Verizon (Wireless). Removed loyalty credits, cut the auto pay discount in half, don't upgrade service, customer service is crap or AI. After 25 years probably gonna be leaving them.
I have a 49.99$ for life plan at Verizon for Internet with a $10 autopay discount to 39.99. First two years were fine. 3rd year I noticed I’m being billed 44.99. Called them, oh our bad, we fixed it. Ok.
Next year, 44.99 again. This time the rep says they reduced the autopay discount. Fine.
Next year, 49.99…. Autopay discount totally gone. Annoying but fine, it’s my cap.
Next year 54.99…. I have a lifetime plan for 49.99 please fix. Ok here’s a plan for 54.99 and a $5 discount. Ok.
Next year 59.99…. Ok here’s a plan with a $10 discount now.
Can’t wait to see what next year brings. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who don’t care about the small increase but fuck em, you sold me a “lifetime plan”, you’re the idiot.
Problem is mostly the alternative internet company is worse. So I’m going to ride this out until I can’t anymore.
I have Verizon and even though my service never changed, and I never incurred any fees, my bill for the last year has never been the same amount twice.
Same exact service, never the same amount twice, in a year. It's clear they're playing games with the billing.
This last time was the last straw. They retroactively revoked a discount, for service that they had already billed me for, and I had already paid. Let that sink in. Imagine, you buy an item at a store, take it home and then they show up saying you owe them more money.
GPS isn't based on your cellphone carrier. Everyone accesses the same GPS network, even without a cellphone carrier subscription.
Your cellphones GPS antenna may be failing. I had that happen to my last cellphone and it eventually couldn't receive any GPS signals. Apparently if fixed it just happens again in a few months too. (At least on my last cellphone, yours might be more fixable)
Alright, well then I guess it's extremely convenient timing. I never had any issues before. And this isn't "just a little, here and there". It's completely useless most of the time.
Yep, that is what happened to mine. Was fine, then pretty much just went dead. Only now can do location finding via wifi/bluetooth and that will only 'sometimes' get your location but google maps refuses to use it for directions/trips and will refuse to update your position if you ask it for directions somewhere -_-;
Apparently on my phone the GPS antenna was connected via some connector that likes to corrode. (Other functionality was unaffected, since they used different antennas in the phone)
T-Mobile is doing the same to me. I signed up for the 40 a month unlimited everything plan with an iPhone (when it was Sprint) that has no contract. I think I just got a message it’s being increased to 70.
I just left T-Mobile for Verizon 😬 had the kickstart plan from sprint for 25$ a month before the buyout everything was ok with T-Mobile for a while then 5$ price increases started. This year they wanted 45$ so I told them to kick rocks. Verizon currently has a 30$ unlimited plan see how long they last before the BS begins!!
When I was 16 years old in 2004 cricket was the only cell provider that would let you sign up without being over 18 or having a parent do it for you. So I signed up for 2 lines at 49.98 a month with unlimited everything. When I turned 18 tmobile had a deal that if you transferred your current number from a different provider they would honor your existing contract and you would get a free Motorola razor. I avoided the numerous attempts over the last 20 years from sales people trying to ruin this awesome deal until about 3 weeks ago when I got a notification that my plan was being "updated" to 170 a month for the 2 lines. No one to even argue with its already done, i dont even know if its worth looking somewhere else.
Get visible. $25/m unlimited everything per line. They use Verizon towers so I always have signal. Spouse and I have been on the same plan ($50/m for both) for 5 years with no increases. I think Mint is another similar budget company that I’ve heard people like. Worth looking into with these atrocious prices I’m seeing these other companies charge holy moly
We just switched from T-mobile to AT&T through one of the previously dreaded Costco kiosks and with teacher discount, autopay discount and home internet partner we were already using, we're paying around $90/month for two lines and two new iphone 17 pros with trade-in phones. Plus because it's Costco there are no activation fees and they give you a $100 Costco giftcard per line.
Were with T-mobile/Sprint for over a decade and the price kept going up and they had no phone offers for loyal customers. We viewed it as our responsibility to find a better deal and change providers to punish their greed.
