The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I've mentioned this before, but I'm not really comfortable with the monthly fees associated with technology.  I don't mind paying for "new" technology, but once those things become standard and it feels like its no longer an option, I feel like I'm getting ripped off.

Smart-phones are a good example.  We pay out the nose for data plans.  And while I suppose that you could choose not to have them, within people my age and in my field, they are basically a necessity.  Am I stuck paying $30/month for "data" forever?  Surely, the cost of getting me that data will decrease...will I see that savings?  Or, like cable TV, is it something I better just get used to paying for?

Either get use to it or get rid of it.

I think I could probably do without "data", but I still like my phone to have the things it does.  I like to have games and apps on it and stuff, but I have no need to access the web to play them.  In short, I could live on just Wi-Fi, without issue.

With an iPhone, can I elect to not renew my data subscription, but maintain call capability and Wi-Fi only?

I dunno. 

My phone can make and receive calls.  I can also receive txt messages.  I assume I could send a text message if I wanted to, but have never tried.  It also can be used as a calculator (done that twice) and an alarm clock (about 6 times)

No, you can't.  Most carriers "force" you into a data plan with any smartphone.  In fact, if you were to sign up with AT&T, let's say, with a "feature phone" (i.e. a phone with no "smart" functions), and then swap your SIM card into an iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry, they would add the data plan to your account involuntarily and charge you for it.  This has happened to me.

The only option is to move to a prepaid phone plan, where you buy bulk minutes in advance and pay for phone and texting and use the wi-fi for data.  They can't force you into anything that way because you don't have a running monthly service agreement.  Its pay-as-you-go.

I think you just have to get use to it and hope that the carriers get into a price war.  As it stands its a cash cow for them.  In fact its recently gotten worse where data plans once were "unlimited" and now most carriers have tiered plans where they charge you overages if you exceed a certain bandwidth per month.  So many people are willing to pay the $30 a month to have the interwebs in their pocket at all times, and that's not going to change.  Until people, on a large scale, are sick of paying for cellular data, the prices are never going to decrease.

Get over it or get rid of it. I think cable is a huge waste of money. Because of that I have NEVER paid for cable.

I love my smartphone and don't mind paying for the data plan. The thing I hate paying for each month is health insurance.

You could go with two devices.  A phone that is just a phone and a ipod. 

For me its insurance in general.  You pay hundreds and thousands of dollars each year to some company, because you need them to back you when stuff goes wrong.  And then when they need to shell out money they give you a hassle and a hard time and raise your rates or drop your coverage.  Its such a joke, a ripoff, and a scam.  But its required, because if you don't have it, it causes more problems.

I agree. When I truly needed my health insurance the assholes kicked me out of the hospital. Such bullshit.

Talk about really bad customer service.  I'm on the old Verizon plan with unlimited data.  From here on out, I must pay full price for my devices.  If I upgrade my device at the promo price, I lose my unlimited data.

I heart MetroPCS

This is any cellular carrier.  You must re-sign a contract to get the promo price and they don't offer your plan anymore.  What's more valuable to you?  Has nothing to do with customer service.  They're not going to give you a phone at a loss and let you take it to some other carrier.  You realize they pay WAY more than the "promo" price for those phones, right?

I always pay upfront for my phones to keep my plan. The plan I have isn't offered anymore. I get unlimited calls and texts with 5GB of data for $59. The funny part about it is that I don't get signal where I live and all calls, texts, and data go through wifi. I never even hit 1GB, much less 5GB. Every time I think of changing my plan, I see that they are charging $40-50 for just unlimited calls and texts. Then I figure that I'm getting 5GB for $10-20, so I just say screw it and keep it.

That's some pretty twisted logic.  If they "don't offer his plan anymore" then how is he still paying for it each month?

They obviously do continue to offer his plan, or else he would have been kicked off of it.  Good customer service would entail letting him simply sign a contract for his already existing plan, but they want to coerce him to voluntarily leave it.

I would imagine that the data plan you pay $30 for now blows away the data plan that you paid $30 ten years ago. It probably would have cost you hundreds 10 years ago to get the data plan you can today if you could even get it.

So to answer your question, no you won't be paying $30 for the same data plan forever. You'll be paying $30 forever, but the data plans will just keep getting better and better because you'll need it to keep up with the ever increasing rate of data consumption.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

They don't offer his plan to NEW customers.  They honor his plan that he was on originally, as long as he maintains service.  However to sign a NEW CONTRACT would mean he has to choose one of their currently-offered rate plans.

