Verizon Wireless has started offering a new promotion for customers who switch to their prepaid service. Those who port their phone number from a ‘wrong network’ (another carrier) to a smartphone plan will get a $75 credit. Verizon switcher promotion will be available until March 31, 2016.

Customers who port their number to Verizon and activate service on one of the eligible smartphone prepaid plans will receive $25 credit with plan renewal for three months (total of $75). Smartphone plans which are eligible for this Verizon switcher promotion are $45 and $60 unlimited plans. The $30 monthly plan that also works with smartphones is not part of this promotion.

The $45 unlimited plan offers unlimited talk and text, 2GB of 4G LTE data and unlimited texting to all networks in the U.S. and to participating providers in Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico. The $60 unlimited plan adds to it just a higher data allotment, 5GB.






If customers sign in to paying their monthly bills automatically, they will receive additional gigabyte of data per month. With auto pay, the $45 plan will include 3GB of data while $60 plan will have 6GB of data. Those who need more data can add data packages per month or per 90 days. The monthly data add-on offers 500MB for $5 while 90-day data add-ons include 1GB of data for $10 and 3GB of data for $20.

Switcher promotions are highly popular in prepaid market for some time now. Some prepaid carriers are offering them on a regular basis like Cricket, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and Boost Mobile as a way to attract more customers. As big as they are, Verizon obviously didn’t think that they need to make much effort towards their prepaid division but now, it seems as if they have started making small steps to be more competitive. They have raised their data allotments to 2GB and 5GB of data to match AT&T’s GoPhone offers and to go even beyond that with 1GB auto pay addition, although GoPhone’s smartphone plans offer unlimited data. Also, the current Verizon switcher promotion is a positive move towards attracting more customers to prepaid division and for some, their coverage and fast LTE data speeds might be just enough.

However, Verizon being Verizon, just as you think they are committed to increasing the number of their customers on prepaid, customers start reporting that they are unable to activate Verizon compatible LTE smartphones with Verizon MVNOs, such as TracFone and Puppy Wireless, something that they were able to do since this carrier allowed LTE on its prepaid service and its MVNOs in 2014 and 2015. The reason for that might be the change in policy (from 1/17/16) where they require Verizon prepaid phones to be activated with Verizon prepaid service for at least one month before they can be used on Verizon postpaid. This policy clearly applies to activating Verizon prepaid phones to postpaid but a message that’s appeared on the packages of Verizon prepaid phones in stores was implying that this might be related to using Verizon prepaid phones on MVNOs as well:

“Phone must be activated on Verizon Wireless Prepaid service and first monthly payment must be made before it can be used with any other service.”

Even if that’s the case, one month of paying for the service with Verizon prepaid, which starts at $30 per month, is not end of the world. After it, customers can move to “any other service” which is Verizon postpaid and hopefully its MVNOs.

Source: Verizon Wireless