Verizon promoting prepaid service in NYC
Verizon Wireless wants to make a splash with its prepaid service, at least in New York City. So on June 10, yesterday, when I roamed around the city all morning, they were offering 99 cent cab rides. True, there were only 40 cabs in the select fleet, but they were running to and from major destinations, but I just so happen to be walking up Fifth Avenue. You know, with the emblematic Apple Store. Anyway, I missed out, but it was still a quality promotion to bring awareness to Verizon’s 99 cent daily access charge. However, there will be another promotion later this month. On June 23, Verizon will offer a Mr. Softee Ice Cream for 99 cents. Whoopee! This one I will not miss. The ice cream will be served from trucks at select points around the city, and if I find out exactly where before then, I’ll make sure to share it with everyone. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more summery by that point, and the ice cream will hit the spot on a hot New York summer day. Best of all, this one will extend to the four major boroughs, so residents everywhere can take advantage of the deal. Hey, it’s a minor compensation for the blaring, horribly annoying song all these trucks play. The strangest part about this promotion is that recently Verizon said that they wanted to concentrate on their postpaid offering. Has something changed between now and then? Or was the Verizon rep just misspeaking? ]]>
Looks like they are using shoe string ways to promote their not so shoe string (read relatively pricey) prepad offerings. They are simply highlighting their Verizon Wireless prepaid 99 cents a day Core plan. Nothing new here.
The core plan, you can’t even call anyone outside of Verizon until they take out their 99 cents access fee.
The only people you can talk to are other Verizon users. If you want to call outside the network it’s 10 cents a minute.
Page Plus with its 12 cents and less flat minutes, 39.95 1500 minutes/1500 text plan and 2.49 a day unlimited plans blow anything away that Verizon Prepaid has. VZ prepaid’s real pluses are brand recognition, dollar a day unlimited data (but not on smartphones)
and unlimited message packs.
Straight Talk by Tracfone is even cheaper, $30 for 1000 minutes/1000 messages/30 megs web on the pre Alltel merger Verizon prepaid network.
Page Plus has an equal network and a better price. Straight Talk is way cheaper then all of them but has a lesser version of the VZ prepaid network (no roaming option at all).
But they both beat Verizon prepaid in value.
That’s $30 a month for just having access to calling 80
Sorry, cut off on last entry. VZ prepaid charges $30 a month for just having access to call others on their network and that’s it. Everything else is nickeled and dimed out of ya (with a couple of exceptions). They even have a $25 service activation charge if you buy their phones online.
VZ prepaid is no value.
This new Straight talk package is definitely the cheapest and best offer on the market. When you think about it, it works out to 2 cents per minute and 1 cent per text then the data works out free!