Cell phone plan marketing and the lesser of two evils

[John105]

This one relates to Verizon Wireless.

I noticed the bill for 3 phones went up $12.

There is a $4 fee on each phone because of antiquated plans.

What I noticed is I could move my mom down, from $49 to $40. Nice! She loses hotspot. She has never used it.

Now try to move my wife down. Can’t. Because our iPhone 13 pros were $309 back on 9/16/22 (14 launch). But the discount is spread over 36 mos. So if placed on $40 plan, lose the discount. She stays at $49 (notice the not round number, usually is a flavor of “5” or “0.”

For me, I decide well what if I spend $55, ie pay $6 more? I get ultra wideband. I’d rather pay $10 more and get something, then $4 more and get nothing. I can’t eliminate the $4, not my choice. The $10 is my choice and was the same as before. The marginal cost of $6 seems to be less than the marginal benefit. I do it, and when all is said and done, it’s $3 less than the original $12 more. Still reading?

At any rate I find marketing to be this way. We’ll steer people into what we want them to pay. The absolute most blatant case imho is when employers steer older employees into HSAs! They do the math in circles and can’t justify the cost of the plan they really need!

Want to fight city hall? Let’s make a half gallon of OJ 64 oz again, a quart of mayonnaise 32 oz, and a pound of bacon 16 oz. Those were the corresponding values I was taught in middle school.

Never seen anything like this before, on regular 5G, though

 

[b_b]

2500 is very impressive, best ive seen is 500, and that was on UW.

 

[mk378]

Cell companies have joined the greedflation bandwagon lately. It's not a good time to change plans.

 

[99Saturn]

$40!? I thought my wife should go shopping at $25 on Visible . I'll keep my HSA comments to myself for now since I willingly have one.

 

[b_b]

Cell companies have joined the greedflation bandwagon lately. It's not a good time to change plans.

"greedflation" has it ever occurred that maybe if people didn't purchase a product the price would go down. its almost as if there is to much money chasing to few goods.

 

[tmorris1]

I have no idea how anyone would ever be able to use or need 2.5G bandwidth on a phone, but it is fast. Any number over 50MB on a phone is overkill. Any of Verizon's current deals on new phones require you to goto the premium unlimited plan for 36 months to get a deal on a new phone. You save nothing by doing this because you trade the phone payment for a higher cost plan so you don't really save anything. You are better off buying the phone straight from Apple and deal with whatever plan you want and not be beholden to a carrier. You used to be able to get a deal, but not really anymore.

 

[wwillson]

2500 is very impressive

2.5Gb/s is a lot of throughput to one mobile device, but mobile devices don't need that kind of bandwidth. Big bandwidth is really about the carriers being able to serve a lot of data to a ton of devices. Your individual phone only needs to participate in the modulation techniques and the frequencies that enable this kind of AGGREGATE throughput.

 

[John105]

On the idea of not being part of the demand, I think it’s a nice idea. When I was in college I was very environmentally conscious. Today, I even wipe machines at the gym before and after. In the big picture, these don’t do much.

So in theory I’d love to cancel my cell and FiOS. In practice, my employer requires that I have a cell and they provide a stipend. It was once $140/mo. I wish like my last employer, they simply provided the phone. But these days it’s much different many don’t care but employers know everything about the co provided phone…

So this doesn’t change anything and I do believe we are steered into spending more and what the vendor wants. Again looking at it this way. It was $35/$45/$55 and now it’s $40/$49/$55 (and $65).

But did that illustrate what I was saying? $55 is still $55. The other two went up.