“Employees were recently advised of the policy change, which targets customers managing to average more than 200 gigabytes of usage on a single line ‘over several months,'” Malcolm Owen reports for AppleInsider. “Affected customers are being sent notices of their excessive usage, with a deadline of Feb. 16 to change their plan.”
“If a line is disconnected under the new policy, customers will have a 50-day window to resubscribe, though only to plans without unlimited data,” Owen reports. “The highest-capacity plan Verizon lists on its website offers $100 gigabytes of data per month for $450, with line access fees of between $5 and $20 per connected device.”
Owen reports, “Users with grandfathered unlimited data plans sometimes abuse the service by using it as their sole Internet connection, tethering computers and streaming set-top boxes in their home instead of using broadband.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you’re using an average of 200GB of data on your cellphone, you’re obviously taking great advantage of “unlimited” data. You also had to know it was too good to last. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
It is the carriers own fault for allowing ‘grandfathering’ of unlimited. Can’t blame the users for taking advantage of it.
Maybe a quick trip to the dictionary for Verizon so they can look up “unlimited”. What their users do with unlimited isn’t abuse, it is UNLIMITED
I think it means unlimited surfing on the iPhone itself – not unlimited tethering on all other devices.
I believe the iphone / carrier settings has the ability for Verizon to distinguiish the two. If so, why aren’t they doing it then?
Bits are a valuable resource and for a greedy few to hog all of them for themselves, thereby preventing other from accessing those valuable bits is unconscionable.
Verizon’s Unlimited Data Plans were clearly never meant to be used by their customers for any length of time that would hurt Verizon’s profits.
DON’T SELL IT AS UNLIMITED WHEN IT’S NOT, end of problem.
Guys. Sarcasm^
FTC (Trade not Communiction FCC) should step in and tell them to allow it. Contracts where companies redefine the meanings of common words should be labled misleading and misrepresentation. If you say “unlimited” in your contract you should provide UNLIMITED service. Carriers only used UNLIMITED to get people comfortable with their plans. The trickster should get “tricked” in this deal. Lesson should be don’t say things to customers that are not true.
The customer who has their data cut off, can take Verizon to small claims court. This has been done before. The result is a refund for all payments for that plan, up to the maximum allowed by small claims.
The reason for this, small claims usually side for the plaintif. I do agree it’s misleading. Unlimited is unlimited.
However the customer who does this is still jerk. To me unlimited means, you won’t get cut off if you happen to over utilize. You are still responsible to use the service in a reasonable way. It is not a primary service, it’s a mobile service.
Even 100 Mb/s fiber, isn’t technically unlimited, but it’s primary and your usage is at a higher tier. My ISP has stated the limit is 250GB/mo, but they don’t enforce it. If you catch their attention, they can cut you off.
Yes, the customer who does this is a jerk. However, it is their right to be for signing up for an “Unlimited” data plan. There is no “reasonable way” use unless it is specified in the contract, then it wouldn’t be unlimited, would it?
And that’s why they should get their money back.
Why is the customer a ‘jerk’? So if you go into a restuarant that has as much as you can eat refills on food, and the manager comes to your table after your 5th refill and says “Sorry, we only really meant 5 times refill instead of as much as you can eat, would you just roll over and say OK, weakling?
Let’s take it to where this might apply. All you can eat does not mean, come in the morning and stay through dinner. The difference between food and data, the limit to food is your stomach over the course of one meal. The limit to data is time – rate of bits over time. I am not saying they can’t feel free and unlimited. It’s intended use for the public is to elevate the worry that you will run up to some brick wall before the end of the month.
A typical household might have a data plan for each phone – lets say unlimited – and a plan for their house. The jerk move is to leverage the phone plan against all the various devices and home the account holder has. We all know the intent of the unlimited data plan. It’s for one device and for while you are out and mobile. The mobile wireless company has a good idea what this should look like. Sure they advertised it as unlimited and that’s a problem.