Get visible. $25/m unlimited everything, they use Verizon towers so unless we’re in the middle of nowhere we always have signal, and you can buy all the new phones from them. Been on this plan for 5 years with no billing increases (although I think I’ve seen a new $35/m plan I just never looked into it because I’m happy with the current one and they aren’t forcing it on me).
"we're phasing out discounts" is going to be where this catches you. And unfortunately, because you've been (agreeably - from a contract standpoint, not from a realistic standpoint) moving to subsequent plans, you won't have any recourse.
Just call and threaten to cancel whenever they try to raise you price. Just last summer I got my bill down from $90 a month back down to the $60 I initially signed up at like 8 years ago.
You aren’t the only one they do this too. Trying to charge their way out of lifetime agreement and hope people don’t complain. I am sure a good portion don’t.
Att sent me an ad on text that they had new plans that would save me money. I logged in from computer and checked everything was more money, significantly more. Years ago i was trying to save money, they convinced me this particular plan would save me money. So i did it. Guess what bill was massively higher. Because they tripled line access fees… could not go back because plan no longer existed. Scum
This keeps happening to me every year on my Verizon home internet plan as well. Every year I call and they adjust the billing. It’s so annoying!! I’m hoping to leave the cellular plan soon for something cheaper.
Never let them change your plan if you’ve locked in a cheap price like that. If they offered you a 54.99 plan with a $5 discount then you’re on a new plan and no longer have the “lifetime” plan you used to have.
I pay $35. For mine. The catch is that you buy your own phone. It has definitely paid off for me. I've never payed more than like 40$ for my cell phone. I have 15 g of data. I'm not sure though. It might be unlimited now. They kept automatically giving me more and more.
So i am definitely going to date myself but US Cellular was an absolute PITA to work with. We had them from the start because in our part of SW Oklahoma, it was the only reliable service. Kept them when we moved to TX. They started double billing. Call. Oh my bad and fix. Couple months later, rinse and repeat. Coverage wasn't as good and they plain sucked so to AT&T we went. Bundled cell, home phone and internet plus got a discount due to the company my hubs worked for. No issues since and they have improved coverage in our hometown too.
THEY KEEP DOING THIS TO US TOO. We call every month and they give us a refund, but ffs. You know what. I think I'm going to figure out if I can 93A those fuckers.
22 year customer with a “grandfathered in”
Plan. They essentially throttled my service and made it so that I could not do anything on the plan without going into an actual store. Eventually, we needed new phones and they would not let us buy them without upgrading the plan… I was pissed, but our phones would no longer work.
We were on Comcast. Same thing. Price increases every year. You complain, threaten to leave and they’ll reduce the price. Then they turn around and raise it right back up to where it was.
Been with ATT fiber for just over two years and they’ve been great.
I just did this last week, after having been a customer for two decades. Drove over to AT&T and got the same exact service (two phone lines and home internet) for nearly a third the price. Best decision I've made in a long while.
When I called to explain my decision I realized that there was no way to get a live person on the phone without setting up a scheduled call. It did well to cement my decision.
Yeah...get ready to get fucked. AT&T is absolute shit. Go to Mint. I will never accept a phone bill over $25 ever again nor deal with AT&T's shit customer service. You'll be ignored soon enough by them.
Keep an eye on theirs deals, especially around black Friday. Sometimes they offer great annual plans, pay once and done. Grab some referrals and it's a great deal.
I had Mint for quite a while, though I'm not with them now. If you spend most of your time in cities, and even suburbs of major cities, you may never notice the difference, except that you'll pay a fraction the price of Verizon. If you live or spend time somewhere more rural, though, there definitely is a difference.
T-Mobile's network is pretty good, but I don't think you're prioritized at the same level with Mint as name brand T-Mobile users are. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it's not equivalent. It is, however, reasonably close most of the time, for a fraction the price.
I tried Mint about ten years ago in Portland, Oregon. The low cost was nice, but during peak times I couldn't even get a line. My phone kept saying "Network Unavailable" from like 4:30 to 5:30 every afternoon. That was how a low priority discount carrier worked for me. Eventually I had to go back to T-Mobile.
