In case you had not looked at a calendar recently, you may not have realized that November 15 has come and gone and Verizon has indeed begun increasing legacy unlimited data plans by $20 to $49.99 per month. With that unfortunate change, customers hanging onto unlimited data plans do get one partial bonus, though – the option to upgrade through a device payment plan and still keep those unlimited data plans. Before you run and upgrade or fire up your bill to see that extra $20 up-charge, understand that you may not be able to do either at this time.

A number of our readers (I looked into it as well) actually tried to go upgrade yesterday and today, only to find that Verizon’s systems were still trying to take away their unlimited data plan. As you can imagine, we all backed out and said, “WTF?” As we mentioned in our initial write-up about the impending change, the $20 price increase wasn’t going to hit your bill until “your next bill after November 15.” That appears to apply to device payment plan upgrades as well.

If you want to upgrade or punch a screen once you see the $49.99 charge for your unlimited data plan going forward, you’ll have to figure out when your next billing cycle starts. To do that, you’ll need to login to your account, click the “View Usage Details” button in the center of your My Account area, then look for your “Billing Cycle.” It should look like this:

So if I want to upgrade to a new phone with a device payment plan, I can do so after 12/6.

Make sense?

Cheers Aaron and Abel!