Friends and Family prorated minutes

[kkstych]

Hello,

  Yesterday I changed our America's Choice plan over to a new family plan in order to include Friends and Family.  I spoke with both a local Verizon store rep and an online rep who suggested that I make our new plan retroactive to the beginning of the current billing cycle, which began on July 18th.  They said that whoever we chose for our Friends and Family, those numbers would now be free, dating back to that time.  However, my account still shows the same amount of minutes used as it did previously.  Perhaps it will just take more time for this to be upgraded, but I am concerned, as we are close to our limit of minutes and have over half the billing period left.  Any ideas?  Thank you.

[SuzyQ]

Probably just a delay in getting the changes updated for online viewing.  If you backdated the plan (a very good idea, that rep was doing a good job for you!) then all calls made from July 18 will be on the new plan, as the rep said.  It may take a few days to adjust the prior calls.  I would watch this coming bill carefully to ensure that it was backdated.  If the changes don't appear in another day or two, call CS or go back to that same rep and verify that the changes were effective at the beginning of your billing cycle.

[kkstych]

Thank you for your prompt response --  I truly hope you are correct.  I have since called Verizon and spoken to a rep who told me I had been "misinformed" yesterday, and that I still have only half of my 1400 alloted minutes left for the remainder of this billing cycle.  I tried asking him what was the advantage of back-dating the start of the new plan, then, since if I had chosen to start it yesterday we would have 1400 minutes available again and I would be receiving a partial bill for the last two weeks.  He never answered the question, just said that whoever I add to Friends and Family begins the day after they are chosen.  I will definitely check the bill when it comes, and hopefully we won't go over our minutes in the meantime. 

Message Edited by kkstych on 07-31-2009 07:53 AM

[nmchileman]

You were told to backdate your plan because it avoids prorating your existing 1400min. If you had changed your plan effective yesterday you would only be allowed partial amounts of minutes under each plan. From July 18th thru yesterday 30th you would've only been allowed 497minutes and then from today the 31st thru August 17th you would only be allowed 903 minutes. So to avoid prorating it like that your plan was backdated.

However, the Friends & Family feature cannot be backdated. The feature can only be affective the day you set up your numbers. So any calls to your F&F numbers prior to yesterday the 30th would be counted against your minutes. Calls to them going forward will be free.

[kkstych]

Thank you.  Part of the reason I did back-date the plan was to avoid those confusing first-time Verizon bills, and since our new plan included no added costs, thought that would be the best way to understand the next bill.  However, I am still upset with the fact that both the online and local store Verizon reps told me that if I back-dated, then whoever we added as Friends/Family, those minutes would be counted as M2M (Verizon-to-Verizon) minutes beginning from July 18th on, eliminating over 400 of our used Shared minutes (I actually counted them from our usage data!).  I now understand that is not the case -- whoever we choose as Friends/Family, those numbers don't become "free" until the following day.  Guess we'll just have to be very careful with our remaining two weeks of this cycle, and hopefully with the numbers we added, we will see a drop in our premium calls.  I appreciate your response.