Trying to figure out Verizon's "Edge" program

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So we’re at that big juncture in family life, about to expand our plan to four phones to give next year’s sophomores ‘real’ phones. (They’ve had Tracfones for a couple of years, but I’m tired of the headaches and they’re tired of the limitations.)

We pretty much have to stay with Verizon because that’s the only carrier here that has solid coverage - so good town Emergency Services uses it as their backup, while the others are all very hit-or-miss.

So I am looking at Verizon plans and for all the hoopla, it’s pretty much the same price per user whether you go with the contract, and a “free” phone, or “Edge” and BYO or pay a monthly payment for each phone. The Mrs. and I have relatively new Galaxy stuff and will just keep it. I’m planning on picking up something like Galaxy S3 minis for the kids - something solid in the $150 range. As far as I can tell, we can bring all this and get 6GB data to share for about $130 a month.

The barrier has always been the shared data - one hog, accidental or otherwise, could use up everyone’s allotment. Now Verizon helpfully offers a “family manager” service (for the low low price of $5 a month… sigh) that lets you set data quotas and monitor usage. As the Mrs and I have gotten along just fine with 250MB, 6-10GB max should serve everyone fine. (There’s a cost break between 4 and 6; go under 6GB and it’s $10 more per phone per month.)

All of which adds up, after much comparison and fine-print reading, to about the same per-user, per-feature cost no matter how you slice it. You can’t get a cheap phone, small amount of data and low rates; you can get any two.

Anyway, what tickles me is the “Edge” program, which simply unbundles the phone cost from everything else. (Which is new-ish in the US but the standard everywhere else, as I understand it. People here are finally starting to twig that their “free” iPhone costs a freakin’ fortune over two years.) Under Edge, you pay for the phone separately, 1/24th of the up-front cost per month. Sensible, I guess, except that you can often get the phones cheaper by paying full price elsewhere and ‘bringing your own’ to the plan.

But here’s what tickles me: Verizon makes a huge deal that you can update your device to the very latest technology any time during the plan!*

*As long as your old device is paid for. Wowwwww…

2

If your family has varied phone needs, check out the various Mobile Virtual Network Operators. These are companies which buy bandwidth from the major providers and sell it in a variety of creative plans. Find the ones which use Verizon and see if any plans work for you. Often, these other carriers will allow you much more flexibility in setting up just the services you need.

A company like byowireless has a 500mb plan for $20/mo.

3

I don’t really understand this attitude. Thing is, an iPhone costs a freakin’ fortune period. Phone companies started discounting phones in order to attract new customers and/or lock people into 2 year contracts, which worked great when a top-of-the-line phone was $150, but now the latest tech costs about $600. The phones got so expensive that (prior to EDGE) Verizon’s $80/mo smartphone plan included a hidden $17/mo earmark to cover the phone subsidy, whether or not you took advantage of it. In other words, if you had gone out to the Apple store and bought a $600 iPhone to activate on Verizon, you’d be paying the same $80/mo as the guy next door who bought a $200 iPhone and signed a 2 year contract, and the only benefit you got from your extra $400 was not being locked into a contract. Big whoop.

Pre-EDGE the economics of the situation meant that your best bang for the buck was to buy the absolute most expensive phone they were selling every 2 years when your contract was up in order to take advantage of the phone subsidy that you were already paying for. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but EDGE changes nothing, because the cost of the monthly phone payment (up to $25/mo for a 6GB+ plan, or $15/mo for a 4GB- plan) is deducted from your monthly service charge. You can pay $80/mo for 2 years + buy an iPhone at the Apple store for $600 for a total of $2520, or you can pay $55/mo for 2 years + $25/mo for 2 years and get your iPhone from Verizon through EDGE, for a total of $1920, with absolutely no downside.

EDGE adds transparency, separates the 2 year loan from the phone service contract (so you can switch carriers and pay off the loan at your leisure, I think), and rolls in the trade-in plan, as you note, so as long as your phone is paid off and in good working order, you can upgrade your phone without losing out on the EDGE service discount.

4

Just to add, as I understand it the “buy a new phone every 2 years” incentive still stands, because once your EDGE phone is paid off you lose the monthly service discount, so going over 2 years doesn’t make munch sense. On the other hand, if you trade in your phone early through the Early EDGE program, you, you know, don’t have that phone anymore, so you can’t sell it on Craigslist. Buying a new phone on EDGE as soon as the old one is paid off and selling the old one on CL still seems to be the way to go.

5

We seem to be talking about slightly different things. As I read V’s page, I can have an “Edge” account on a month-by-month basis for the data cost ($50 for 10GB, I think) plus $15/line per phone. They don’t care if I’ve bought a phone from them and have that monthly payment on top of the service cost or not.

Phone providers haven’t “discounted” phones for a very long time, if ever - the full cost of the phone, less whatever they could get you to front, is bundled into the plan. As you point out, that bundle cost is sometimes there even if you brought your own device, which is flat-out theft. “Selling” someone a Galaxy S4 for $49 isn’t a “discount,” not when the required two years of service cost $2500 or more.

Unbundling the phone cost from the service is one of the few pro-consumer things I’ve seen from big seller/providers in years. It never really should have been combined except that the providers and sellers discovered they could charge a lot more, net, that way. Verizon’s prices on phones are list/MSRP, or near to it, and all but the hottest models can be had for discounts from other sellers.

So it’s all good. Mostly, I find V’s pricing structure loaded so that you pay pretty much the same net amount no matter what you do - if you want a smaller data plan, you pay a higher per-line price. May as well do it the other way around. (May as well pay $10/month more for data you may not use than $10 more for a line charge that effectively buys you nothing.)