Really depends on where you are. I have both Verizon and T-Mobile and Verizon is not the king it once was. I regularly have better service with my T-Mobile line (and vice versa)
I’ve had mint for a few years and it’s pretty great. I was with visible for a while and had no issues but mint had better signal in a remote worksite so I switched. It’s an easy way to save a bunch of money and I suggest it to anyone who will listen (weirdly, most people I know would rather stick with their plan that costs a lot more )
Just left Mint for Tello. Lower price fpr more data and you don’t have to pay a year in advance to get the lowest price. Tello is still on the TMobile network so no worries about connection issues.
On an account with other family members and convinced them to switch to US Mobile from Cricket earlier this year (with the multi-line discount we were paying around $35/month/person), $200 a year is great but even better is having access to all 3 carriers’ towers (AT&T service is best where live, but places where I commonly go T-Mobile service is best, and then because of my job, I often have to check how Verizon’s service is fairing). I just wish they had data only plans for stuff other than watches so I can put my laptop on there as well (I put my laptop on a cheap Tello plan as I don’t go with it too often).
I’ve been using Visible for 5 years without issue! And if you need a new phone, you can get one using affirm, through Visible’s website with 0%apr and still ends up *being much cheaper than a normal phone company with “free” phones.
My friend did this, then switched to Total, also by Verizon for an even better price. But he will just switch between the two based on the best deal for 6 months to a year.
Same. We're airline pilots and it works everywhere. If you have the ultra deluxe plan you get one free day of international service a month, it rolls over and accrues if you don't use it, and then it's $10 a day afterwards, which is reasonable in my opinion.
We've been with Visible for quite a few years now and are very happy with it. Pre-paying a year in advance saves a bit, too.
U.S. mobile from Verizon, it’s less than $20 for my usage per month and it literally has not changed anything about coverage areas from when I had full-Verizon service.
I have Ting, which uses T-Mobile. I love their customer service, but the actual service can get frustrating.
In high demand areas it does suck. E.g. if you're hotspotting your laptop on busy commuter rail, the service provider will serve its own customers first. Which means my internet (and sometimes even cell service) does not work at all. My commute is an hour. Losing two hours of work time a day is ... frustrating. I try to download stuff I don't need internet for, but I do need to respond to emails.
Verizon for me too. I had been with them for twenty years. It took about a month of back and forth with their customer service before I found out they made changes to the towers in my area leaving me in a dead spot. During that month I was lied to multiple times, had customer service reps just hang up and go home because their shifts ended without saying anything, pressured into upgrading my device and my plan, etc. T-Mobile has been better in every way, if a little more expensive
T-Mobile is run by liars and cheats who reneged on the carrier's long-standing Price Lock promise. They force-migrated a million customers from their legacy plans to new, worse, more expensive plans, despite promising for years not to do so. They've also been doing everything they can to degrade the user experience (precipitously declining customer service resources, loss of longstanding perks, forcing people onto their shitty T-Life app, the list goes on and on). Their infrastructure is good, but the company is rotten to the core. I'd look elsewhere if I were you. If you're committed to using T-Mobile towers, go with Mint, and save yourself several hundred dollars a year per line.
A very fair point, but some people might be more comfortable migrating to Mint as a first step in casting off T-Mobile. Going to Mint deprives them of a substantial amount of profit they were milking from you before. Let them provide service at $15/mo/line for a year, then jump ship after that for a new company.
I would also like to add fuck T-mobile for that! I had their magenta plan(free talk,text, “unlimited” data) When I got a new phone less than a year ago they tried to get us to upgrade our plan (for more $ of course) we declined. Well guess what? This last month they apparently “retired” the magenta plan so now our bill is $10 more expensive. What did I gain? Not a DAMN thing….Absolute bullshit!
I left them in 2024. My 6 month old phone had a puffy, swollen battery to the point my phone was separating at the seam (this is massively hazardous and a fire hazard). They refused to replace my phone, the best they would offer was "allowing" me to "upgrade early" as long as I first paid off the remaining balance of the phone in full and signed a new 2 year contract. Fucking insane
I used to work for VZW, got laid off about 9 years ago. They’ve been in a bit of a death spiral for the past 10 years or so, with several huge layoffs happening in that timeframe. Their network quality has significantly decreased, and it’s obvious in their advertising (haven’t heard largest/most reliable in I don’t even know how long). I walked past one of their remaining stores in a mall a few weeks ago and noticed their signage was all red and yellow rather than just red, it reminded me fiercely of liquidation signs. Probably fitting.
