Yeah, the phones we have are over 2.5 years old. Mine in particullar is in pretty rough shape.
An update - more thinking and some doing.
My research led me to decide to go to Page Plus. I would buy a couple of phones and convert over. Looks like I would end up at about $55-$75/month, plus the full retail price of the phones. Add the phone cost in and I would look at about $20-$25/mo if I spread the retail cost out over 24 months. That would be per month.
For our current Vzw Nationwide Talk Share 700 Plan, we are paying $102/mo (with discounts) and it is a good plan (min/text/data) for us. If we upgrade to better but less expensive/subsidized phones on the same plan than PagePlus, add $10/mo to get to a Vzw total of $112 for comparison purposes. This is a $12-$37 premium over Vzw
I did the research because the Vzw site indicated we would be forced off our current off our plan to a Share Everything Plan. With upgraded phones, that would come out to a total comparison price of about $140.
I had some reservations about PagePlus. 1) using older phones (non-4G), less capable software), 2) the annoying process of shopping for/activating the phones, 3) difficulty to involve human contact and 4) sketchy customer service. The reviews were good enough to give it a try based on paying $75- $100/mo rather than $140.
I decided to stop at the local Verizon Dealer store yesterday just to see what the actual price would be for the Share Plan and make sure I didn't miss anything.
Quite an illuminating conversation. The gentleman there told me 1) we could upgrade our phones with the standard 2 year agreement and 2) he could renew us on our CURRENT plan - we didn't have to go the the more expensive new plan. He explained that the stores have different and more flexible offerings than the website. I was shocked and he grinned when he told me about it. He said my reaction was the same as everyone else that wandered in for a discussion and found this out.
So, for what amounts to a roughly $20/mo premium, we can keep what we have, get new phones (without an annoying process) AND have Vzw's (pretty good) customer service available. Plus, it solves another concern I had - the family uses the free Verizon minutes for V to V calls and nights/weekends. By canceling and going to Page Plus, those freebies turn into paying calls for you guys.
The net result is that understanding our usage and the other factors mentioned above, we will be upgrading phones and renewing with Vzw.
Sorry I raised all of the dust, but it was a good exercise to go through to understand usage and see alternatives. Still not happy with the premium, but I can understand it since it pays for their infrastructure, retail stores, cell tower construction and customer service folks.
Looks like my wife's choice of phone will be the iPhone 5. That will tie right into our Ipad 3 / iPod 4 / AppleTV 3 / iTunes Match / iCloud / rest of family iPhone infrastructure. Plus I like the idea of iOS upgrades going to everything at the same time as opposed to Android updates being spotty and freezing a phone 2-3 versions back over time
