what the Verizon ordeal has taught me

I went for a walk in the desert this morning before it got too hot, and took a few infrared pictures. The more chlorophyll in a plant the more white it looks. And the bluer the sky the more black it is.

My little Verizon MiFi is working just fine so far. I can't tell how many gigs of hotspot data I've used because the place on the jetpack that gives me that information is kind of blacked out. I'm taking that as a good sign that the plan is unlimited so there would be no need for me to know how much data I'm using. And it's pretty fast, I'm getting 23 Mb per second download and 14 upload, that's actually faster than I had at my house. Of course those Speeds will depend on your location.

I've still got my regular unlimited phone plan that has 20 gigs of hotspot data, and I'm going to hang on to that for a while till I'm sure the MiFi is going to work for me, then I'll drop my phone plan down to maybe five gigs of hotspot data just for emergencies. I'm hoping if I can do this right I can end up with a phone bill that's only a few dollars more than the one I had before but will have unlimited hotspot data.

One of the things that caused a lot of the problems that I had trying to track down this plan is that there are two sides to Verizon when it comes to these plans, a postpaid side which is what most of us have on our phones and a prepay side which is what I've got with the MiFi. And the weird thing is their like two separate companies and they don't keep up with each other.

They really don't know much of anything about each other, and don't care. For instance, I have auto pay set up for my cell phone bill, it saves me five dollars a month, so they of course have my credit card number. This prepay jetpack plan also has an auto pay, but they had no idea that I already had an auto pay set up and a credit card on file because they can't get to it or use it. I had to set up a whole new auto pay for the MiFi. Also the postpaid side of Verizon gives me a 15% veterans discount. But the prepay side doesn't offer that discount.

If you ever want to jump into the Lake of snakes and get this unlimited hotspot plan number 28366 for $65 with auto pay, here's a few suggestions that might make your life easier than mine has been the last three weeks.

You can't add a prepay plan on to your regular postpay plan. If you don't already have a prepay plan you have to sign up for a new prepay plan and The prepay people will act as if they've never heard of you before even if you've been with Verizon 10 years.

Forget the stores, get on the phone and call Verizon. As far as I can tell right now the stores know absolutely nothing and either can't or won't try to find the unlimited hotspot plan for you.

Don't be confused by the term unlimited. It seems like all of Verizon's plans are called unlimited something or another. It's not the amount of data you're concerned with, most of them have lots of data, it's the speed of the data that means everything. carefully read the details about "throttling" on the advertising

The way that they trick us is using the term unlimited. Yes your data is sort of unlimited but that doesn't mean it's usable. All these unlimited plans have lots of data but at a certain point your data is throttled down so slow it's all but unusable, and that's the scam, you got the "unlimited" data but after 10, 15, or 20, gigs the data is throttled so slow you can't do anything with it.

It's the hotspot data that allows you to have your computer hooked up to the Internet all the time through the MiFi jetpack or your cell phones hotspot, and that hotspot data is very limited in all the plans inless you get the plan that I'm talking about.



When you call Verizon about this unlimited hotspot plan, immediately tell whoever you're talking to that you need help on the prepay side. I wasted far too much time not realizing this and talking to people that couldn't even begin to help me because they didn't know I needed the prepay people.

About the only difference in the unlimited plan 28366 I just got and the regular unlimited plans is there's no limit on the hotspot data. So make sure they tell you the plan you're getting has unlimited hotspot data not just unlimited data.

And most of all don't try to use your Visa card.

                             theboondork

Saguaro cactus must not have much chlorophyll because they always look kind of dark.

This is an infrared picture of the Arctic Fox. I had to lighten the Arctic Fox because it was so dark you couldn't see it. I guess the fiberglass absorbs all the infrared light so the trailer comes out almost black.