The appropriate course of action is for the mobile company to give the account holder their money back, if they chose to null and void their contract, in case the user abuses the intended nature of the plan.
It’s like to devils fighting over the semantics of a contract. A devil is a devil and a jerk is a jerk. It doesn’t mean they are wrong – they are not nice or glutinous.
No, the analogy is that you go to a restaurant for all you can eat and have 5 refills. Then the waiter takes his time replenishing your drink or reordering your food. But you can still get refills, but it takes longer.
I’m totally against this falsehood of wording UNLIMITED. The Carriers say you can eat all the data you want, but after a certain amount they will slow your data flow rate. Thus, IT HAS LIMITS, NOT UNLIMITED.
I think following the all you can eat restaurant example a better analogy would be that a parent walks in with some teenage children pays for his/her all-you-can-eat meal and then proceeds to feed the children (tethered devices) from his/her plate.
The difference is that your ISP doesn’t advertise the service as being unlimited, it clearly states 250GB…
It’s not unreasonable for someone with an unlimited internet plan on their phone to use it as their primary means of connecting to the internet… in many places LTE is faster than DSL…
I have unlimited internet through Charter Communications and I regularly go over 1.25TB (yes, terabytes) per month… this is residential, not business, not hosting any servers, and no torrents…
I think anyone that has their contract terminated because they used the service per the terms should be fully compensated for that loss…
This is just companies being greedy instead of using the money to upgrade their infrastructure in order keep up with modern technology…
Wow. 1250 GB per month and no movie torrents. 4k streaming in 10 rooms each day? LOL
I can follow your argument. Thanks.
I don’t think this is the consumer’s fault. They are using the plan the Verizon was stupid enough to offer. Poor corporate behemoth!!!
I blame Verizon for their shortsightedness or putting marketing over what they actually wanted to deliver.
If there’s a “reasonable” limit after which you get cut off, shouldn’t that be the actual limit?
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
These are not free plans.
This is and always has been a lame excuse. Tiered plans do not stop data hogs from hogging data. It just puts more money in the pockets of the data provider. While you can argue it will make these people think twice about their congestion, they are a minority. Most of us use the same amount of data and just pay more. Tele-coms claiming it has to do with congestion is bull. Congested towers remain congested towers, regardless of the plan I have.
My guess is that if you are using 200GB of LTE, you are probably using the phone as a hotspot for other devices such as a laptop or streaming to an HDTV.
Verizon is voiding contracts. Just say what it is. They bought unlimited data. Those people are using what they paid for; unlimited doesn’t mean 200GB, it means unlimited. This free lunch suggestion is trying to inspire guilt, as if overusing is harmful to others on the network. (1. not the customer problem, 2. inaccurate -congestion equals optimization, otherwise they would sell the excess)
Use a different network, Verizon is treating is taking their customers for granted. Use anyone else!
200GB? Let’s say you watch a movie a day. Is that really a bad thing? The average movie being 4GB? So that’s 28GB a week. Over the course of a month that’s 112GB. So in two months you’ve done over 200GB. That doesn’t seem like some crazy bandwidth hogging jerk to me, and bottom line… unlimited means unlimited. Just change the claim Verizon. You’re lying through your teeth.
Perhaps the solution is to be unlimited on the primary device and pay for tethered data tiers. The first xMB would be ‘free’ and anything above that would be charged accordingly. This would keep the spirit of unlimited (on a primary device even w/o resorting to throttling) and still give the provider leeway in making money off of ‘abusers’.
Shouldn’t they be given a chance to change their ways before being booted off? Not fair to call them “abusing” it. Just using it very well I’d say!
This is why I tell people don’t fall for the cutting the cord only scam! The Cable companies want this to happen because now they can become DUMB PIPELINES and do not have to negotiate rates with networks. You will end up paying 99 cents for access to networks and still have to watch commercials using data you pay. Then, Cable companies will sell data bundle plans which will cost you more than current subscriptions.
When enough people cut the cord, cable tv and satellite tv will vanish any you WILL PAY MORE.
Just a word of warning.