Verizon said to be plugging yet another unlimited data loophole on August 24th
Ever since Verizon made the decision to ditch unlimited data and entice people to hop onto MORE Everything plans, the company has done many things in their power to discourage folks from using workarounds and loopholes to keep that unlimited data. The most basic and obvious way was to just buy your smartphones full price or grab one from eBay or another aftermarket source.
No one likes to buy a smartphone at full price, though. Verizon had a payment plan option for folks who didn’t mind paying full retail over the course of 12 months, but that option no longer lets you keep unlimited data as of last month. And unfortunately for us, Verizon looks to be making even more moves to stop people from gaming their wallet-hurting system.
Droid-Life reports that Verizon will soon introduce a change on August 24th that will force you to keep smartphone data service on a contract smartphone for the length of the contract. Why is this important? Many folks who used secondary lines for purposes of upgrading would switch the upgraded phones over to their unlimited data line. They’d then cancel the minimum $30 for 2GB smartphone data plan on the secondary line and revert to paying $10 per month for basic data.
While this alone doesn’t effectively kill off the alternate line upgrade method, it does make it a lot less appealing — having to pay $30 per month for data you’ll probably never use is pretty sucky. Verizon’s supposed thinking is that since the customer is buying a smartphone at a discount they should commit to paying for smartphone data for those two years or however long your agreement happens to last. While it makes sense from a logic standpoint, it certainly won’t be a popular decision with anyone on the consumer side of consumerism.
We’re not sure how long it’ll be before Verizon outright forces folks to drop their grandfathered unlimited data and require them to be on a tiered data plan, but if these latest changes are anything to go by it won’t be long before that dreaded day comes. What will you do if Verizon finally manages to pry unlimited data from your hands?