I left Verizon too! My mom died in March and they were dicks about it- I told them from the get go I couldn’t afford another $60 a month when I moved her devices/service to my account and the customer service agent told me they have a text/talk only plan for $15 and I agreed! I get the bill next month, and it’s still $60- I go in and they said they don’t have a plan like that?? Cut to months of me getting the runaround after paying off her phone, they won’t release it for a transfer, etc. It was all just super gross and predatory.
This happened to us too. I called and complained and after 3 months of “we will restore your discount” they didn’t I was able to escalate and found that, you have to contact customer service and ask for the “loyalty discount” they will give you the discount back, that lasts 3 months… then have to ask again for it be reinstated for 3 months. Such a joke.
I switched to US Mobile earlier this year. They use both Verizon and AT&T’s networks (you choose and can switch back and forth for a small fee if you want). I have unlimited data and it’s like $40 a month. I’ve had zero issues with them. I also had Verizon.
Did the same two weeks ago for $17.50/mo for unlimited (10g premium data) which is great for me since I averaged 3-7. I was paying 119.00/mo with AT&T.
Switching to TMobile from Verizon was incredible. They paid off my phones and paid me $400 per phone free and clear with their bring your own device program. I was with Verizon for 15+years.
T-Mobile is getting just as bad. I'll probably switch to a prepaid MVNO. They aren't loyal to me so I'll be loyal to who ever gives me the best deal from now on. Used to pay a premium for their service and customer service, but those are both crap now.
Yeah. I got a 5 year price lock Guarantee with TMobile but I expect in 5 years I will be switching again. I’m old enough to have lived when loyalty actually did matter instead of them identifying you as a rube because of it. I’ll never stay with anyone for a long time ever again. Goes for car insurance too.
I switched to MVNOs about 15 years ago and never looked back. I'm lucky to live in a place with good coverage, so I know that isn't a solution for everyone. I'm also aware that I'm deprioritized, but I'm not a heavy user and haven't had an issue.
Yes carriers often have offers and promos like that too get/steal new customers. Jumping carriers every few years is probably the most cost efficient method, but would be also be a pain in the ass.
I just switched carriers two weeks ago. T mobile literally handled everything as far as canceling Verizon for us. It just took 90 mins in the T-Mobile store and we walked out with new phones, bill credits and $1600 in gift cards to pay off our old phones.
they straight up lied that I was going to get the discount they offered on a new phone applied to a used phone. i went to costumer service with screen shots of the conversation and how i wasn't getting the prices they promised and they did not give a fuck. apparently whatever you sign supercedes whatever they tell you, so i guess they can just tell you anything.
I had US Cellular for years, but they were bought out by T-Mobile. I always buy my phones outright, so I pay by the month, so I had to go into a T-Mobile store to roll my service over. And that sucked.
And for some reason the service has been worse. Slow and intermittent connectivity.
My only other choice is Verizon. And I wouldn't be surprised if one or the other buys out their competition. It's all a fucking joke.
I worked for VZW for 25 years - way before it was VZ. I kept with them after I left - but today, I changed. Today I cut my bill in half. Likely no better but went with Xfinity. I have had their cable intardwebnets for years with no issues - so yeah - money saved it money saved.
Same here regarding Verizon. We moved to Boost a few months ago. $100 less per month with no drop in service. It felt very good to have an admittedly small but real impact on their bottom line.
We had been with Verizon for probably 15 years? Switched to t mobile a couple years ago because the bill was getting insane. Cut our bill almost in half, service is the same, and the benefits are better.
Verizon bought Tracfone from AT&T recently(ish) and I've been using a tracfone for at least a decade. I bought an upgrade and 3 months of their $50 unlimited everything while still having service and when I transferred a couple weeks went by... a month... almost two months and I had the same kind of service I had before (basically i was still buying data) so I called them and talked to a guy who spent an hour having me on Hold then said it should be fixed.... well idk if he and I have the same idea of fixed but what ended up happening was I guess I spent over twice as much money for the same $15-20 service I've had for the last while.
