For being such a wonderful customer, Verizon Wireless is offering me the chance to increase my talking habits in turn to increase the chance I’ll go over my plan’s limit and pay for excess “overage.” Yes, they sent me a reward of 100 free anytime minutes, which I will retrieve from a special website for people like me.
Unfortunately for them, I am always under my limit, so this reward is nice but wasted on me. These 100 minutes are “good” for 60 days, at which point any unused bonus minutes will expire. I might as well not even bother.
I also received another rebate check from Citi as a result of my continuous use of my Citi Dividend World MasterCard, which at some point I should switch to a Driver’s Edge Platinum Select MasterCard. That’s an extra $200 I can use for… savings, I suppose.
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Cellular industry in North America operates on a totally different business plan that in Europe and rest of the world. We get subsidies for signing contracts and receive locked phones. So in the end, a phone that is say $500 without a subsidy costs us a few thousand dollars once the contract is over. And we can’t still use that phone with another carrier if we choose to switch.
Re the Citi Driver’s Edge card:
I got mine for the cash-back rebates. Then they changed the deal … you get points which you can redeem from the “Thank You Network” for gift cards from places I don’t go, or (if I figure correctly) a lesser amount of cash than I signed up for.
I cancelled in a flash and got one of a growing number of competing cards with equally good or better rebates that you don’t have to figure out or jump through hoops to redeem.
wish that was northwest and not north east. I just lowered my verizon minutes with my new contract and it would be nice to have a little buffer.