Contract term expiring

[Harry]

I got a letter in the mail that my contract term was expiring with FIOS internet and that my new rate would be 62.99 which is up almost 40% from the 44.95 I am spending now. They gave me a phone number to call to check out "packages" that might be better for me. That is one heck of an increase in a competitive market. Anyone have any insight on this?

Harry

[Floyd]

Call them up and tell them you'll cancel before succuming to their extortative rate increase. I was on an introductory 5meg/2meg FIOS internet plan that expired, and they went to 34.95, which I consider about the right increase for a continuing customer.
My wife was negotiating a landline calling plan with verizon for our vacation cabin, and they offered to "upgrade" our home package to include nationwide long distance, 15meg/2meg on the internet; but it required switching our LD from sprint to verizon. The new plan was about $5 more than our current internet/phone pkg. I declined the upgrade, since my sprint cellphone plan now includes "sprint to home" un-metered calls from our cells, but requires that I have sprint as a LD carrier on my landline at home. I don't think that having a faster fios speed will change my usage much, since I don't download movies. I'll have to look into it to see if it would be a good thing for me to do, considering the extra $5/mo. We allready have nationwide calling on our cellphone plan.

[pilotbob]

I don't understand why local phone companies charge you for "long distance" calls any more. Since nationwide calling is included in just about any cell phone you can get... even my Virgin Mobile pre-paid plan includes nationwide calling for the same rate.

People are dropping local phone service left and right... these mammoth phone compainies really need to get a clue.

BOb

[Floyd]

My wife told them to go ahead with the 15/2 Freedom plan that would give us increased fios internet speed and nationwide long distance on our home verizon phone line that is packaged with the fios service. I still balked at losing our sprint-to-home 'free' calling from our cell phones, so I called up and cancelled the order....too late. Everthing went dead while they got mixed signals. I was able to call them several times and got everything back up after a day or so. I can't blame them, since they got two conflicting orders from my wife and I. That was back in July-Aug.

Our latest bills show an increase in the fios internet price from 34.95 to 39.95, so I called to find out what happened. They said fios prices had gone up for everyone here in the last several months. I asked if I could go back onto DSL(3m/1m/$29/mo) and they said no...no going back to copper, so I guess my allowing them to convert the phone to fiber was a bad move. The copper wires are all still in place though, so if I wanted to save $10/mo I guess I could somehow force them to give me my copper plan back.

Today, I did a speakeasy speed test from my hard-wired desktop, and was surprised to see my download speed was up to 10,000kbps from their Atlanta server. So, now I'm wondering if my "complaining" had anything to do with the speed boost, or are they rolling out the increase to go along with their new prices? Upload speed is still at 1800kbps.

[pilotbob]

Just be carefull with speed tests, they show throughput not necessarily connection/transfer speed.

I think speedtest.verizon.net shows the closes speeds to what they say you are paying for since it is testing against a local server on the verizon network.

BOb

[Floyd]

I get roughly the same results from the verizon speedtest.
For whatever reason, my DL speed has doubled in the last month or less.
Anyone else?