Paying $120 for unlimited prepaid voice when others are offering the same and more for $50 do not make comparable deals. Granted, network matters, but over double in price makes it come across as way too costly if there are other options available. And there often are.
Here's what I don't get: Verizon's MNVO, Page Plus Cellular, offers unlimited voice at $74.70 a month (rumored to being cut to $59.70 a month soon). Verizon, who owns the network itself, is offering it at a super inflated price. Sure, with Verizon Inpulse, you have the advantage of only being charged the daily access fee on the days you use it, but I think it's fair to say that 99% of people who need unlimited minutes are going to use it every day.
Long story short, Verizon needs to get with the times if their being undersold by their own MNVO.
I had the PagePlus unlimited and would have stayed with them if they had a text bundle for it. I used a 407 area code which gets the $1.99 a day rate right now. At 15 cents a text though even a small amount of texts can be expensive. I will return to that with a text bundle added, fingers crossed.
It seems Verizon is using its MVNO's to compete in the prepaid space.
This Virgin offering adds gasoline to the fire and should create new lower priced offerings from Net10/Tracfone, PagePlus, and others.
Originally Posted by metallicpoet
Here's what I don't get: Verizon's MNVO, Page Plus Cellular, offers unlimited voice at $74.70 a month (rumored to being cut to $59.70 a month soon). Verizon, who owns the network itself, is offering it at a super inflated price. Sure, with Verizon Inpulse, you have the advantage of only being charged the daily access fee on the days you use it, but I think it's fair to say that 99% of people who need unlimited minutes are going to use it every day.
Long story short, Verizon needs to get with the times if their being undersold by their own MNVO.
add unlimited data and a windows mobile phone, and i break my contract and port my number to vmu
Aren't you on SERO? Add Unlimited Incoming, Pick 5, and Bonus Minutes and you pretty much have a Simply Everything plan that's cheaper than Boost, Virgin Mobile, Cricket, or MetroPCS. That's what I've done, and I pretty much use my phone without even worrying about the meter running. Check out all the free add-ons you can get from sprintgurus.com.
It seems Verizon is using its MVNO's to compete in the prepaid space.
As well they should. They seem to want nothing to do with that market. When I had Verizon prepaid, all I ever got was lousy customer service and CSRs who disparaged the product with lines like "Why are you messing with prepaid?"
As well they should. They seem to want nothing to do with that market. When I had Verizon prepaid, all I ever got was lousy customer service and CSRs who disparaged the product with lines like "Why are you messing with prepaid?"
Yeah, looks like that looking down at the nose attitude from VZ kinda confirms my suspicions about their true view on prepaid (even though I don't know if you had them before or after the current $50 unlimited price war). Their prepaid offerings are weak compared to say Boost, Virgin Mobile, Metro, Cricket , Page Plus and others. They seem to have a relationship with Page Plus and their other Mvnos similar to what Sprint has with Virgin Mobile (which last year at least actually had more members then Sprint's own Boost prepaid plans, I'm not so sure now after the recent surge on Boost's walkie talkie /iden side). In fact, Sprint increased the "bounty" they paid Virgin for every new customer because apparently Virgin Mobile had a bangup last year even with the economy.
They're sticking with, "It's all about the network , stupid." I might buy that if I were in an area where only their legendary reception works (but then again, I'd probably go with Page Plus because I hate contracts), but I'm fortunate enough to be in a metro area where everyone is pretty much equal in reception quality.
And it's funny about VZ CS. I've had nothing but bad to mediocre service from them on the POSTPAID side. Whenever I help out people with their VZ postpaid accounts, the CS leaves a lot to be desired. Especially annoying are the exceptionally long wait times compared to say Tmobile .
Minimum Price of admission: Virgin Mobile Jax $9.99 (or FREE phone - Marble or Slice with $9.99 airtime purchase) vs Boost Mobile $49.99 for the i290.
AND If you actually use the service...
Virgin Mobile PAYGO has more options and lower costs: Voice minute packs starting at 10cents/min. ($20/200) and messaging packs (text, pix, IM, e-mail, video) starting at 6.7cents/message ($2/30) PLUS 5Mb data for $5.00 (includes: 3g ev-do).
vs Boost Mobile PAYGO $.10cent per voice minute or text message (and $.25cents per picture or video message). PLUS Unlimited data available at $10.85 per month ($.35cents per day) -- connections slower than dial-up.
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Originally Posted by gestaltent
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