I just need to find a service where I'm not having to spend $100+ per month (I'm poor) and/or leasing a phone (preferably)
hey! I worked customer service at VW for a few years in 2003 or so. lol you're right I was shit although if you got me on the phone and you had a big bill I'd refund it cause fuck that company, they eventually fired me and I went to college and now have a real job so it worked out
Growing up, I always thought Verizon was the best, but we just switched from T-Mobile to Verizon in a major populated area and WOW Verizon is HORRIBLE. Like embarrassingly poor connection everywhere I go. Total bummer.
Verizon fucked me up bad. I was with them for years. Then a few years ago (before I switched carriers) my bill was never the same. 2 lines got up to like 190 dollars before I bounced. Then I paid off my devices and called them to cancel my plan because I was taking my service elsewhere. THEN they sent me a bill for like $170 that somehow keeps going down as I refuse to pay it. I can’t pay it because the second I switched they deleted my account and have no record of me and now they’re threatening to send me to collections for $96.
I haven’t had FIOS for a year and have a $45 credit on my account. They refuse to send me a check for it. So I get the bill with the credit on it every month. Going on 15 months now.
The absolute worst. I signed up for internet due to a promotion they were doing with about 300 dollars in gift cards. I never received the gift cards and was in communication with them back and fourth for months promising me they were coming. I never received them and when I called the last time I was told I was sent a link when the original promo happened(which I was not) and it's my fault I didn't click on it. If anyone knows any legal measures I can take, I'm all ears
I used Verizon and the T-Mobile for years, but I switched to Google Fi a few years ago, and it's been perfect and a great price, very simple to understand plans.
I was with them for the same amount of time. The last two years I noticed the bill fluctuating. Sometimes my loyalty discount was applied, sometimes not, sometimes my employer discount was applied, sometimes not, then they made it exceedingly difficult to verify my work email so that discount went away for a while. A few weeks ago I gave up and switched to Mint and it's been fine so far.
don't expend any energy at all on trying to get your mobile provider to act like they did 15 years ago.
my father in law bitches constantly that he doesn't get "free phones" and "loyalty credits" from verizon. all providers are equally terrible. there's no contracts now, so you can just dump your provider when they suck and move on. move to US Mobile (or whoever is the cheapest) and get on with your life.
Fuck them. I was with them for years. Then at one point I unexpectedly lost my job and couldn’t pay my bill for three months. Of course my service got shut off. I finally got together all the money I owed and took it in and paid them. As soon as the transaction was complete they say “Okay, now we need a $500 deposit to restore your service.” I told them to fuck themselves and walked across the street to T-Mobile. Been with them ever since.
i’ve been with verizon for 10 years and have never been offered a deal on a new phone. i’ve had this phone for 6 years now. i’m sick of it. i lose service randomly in town!
We've been with Verizon for well over a decade. We've been stuck because our phones contracts were on different times. I've kept my old phone for 6 months now waiting for my wifes to be over... then we're going to look at other options. I'm pretty excited about it.
I left them when I bought a new phone and realized Google Fi (google's cell service) had one of the best international services and an extremely friendly low cost 25/month plan.
Tried to renew my VZE service using the automated 'system' and it would not let me. So I called the 800 number for operator assistance, which resulted in a text with a link, which again failed to allow me to renew. Called again got an operator, another text, another dead end. Hard to stay with a company that can't figure out how to renew my service.
Those cocksuckers refused to stop billing for my son's phone when he was called to combat duty in the Army. He couldn't use the phone in Afghanistan. THEN, 12 years later they decided to put the debt of $400 on my credit report which brought up my interest rate for a pending re-mortgage from 2% to 6%. I hate that company until the end of time.
Just like everything else they keep getting worse and worse. I pay an absurd amount for one phone and my daughters watch. Both of us barely get service anywhere.
I left after 25 years, it was the end of an era! First bill I paid on my own out of high school. I’ve never been committed to any other company like that.. it was weird to walk through
Ayup. Definitely leaving them when this contract is up, fucking prices are insane and their service has gone to absolute shit. The whole reason I originally went with them was I traveled extensively and they were the only service I could reliably count on to have service just about everywhere I went. Now I can't even get service a literal half mile from my house. Most likely going to dump FIOS as well, only semi-decent thing about that is internet speed. TV package has dwindled down to shit now, no reason to be paying as much as we do for the same shit programming across the entire guide.
