Verizon officials have confirmed what SmartMoney was told by Verizon sales reps at a number of stores around the country: The company is ending its popular "New Every Two" program, which offers Verizon subscribers a credit of $30 to $100 toward a new phone every two years. As of Jan. 16, the company will stop offering the credit to new customers and won't re-enroll current customers in the program after their next New Every Two upgrade. The cell carrier is also putting the brakes on its permissive early upgrade policy, store representatives confirmed.
All of this adds up to more out-of-pocket costs for Verizon customers. With the New Every Two perk, a longtime customer with a $100 credit could get the iPhone4 for $99.99 – half off its new-subscriber price of $199.99. When the program ends, new subscribers will no longer be eligible for those discounts. Existing customers will lose the perk when they renew their contracts (unless they renew before Jan. 16—but that date is well before iPhone orders will be taken). And with the end of the early upgrade program, customers who were previously eligible for discounted phones as early as 13 months into a two-year contract will now have to wait 20 months to get a new phone at the promotional new-customer price instead of retail (for the iPhone, that's currently a difference of $400).
The move comes as millions of cell customers are expected to jump to Verizon, now that the company has the highly-sought iPhone4. And none of them will be able to squeeze in before the company changes its policies, because the iPhone won't be available for new customers until Feb. 10. If Apple keeps its current new-phone release habits, customers who sign a new Verizon contract in February will be locked out of preferred pricing for later models until three months after Apple releases a new model in July 2012.