The Wacky World of Wireless

Sometimes I have to scratch my head and wonder what the heck management is thinking. For years, I was an Authorized Verizon Wireless Business Solution provider. My problem was the playing field between Verizon's Enterprise Corporate business channel and my indirect Enterprise business channel was far from level. Verizon Direct would regularly undercut my discounts with larger ones not available to us. My solution was to move all my Verizon Enterprise accounts to T-Mobile and no longer offer Verizon to my enterprise accounts.

Anyone who has ever been in the wireless industry would know that everything above is perfectly normal. What's got me puzzled is now my channel apparently can exclusively do something that Verizon's direct channel cannot do. We can offer Verizon's amazing new S, M, L, XL and XXL with contracts. I've been told the Verizon stores can no longer offer contracts with the instant $450 subsidy, except to current legacy plan users. Well, we can offer these to anybody, individual liable, corporate liable, upgrades or new activations.

Don't get bamboozled by the carriers that are no longer offering contracts and saying they were a bad deal. If you were under contract with a carrier that offered crappy service, or inflated rates, than contracts might seem like a bad deal. The funny thing is if you were happy with your carrier and did your new device upgrade promptly when eligible, contract plans protected you. Traditionally, any one who signed a contract would retain the same deal, even after it was fulfilled. The carrier would continue to charge you the same rate, but you could leave anytime without penalty. Carriers almost never try to change terms or conditions for those who are under contract or were previously under contract. The disadvantage of monthly plans is they can and often do change the terms anytime they wish. An example of this is Verizon's 1% club. All of those folks who had signed up for UNLIMITED data and still have it, despite the fact that Verizon has not offered UNLIMITED data to the public for over 3 years. One of my colleagues recently penned an interesting article explaining every carriers confusing buying plans.

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