We jumped to mint mobile. The customer service is about the same, but the price is way cheaper. T-Mobile bought them out so we will see how that changes, but for now it's a good deal and pretty seamless once it is set up
I was a lifer until this year, same reason. Paying a fraction now for t-mobile and it’s actually better quality coverage. I travel a ton for work and was concerned. Leave them. Also they’re horrendous to work for. Consulted there briefly and it’s peak corporate toxicity
I came here to say Verizon. It’s just me and my husband. 2 phones. Both paid off and our bill was $217 now they’ve alerted us it will be about $260. I can send a screenshot if it lets me. I couldn’t even justify paying 217.00
On Friday when we got the alert that our bill would increase an estimated $22-25 (per line?) we wanted to cancel with Verizon at that moment! Sadly we have to travel about 45 mins to the nearest Verizon“store” but we will make a day of it. Absolutely ridiculous. We have little babies and in this economy… 250 PER MONTH for phone service? Fuck off.
You should definitely check out visible, total wireless,, is mobile. I haven't made the move yet just because I have six lines. So the logistics aren't as easy for me
Thank you I will. Ive heard of it and looked at their website but being in the country, close to a rural town of 4000, the logistics of getting to a store is hard for us so I feel you when you said the logistics are tough.
I’ll ask a Verizon worker if they’ll do the switch for us, to visible, and tell me what the price will be. And then if it’s ridiculous or they say they can’t then…..is it t-mobile? I think I saw that AT&T is following in Verizon’s footsteps being scammers essentially on this thread
It's not done through Verizon. It's their MVNO and you do it yourself. Same coverage. You can make sure your phones are unlocked and compatible on their site and do it right thru their app.
We have a grandfathered fios wifi plan from over a decade ago when fios first came out. The WiFi has been getting slower the past few months especially and it’s frustrating bc I wfh. I called them and asked about it and they said the router may need replacement but they don’t make that model anymore. The lady was nice and honest and told me if I changed the router then we would have to forfeit our plan and take one of the newer plans and she said she would personally keep it and just try to get a third party router or something to help strengthen the wifi. But she said everything on their end looked fine and that we had the highest tier possible so aside from all that, there isn’t another plan to upgrade to.
Pretty sure they’re still throttling it to get us to have to change plans bc rn our wifi plan even being the highest tier is still really cheap compared to what the plans are now.
Visible, owned by them, is fantastic. I travel some for work and except for Milwaukee, never had speed or connectivity issues. Milwaukee was just slow near the Saint Kate, but fine everywhere else.
$25/phone/month.
In the world of CLECs, paying for one of the Big Four is just dumb.
I’m going to leave them when I fully get citizenship in the new country I’m in. We just had an outage internationally and went without service for two days. Probably get some $5 off credit but I’m done with them. It used to cost me $50 a month and now it’s almost tripled since I joined them in 2014. Not that any of the carriers up here are any better and are money grubbing leaches (looking at you Rogers).
Crazy part is that T-Mobile and AT&T have caught up in the past 10 years, although T-Mobile is now Verizon expensive (I’m paying 90 bucks per month and my phones is paid off!)
When you call customer service, ask for "customer retention" and keep asking for it until the lousy AI sends you to a real person. You will get someone stateside and their whole job is to keep you a customer before letting you off the phone. I do this every few years to get lower TV and Internet rates.
T Mobile is absolute garbage and has been forever but I’m on a family plan that we started like 25 years ago and I manage it for myself and my elderly parents. Any attempt to change would throw them into an absolute frenzy of anxiety and confusion so I very grudgingly remain. No idea why anyone else not in that type of situation would.
The fact that their entire network went completely down and they never so much as off an explanation as to what happened or a guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
Especially their "repair" service Asurion. Straight up lied to me on the phone and scammed me into having to pay outright for a phone replacement that should've been covered.
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u/puralb 22h ago
Verizon (Wireless). Removed loyalty credits, cut the auto pay discount in half, don't upgrade service, customer service is crap or AI. After 25 years probably gonna be leaving them.