Josh and his wife thought they’d save some money by combining their contracts into a family plan, but were surprised by their next bill, which itemized Josh’s texts and put his wife on a more expensive plan that allowed her fewer messages. Josh says he argued with Verizon reps but can’t get them to reinstate his wife’s old text messaging plan and let him join in.

He writes:

At the end of last month my new wife and I wanted to combine our plans on VZW into a family plan. At the time of adding my line onto her account the customer service representative asked if we would also like to do a combined messaging plan. My wife has had the same messaging plan for a long time, so long that it’s not offered anymore, but it has never been a problem to keep on her account through multiple phone upgrades and changes to her voice plan. Because she likes that plan, and because our separate plans were still less expensive than a combined plan, we asked if we could keep our separate plans and were told we could.

Now it comes to our first bill. When our bill comes in for the prorated last month and this next month we find to our surprise that we’ve both gone over our allotted text messages. After looking at the billing details, Verizon has decided to drop my messaging plan altogether and charge me for every text message, and has “upgraded” my wifes text messaging plan to one less than she previously had. We then called customer service to get our plans reinstated only to be told now that they can’t give us the plans that we had before we switched, they are no longer available.

All we asked is that they set our plans to what they were, just like the in store representative told us they would, and we were told no. Eventually they gave me back my messaging plan after requesting a supervisor and a lengthy talk with him but they refuse to budge on giving my wife her plan. They told her they have no way of verifying what an in store representative said and basically called her a liar even though her past bills clearly show what was on her account. She has been a loyal Verizon Customer for a long time and got me to switch from AT&T and now we are both seriously considering switching. Is there anyone else we can talk to to try and get a resolution on this so as not to get roped into a higher plan and stuck with fees from a switch that never should have happened?

If you’ve combined cell phone plans with a significant other or family member, what hiccups have you encountered?

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