Are smartphone bills just something we have to get used to?

[Brian Fein]

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.

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.

[Spider-Dan]

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.

[Brian Fein]

he is an existing customer with an existing expired rate plan. 

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.

[Spider-Dan]

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.

[Brian Fein]

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.)

[Phishfan]

  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. 

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.

[Pappy13]

Not even remotely close to a necessity.

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.

[Dave Gray]

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.

[Landshark]

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.

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

[Brian Fein]

^^ 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.

[Landshark]

^^ 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. . 

[Brian Fein]

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).