Techzilla Blog The New Verizon Upgrade Fee - How You Can Avoid It

The buzz on the street is that starting next Monday, April 4, 2016, Verizon will be charging customers who upgrade their phone a $20 per year upgrade fee. This is true whether you pay for your new phone all at once or use their monthly payment plan.Verizon has confirmed this change to several news sources though details are not yet available on their website. They say it offsets their costs to upgrade phones.An upgrade fee is not a new concept. Verizon Wireless site has been charging a $40 upgrade fee for some time, but only if you paid a discounted price for your new phone that was being subsidized by extended your contract by two years. This fee is not changing.Verizon isn't the only carrier who charges an upgrade fee, AT&T and Sprint also charge upgrade fees.Verizon also offers top-notch performance and a wider coverage map than competitors so we do not advocate leaving Verizon just to avoid a $20 fee.How to avoid the Verizon upgrade feeTechZilla's mission is to save you money while still preserving our planet by reducing waste, so our team was quick to pour through as much information as we could find on the new fee to find a way to beat it.We believe we found a way to avoid the Verizon upgrade fee. According to MacRumors, Verizon's new upgrade fee applies to new phones, not to phones you bring to Verizon to activate. So the answer is quite simple, don't buy your phone new. Buy a Certified Pre-Owned phone from TechZilla. In addition to avoiding the upgrade fee and extending your contract, you will save hundreds of dollars.Don't give in to the man. Keep that dough in your pocket.Check out our Verizon phones. Get yourself an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, a Samsung S6 or Note 5 or one of our other gorgeous phones. We've got phones starting well under $100.