The payment plan itself is a contract. You are required to make monthly payments and maintain service until the device is paid for.
Not true. You can cut off service at any point... The easy pay plan for devices is essentially just getting a line of credit on the value of your device until your installments pay off the loan in full.
I have this also with at 24% discount via work. I am not happy though that we are now limited on roaming even though we're grand fathered with our plan. Original sign up had no roaming charges ever. Commercial is still out there on youtube.
If you cut off service, the full remaining balance for the device is due immediately. In a similar manner, if you terminate service early on a contract plan there is an early termination fee. There really is no difference between the two types of plans, they just shuffled numbers around in order to sucker people into the trap. My original point is that once you sign your name to buy a device on credit whether it's a subsidies based plan or a credit/payment based plan, the carrier has you under their thumb for as long as you maintain service under the terms of said contract. On the other hand, if you buy your phones outright a don't put yourself in that position, the carrier has no choice but to earn/keep your business by providing the best service that they can.
Take a look at totalwireless.com it is Verizon's network but significantly cheaper. I'm not a customer yet but will probably make the switch soon. This is a sister company to straight talk but is pretty new and is working through some customer service issues. My family is currently on Ting and that has been great but now our data usage has hit a point where it isn't as good of a deal as it used to be. They have awesome customer service and if Sprint is strong in your area I would recommend them.
Prepaid is the way to go. Buy your phone on Swappa.com. I would also recommend looking into Total Wireless for Verizon service. I use AT&T and I'm on Straight Talk. I have also been on Cricket and GoPhone. Before that I was on an AT&T family plan. GoPhone is probably the closest thing to postpaid service. But it also costs a bit more. Cricket is fine. Same coverage as postpaid minus roaming. They cap your data speed at 8mbps. It's usable for most people. I've only been on Straight Talk for a month. But the most noticeable change from Cricket is the data speed. I ran a test last night and I had 27mbps download speed. That's faster than my home internet. Just don't expect to get the same customer service quality.
