Verizon upgrade fee isn’t as bad as it sounds

There is a lot of chatter and angry readers this afternoon regarding the news that Verizon will start charging a $30 upgrade fee for those looking to upgrade their smartphone. While I’m not a fan of the fee and don’t like it one bit myself, it isn’t as bad as it sounds and won’t be going away either. I’ll tell you why below.

Verizon is actually the last carrier to implement this fee. As in they’ve been the good guys for well over a year while all the others were charging similar fee’s. We wont see this reversed like the $2 monthly fee earlier this year either — but it can’t hurt to try. AT&T, T-Mobile and the rest of the US carriers all charge upgrade fee’s, Verizon is actually the second cheapest too.

AT&T and T-Mobile both have been charging $18 for their fee for a long time, and this February AT&T doubled that fee to $36 — making Verizon’s $30 seem not so bad. With AT&T and that other wannabe LTE carrier charging $36 each, and T-Mobile only charging $18, this makes Verizon’s seem ok if you ask me — even if I don’t agree with the fee in the first place. Another thing no one’s mentioned this morning is the EU (early upgrade) fee is being raised from $20 to the same $30 as the new regular fee.

There is some good news here though. Business and prepay customers do not have to pay this fee, and if you are getting a new device but NOT resigning/extending a contract you don’t have to pay this fee either. That does mean you’ll be paying full price for the device though, so there’s a catch on that one. What does and does not apply can all be read in the image posted below for those with more questions.

Thoughts on the upgrade fee? I know you’re mad but everyone else does it too. Does that make it OK?