious disconnect in data prices. Also, bills look like they will increase. I have yet to see a case where they decrease and overages went from $10 a Gb to $15 depending on your plan.

These plans are a bad deal and I will tell VZW no thank you when my contract is up and take my business elsewhere. I liked the coverage and service, but it's not worth 20% of what I pay for my mortgage.

[lewisr13]

If you guys don't like the new family share pricing plan, then stay with what you have. Why would a company come out with plan that would reduce most customers bills? It's a pricing plan for those that don't have or use very much data to entice them to use more or get more data on more lines. As more people adapt to using there phone for data the more data will be used and more people will become dependant on it. Thus they will need to purchase more data.

[PJNC284]

lewisr13 wrote:

As more people adapt to using there phone for data the more data will be used and more people will become dependant on it. Thus they will need to purchase more data.

yup.  And that is exactly what CFO Shammu said.