If you’re switching to Verizon and still on contract, you’d better have some cash

Making the switch from one carrier to another used to be a money-laden affair, but U.S. carriers have done a better job of minimizing the blow by offering financial incentives to make the switch. However, don’t count Verizon as such a carrier, reports FierceWireless.

Confirmed by a Verizon spokesperson, Big Red will no longer pay up to $650 in early termination fees (ETFs). The now-defunct promotion, which Verizon launched last December, gave customers up to $300 in credit when trading in their smartphones, as well as up to $350 for the ETF you might need to pay your current carrier. If you weren’t on a two-year contract and instead were on a device payment plan, Verizon would pay up to $650 toward your remaining balance.

Considering how big of a promotion Verizon made its ETF payment out to be, this is an interesting step for Big Red to take. Verizon could very well bring the promotion back to life sometime in the near future, though we will note that T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T still offer their own ETF promotions to would-be customers on other carriers.

For the time being, however, customers will have to be satisfied with up to $300 in credit for those who trade in their current smartphones and decide to buy and activate a new line of service with Verizon. In addition, Big Red will hand out 2GB of free data to its customers who use Android Pay, Google’s mobile payment service in the same vein as Apple Pay. More specifically, 1GB of free data will be added to the next two billing cycles if you use Android Pay twice, with an additional gigabyte of data for those who use the service a third time. The latter promotion expires on June 14, with customers having until July 13 to use the extra data.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1WxWYkr
Williams Pelegrin