And the whole “Upgrade any time!!! (as long as you pay for it)” is just hilarious retroflexive marketing wank. No one was ever stopped from paying off the phone they had and buying a new one, no matter how the charges were juggled or combined or separated. It’s really not any huge favor or feature for them to graciously allow you to pay one phone off and buy another.
ETA: And that’s “full list cost” of the phone bundled in, wherever a number pops out. The discount is between the phone maker and the provider, and while you’d have to pay any remaining list cost of that S5 if you terminate early, Verizon’s cost was wholesale, not retail.

6

What you’re missing is that you get a discount on your monthly service fee if you bought a phone from them through EDGE.

Sure, I’m just using their terminology. Used to be you’d get a $600 phone for $200, a “discount” of $400 that you’re just paying in the form higher service fees, but as you point out, you’re paying those higher fees regardless so it always made sense to take the discount. Whether or not you call it a discount or a gouging, it still made more economic sense to get a $600 phone for $200 than a $300 phone for $150, which was often the case. And I believe is still the case.

Except nothing’s changed because you get the EDGE discount. As I pointed out above, you can pay $40 a month for a line, or you can pay $40 a month for a line, $25 a month for a phone, and then get a $25 discount from your line charge for a grand total of… $40 a month. You’re still paying for the subsidy whether or not you use it, except now you can see exactly how much that subsidy is.

Again, you’re missing the monthly EDGE discount.

7

Also, I don’t think your phone has to be fully paid off in order to upgrade. It’s something like 50% or 60%, so you can make payments for a year, and you hand the phone over to Verizon and they wipe the rest of your loan clean.

8

Actually I think it’s 75% now. They keep tweaking things, and it looks like early upgrading is no longer advantageous for the consumer.

9

Too late to edit, but it’s 100% as of this month. I’m way out of the loop. Sorry!

I still think Edge > conventional 2-year contract > bringing your own phone, even if you plan on keeping a phone for a long time.

10

I don’t see anything about a discount, at least not on the current plans offered. (As you’ve noted, the “Edge plan” has been changed about every fifteen minutes for the last year.)

“Edge” just seems to be their name for unbundled service - you contract and pay for service on one agreement, and buy a phone in installments on another agreement, which can be conveniently managed as one cost. There’s no real advantage to buying their phone or having the combined cost except that they’ll basically give you the phone on the installment plan. If I BYO, I pay the same service plan costs, no discount, and of course no phone costs.

If I’m misreading that on the current plan, show me where. Ghod knows it’s confusing as hell even without the essentially false marketing aspects.

11

I linked to the edge faq in post #6, the discount is explained in question 2 under “General Information.”

12

There is only a ‘discount’ for switching to Edge from their standard, bundled, “More Everything” plan. Edge is Edge, same prices, whether you buy a phone from them or not.

That Edge is cheaper because it doesn’t have the phone-subsidy charge rolled in is good. But it doesn’t have it in any case. (None I can read, anyway…)

We can actually switch from the traditional V plan for two phones ($110 with 250MB data) and two Tracfone accounts (about $30, with all the limitations of TF) to an Edge plan with four lines and either 8 or 10 GB of data for about $130, plus or minus a bit.

I’d say cellular service has finally matured in the US. :slight_smile:

13

This is interesting. The VW site has changed since I looked at it this morning. I can no longer find the pages I was looking at about Edge without buying one of their phones.

I suspect a lot of browse-history-sensitive shaping going on here.

14

Edge is not an alternative to the “More Everything” plan, it’s an alternative to signing a 2-year contract.

You get the More Everything plan for 6GB, it costs $X per month. It costs $X per month whether you bring your own phone or sign up for a 2 year contract and get a “discounted” phone from Verizon. In other words, nothing’s changed, there’s still a hidden phone subsidy built into the More Everything price.

However, if you don’t want to sign up for a 2 year contract in order to get a phone, you can buy a phone through Edge, which is just a 24 month 0% loan for the entire cost of the phone. Why would anyone take out a loan for the full price of a phone when they could just sign up for a 2 year contract and get a $400 “discount?” Indeed, that’s how it was when Edge was first rolled out. But now, crucially, your More Everything plan will be cheaper if you bought a phone on the Edge plan. By $25 a month if you have the 6GB plan or higher. So it doesn’t cost $X per month for your More Everything plan, it costs $X - $25. And then on top of that you’re paying some monthly loan payment, which in the case of an S6, is exactly $25.

The S6 is basically free. I know it’s not free, it’s built into the cost of the plan, but since you’re paying that cost anyway, the phone is free.

eta: Ahh, yes, the website is terrible and the details of the Edge plan have changed a lot over the last 6 months.

15

Okay, you’se right, I’se wrong. What I was looking at has nothing to do with Edge, but under the ME plan on monthly payments, it’s far cheaper without the subsidized phone allowance. Edge just adds the ability to roll an expensive phone back into the mix for a monthly rate without the baggage of the 2-year-contract ME plan.

So it’s:

[ul]
[li]2 year contract, pay a fortune, get a bundled phone.[/li][li]Add Edge, get a discount, pay the money directly to the total phone cost instead.[/li][li]Go month to month, with BYO or fully paid phones, get reasonable service costs and terms.[/li][/ul]

16

Not sure if everyone knows, but Verizon offers a credit for customers whose contracts have expired, I assume to off-set that phone subsidy. I was getting a $15/mo credit until I signed a new 2-year contract last month. I don’t think that they advertise it. I had to call Verizon to get the credit.