Data Plan for Family

[compywiz]

I know for just about any smartphone now a days, you're stuck paying the 29.99, but VZW used to have a Family plan for data. It was like 40 or so dollars more for data on the entire account. Did they get rid of this? Now that the droid is so cheap, I want to get 3 more for my family, but thats another 120 in just data (twice the bill!). Do they still have this plan, or did they scrap it because they realized they needed to make more money?

Thanks

 

[legalkill]

i guess so, when i went in for upgrades i never heard them say anything. Sorry kids only free cheap non-data required phones for you.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/planfamily.jsp

 

[jsh1120]

I know for just about any smartphone now a days, you're stuck paying the 29.99, but VZW used to have a Family plan for data. It was like 40 or so dollars more for data on the entire account. Did they get rid of this? Now that the droid is so cheap, I want to get 3 more for my family, but thats another 120 in just data (twice the bill!). Do they still have this plan, or did they scrap it because they realized they needed to make more money?

Thanks

No longer available as far as I know. Data plans are now linked to particular devices. And frankly, that seems to make more sense. If I have three smartphones in the household it seems reasonable to pay for data usage for each device compared to a household with only one smartphone and several other devices.

I understand your complaint, of course, and perhaps Verizon (or another carrier) will consider a volume discount for multiple smartphones but from a sales/marketing standpoint it makes a lot of sense to try to tie multiple household members to the same carrier, making it less likely that individuals in a household might "bolt" for another carrier. Once that is done, however, there is no incentive to extend the concept to data use.

 

[DessoThumbs]

I have an ancient (500 mins shared - never have exceeded this even w/ 2 teenage girls, unlimited text for all) Alltel plan. 4 lines and the verizion data enterprise portion (unlimited 3g web, email, etc.) is an addtional 20.00 per line. not a bad deal.

 

[StupidGenius]

It would be great if they had some kind of bulk rate or $5 off for each additional data plan. Doubt it'll ever happen though. Metered/tiered plans seem to be in our future once 4G is introduced.

 

[DessoThumbs]

It would be great if they had some kind of bulk rate or $5 off for each additional data plan. Doubt it'll ever happen though. Metered/tiered plans seem to be in our future once 4G is introduced.

It's ashamed that the Droid hardware can't and never will be able to support 4G.

 

[Garemlin]

If they offered some sort of discount family plan I would jump on it in a heartbeat. Would love to get my daughter an Eris for when she heads of to college this fall. I'm already paying $10 for data for her EnvTouch. If they did do a plan like this they would sell a lot more smart phones IMO.

 

[billyidle]

Sell more phones, but make less money you mean?

 

[DessoThumbs]

Would love to get my daughter an Eris for when she heads of to college this fall.

I did this recently (valentine/college gift) for my daughter who will be starting @ Elon in the Fall.

 

[compywiz]

No longer available as far as I know. Data plans are now linked to particular devices. And frankly, that seems to make more sense. If I have three smartphones in the household it seems reasonable to pay for data usage for each device compared to a household with only one smartphone and several other devices.

I understand your complaint, of course, and perhaps Verizon (or another carrier) will consider a volume discount for multiple smartphones but from a sales/marketing standpoint it makes a lot of sense to try to tie multiple household members to the same carrier, making it less likely that individuals in a household might "bolt" for another carrier. Once that is done, however, there is no incentive to extend the concept to data use.

I figured this was the case. After reading your scenario, it really depends on the case. We had the National Talk, or whatever they call it, with 4 lines, only one had data plan. To upgrade to National Data (just making names up now), it would be another 40 dollars for the entire plan, but drop the 29.99 per phone. So with 4 phones and data plans, this is a savings of ~80 dollars. Unless you had more than one phone with a data plan, it wouldn't make sense to upgrade to this plan. At least this is how it seemed, I can't find any data on it now.

Sell more phones, but make less money you mean?

They give away the phones since they get you on the data plans, it doesn't take long to cover the price of the free phone.

 

[Zargon]

It would be great if they had some kind of bulk rate or $5 off for each additional data plan. Doubt it'll ever happen though. Metered/tiered plans seem to be in our future once 4G is introduced.

It's ashamed that the Droid hardware can't and never will be able to support 4G.

I'm not too worried about that. By the time 4G is readily available there will be newer, faster, better phones available.

 

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

before I left verizon, the drive was to sell data. i was on the finance side. Revenue was driven by data sales, not minutes. Data, data, data.