I know you know this, so I don't understand why I have to spell it out like I'm talking to a 2-year-old.  You're a smart guy.  You just trying to argue semantics?

No cell phone carrier in the USA will allow you to sign a NEW contract on an old rate plan.  It just isn't how they operate.

Yes, and that's the "poor customer service" part.

The "old" rate plan you refer to is the plan he has right now.  He is not a new customer; he is an existing customer with an existing rate plan.  And they use this excuse (of not allowing you to keep the plan you are currently on) to force people off of the plans they like and on to plans they don't want.

And when that doesn't work (see: AT&T iPhone subscribers with the original "unlimited data" plan), they use loopholes and throttle their speeds on the backend to force them to switch to metered plans anyway.  It's a racket.

I don't see what the fuss is.  Its not a customer service issue.  Its industry policy.  Its like going to Motorola and asking them to give you the RAZR from 8 years ago because you liked that phone.  Its been discontinued and is no longer available.

But it's not really expired, because he's still on that plan as we speak.

And much like the banking industry policy of your own bank charging you a fee when you use another bank's ATM, this policy is bad customer service.

I guess I don't see it that way.

Bad customer service would be if they said "hey buddy, we don't allow unlimited data anymore, so you can pick from one of these new rate plans, or we're going to just pick one for you and charge you for it"

The fact that they honor his previous rate plan, which they no longer offer, should be considered GOOD customer service.

(For the record, your ATM example I also don't consider poor customer service.  That's just the way it is.  The fact that my bank not only doesn't charge me, but reimburses me the other bank's fee is GOOD customer service.)

Not even remotely close to a necessity. People really need to understand how overused this type of sentiment really is. "I need a..." is almost always followed by something that is actually a want rather than need. The smartphone is some sort of status symbol. That is why people ask, "What type of phone do you have?" It has replaced the looking at everyone's business card scene from American Psycho.

If it was a necessity, you can better believe the company would need to pay for it because they would need to supply it or reimburse the fees.

I would say it's inaccurate to say it's not even remotely close to a necessity. Depends on the job and depends on how much you think you need it to do your job.

If you work in a support role like I do you probably at least need to be able to send and recieve texts on your phone, but you don't have to have a smartphone for that. Most of the support managers that I know have their e-mails forwarded to their phone because they have to be alerted if problems arise or something needs their immediate attention. Many of them have pagers as well. Some managers (depends on their title) have smartphones purchased for them by the company, others purchase their own so that they can keep up. They don't technically have to have them, but I think it does add value to their job.

Or course it's not a necessity, in terms of a basic need (I'm not going to die or cease to function without it), but speaking in terms of modern convenience, I'd say it's as needed as air-conditioning.  A smart phone is very integral to my daily life, but not necessarily the "data" aspect of it.

Also, I'd like to be able to look something up while I'm out, but not have to pay $30 for it.  ...like a "bill for use" type of thing.

I guess I'm kinda stuck with it until I find another solution.

Wrong.   I've done it before. This is the first time I've seen it happen. And other carriers still allow you to keep your old plan

^^ Wrong.  I've never seen this and I've been on every major US carrier in the past 10 years.  Prove it.

And before you tell me otherwise, recently TMO has changed to a "no contract" policy but they make you pay full price for the phone.  They don't give you a subsidized  price.

I had Alltel for years before they got bought out by Verizon.  They would always allow you to keep your old plan but once you got off it, you could not go back on.  Verizon did the same thing until Smartphones came out.  Then if you got a basic phone, you could keep your old plan, but if you got a Smartphone, you had to add the data package.  Then Verizon came out with unlimited data plans, then got rid of them.  For a while, they were allowing customers to keep those grandfathered plans while upgrading their smartphones.  They stopped doing that in June of 2012 and forced people to either pay full price for their phones or switch to one of their current plans if they upgraded at the promo price. . 

I am not going to argue with you - I don't care that much.  I left Verizon years ago, specifically for that reason, because they wouldn't allow me to upgrade my phone without either paying full price or changing my rate plan.  At the time I was on a family plan with 5 add-on lines and they decided that add-on lines were going to increase in price and they wouldn't allow me to have 5 anymore (4 max).  So I left and joined Nextel (now, Sprint).