Verizon Insists I Had Data Cap Put On My Plan Because "Customers Do Weird Things"

With Verizon Wireless set to slaughter grandfathered unlimited data plans — at least for those who don’t want to pay full price for their phones — some VZW customers are already being driven against their will into capped data plans by Big Red.

Take for example the story of Consumerist reader Gerret. Both he and his bride-to-be have been with Verizon for a decade, and they both had unlimited data plans on their smartphones.

Then last November, Gerret’s fiancée decided to ditch her Blackberry (because it’s apparently no longer 2006) and switch up to a Droid RAZR.

“My biggest concern was that in the transition from 3G to 4G, she would not lose her unlimited data plan, which Verizon discontinued awhile ago,” writes Gerret. “I repeatedly and pointedly asked the customer service reps this over the phone and in person at two separate locations. They assured me it would remain.”

But as even the casual reader of Consumerist knows, just because a company — and certainly a telecom company — crosses its heart and hopes to die that it’s telling you the truth, it doesn’t always end up that way.

As Gerret’s fiancée found out in January, when she suddenly got a text message from Verizon stating she was nearing her data cap for the month.

Trying to figure out how one could be approaching a nonexistent data cap, Gerret called Verizon, where a CSR told him that when the phone was upgraded to the Droid, the unlimited data plan was removed.

No one had noticed in the couple months since the upgrade because the cost for the capped plan and the unlimited plan are the same. But putting the cap in place could mean might overages if Gerret’s fiancée continues to use a large chunk of data (which she should be allowed to do, seeing as how she had an unlimited plan). And keep in mind that his fiancée had been put into a low-tier 2GB cap, which is in no way comparable to having unlimited access.

When it was explained to the CSR that they had been told on multiple occasions that upgrading to a 4G phone would not automatically switch the plan from unlimited to capped, Gerret says the rep could only say that “customers do weird things.”

The CSR offered to upgrade the plan from 2GB/month to 4GB, but that still seemed unfair.

Since then, Gerret says he’s been told multiple times by Verizon that he must have requested be switched to a capped plan, an allegation he calls “ridiculous.”

While we hope that someone from Verizon sees this and offers to at least listen to Gerret, it almost seems pointless as the company has made it very clear that it plans on transitioning all customers to its yet-to-be-announced new data plans.

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