You know, it’s a cell phome provider. And as a provider of communication services, I won’t complain much. I am able to talk to people in a lot of places that people who use other cell providers aren’t (like my house), and calls are generally clear.
But your phones…the marvelous phones, capable of downloading pictures, music, games, ringtones, etc. They are so nice. Why do you dumbshits cripple them, forcing people to pay 2 bucks for a ringtone? Or 5 bucks for a game? Or whatever to download a picture…
That’s just bullshit. I know you guys like to make money, but this is just not how you do it. I’m surprised you don’t charge us for each picture we take with the camera phones.
If you do a little research, you can get Verizon phones that will let you download ringtones/images/whatever for free. I picked my current Verizon LGwhatever because I found out that I could buy a $10 USB cable from Radio Shack, then run a free program to sync my data to it and download my stuff without going over the air or accruing charges. I still have to pay for the “Get it now” games/novelties, but since I seldom do that, it doesn’t bother me.
Where Verizon is really out of line is with their data policy for PDA phones. They are charging $15 a Megabyte for downloads. That means a single graphics intensive web page that you view with a web enabled phone can cost you hundreds of dollars.
Also, many of the newer phones automatically connect to the net without being told to by you. This can incur charges.
For unlimited data you need to pay $45 a month. This is bullshit. Sprint charges only $15 a month for the same service.
Even more frustratingly, Verizon slaps these phones into the hands of anyone who will take them with no explination of the extra charges that can be incurred. I had a Kycocera 7135, which was a great phone that often had hardware problems. When it finally broke for good Verizon quickly sent me a new Treo for free. Sounds great, until you find out about the new data policy.
If I hadn’t done my research online, I would have had a nasty surprise at the end of the month.
They’re not exactly crippled. I’ve got an LG VX7000, and I can send MP3/MIDI ringtones to the phone by email for the price of a picture message ($0.25), or just copy them over a data cable for free. I can transfer pictures from the phone to my PC for free as well.
Game pricing sucks, though, especially since very few of the games have free trials - you have to pay just to find out if they’re any good. BREW uses digital signatures to prevent you from loading your own apps or copying them between phones. There are ways to get around that, but I don’t know the details, and I doubt the mods would approve anyway.
Bizarre… I don’t have a PDA phone, but my data usage is billed the same as voice minutes (“National Access MOU”) which means it’s free at night and on weekends. You should be able to get that with any America’s Choice plan.
$15/megabyte is crazy expensive, but not much worse than other providers. Cingular charges $0.01 per kilobyte without a special data plan, IIRC.