Another price increase is coming to Verizon, and this one is just as bad as AT&T's
While it's never nice to have to pay more for the same services or goods, we were actually pretty pleasantly surprised by the "economic adjustment charges" (read monthly rate hikes) announced by Verizon almost a month ago.
That's because we all saw them coming, and compared to how AT&T chose to deal with out-of-control inflation less than two weeks earlier, Big Red seemed rather considerate towards its customers, adding a small new $1.35 recurring fee to millions of accounts.
Unfortunately (although not entirely surprisingly), it appears that a second round of price increases is on the way, impacting fewer users... to the tune of $6 a month and up. Yes, Verizon is taking a page straight from AT&T's playbook this time around, pulling out all the stops to boost those unlimited subscription numbers while naturally beefing up its profit margins in the process.
The exact same $6 and $12 hikes for single and multiple lines respectively will be imposed by Verizon on "metered postpaid consumer plans" in addition to the aforementioned new fee, which means that some customers are likely to see their monthly bills go up twice in the space of just one month.
According to a document leaked on YouTube and essentially confirmed as authentic by the nation's largest mobile network operator for the folks over at CNET, impacted customers include but not are limited to those on More Everything, More Everything Loyalty, The Verizon Plan, The New Verizon Plan, and shared 5GB/10GB plans.
As you can imagine, unlimited plan users will not be affected in any way by this latest change, and the same goes for prepaid and business customers. The excuse offered by Big Red for the price hikes set to come into effect starting "no sooner than" July 19 is frankly laughable, as it has apparently become costlier to "maintain" the legacy plans mentioned above (as well as others like them).
While Verizon insists it's not "requiring" anyone on a so-called "Shared Data Plan", aka a metered plan, to upgrade to its so-called "unlimited" service, it's easy to understand why some people impacted by this move might feel like that's exactly what's happening here.
If you're not entirely sure you'll be able to afford your phone bill soon, fret not, Verizon will formally inform you of any and all new charges starting next week, giving you enough time to switch to T-Mobile by July 19. By the way, does anyone still think it was a good idea for Big Red to essentially attack the "Un-carrier" on semantics last week?
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