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How to Avoid Paying Overage Fees on Verizon

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Overage fees are the worst, especially when you don’t see them coming. Here’s how to avoid paying overage fees, or at least how to pay as little as possible for using extra data.

Like most carriers nowadays, Verizon’s More Everything plans come with a limited amount of data per month, and the more you pay, the more data that you have to play around with. However, you’re probably like most users and want to pay as little as possible on your monthly bill, so you probably only have a few gigabytes to play around with. While you are saving money, it also means that you have to be careful not to go over your monthly data allotment, as you could be charged with overage fees.

Verizon charges $15 per 1GB for overage fees. This means that if you normally have 3GB of monthly data and you go over that, Verizon will add on 1GB for that month for $15, so you now have 4GB for the month, although you’re paying a lot more for it. If you were to go over 4GB, Verizon would add another 1GB for another $15. Before you know it, you racked up $30 in overage fees for the month. Yikes!

Luckily, there are ways that you can avoid paying overage fees on Verizon, or at least methods to pay less than $15 per 1GB if you do happen to go over your monthly data allowance. Here’s how you can avoid going over your data limit and what you can do if you do go over the edge.

Watch Your Data Usage

The best way to prevent yourself from going over your monthly data allowance is to keep a close and constant eye on your data usage every month. Thanks to a new iOS 8 widget, that’s easier than ever.

Normally, Verizon customers were able to look up their data usage by opening up the Verizon app on their devices (and they still can), but a new iOS 8 widget allows users to quickly check their data usage without even opening up the app in the first place.

verizon-app

Verizon recently updated its iPhone app with a cool new feature that allows you to quickly check your data usage with a simple swipe down of the Notification Center. There are a handful of cool widgets in iOS 8 that you can add to your device’s Notification Center, but Verizon’s new widget is perhaps the most useful one we’ve come across so far.

In order to get the widget, you’ll need to download the My Verizon Mobile app onto your iPhone. It’s a free app and is available in the iTunes App Store.

After you download the app, open it up and you’ll be asked to sign into your Verizon account. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to access your Verizon account and see how much data you’re using, but we’ll want to see that info without even opening up the app.

verizon-widget

After you download the Verizon app and log in to your Verizon account, you can now enable the Verizon iOS 8 widget in your iPhone’s Notification Center. Simply swipe down from the top of the screen to bring up your iPhone’s Notification Center. Tap on the Today tab at the top if you aren’t already there. Toward the bottom, tap on the Edit button. Scroll down until you see My Verizon Data in the list and tap on the green plus icon next to it.

That item will now be moved up toward the top, and from there you can rearrange the order by tapping and holding on the icon to the right and dragging it up or down in the list. Tap on Done in the upper-right corner to finish up.

The Verizon iOS 8 widget will now appear in the Notification Center and will quickly show you your monthly data usage. You can tap on the widget itself to automatically open the Verizon app if you want more details about your data usage. Otherwise, the widget just shows you how much data you’ve used compared to how much data you have allotted for the month.

Prepare Ahead of Time

If you think you’re going to go over your data allowance for the month, you can actually temporarily boost your data plan just for the month to avoid having to pay more-expensive overage fees.

For example, most of the tiers in Verizon’s More Everything plans are separated by $10 per month, so by simply bumping up to the next tier just for the month will save you $5, since overage fees start at $15.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 4.10.11 PM

To do this, simply log into your Verizon account at VerizonWireless.com and you’ll be taken to your account page. On the left-hand sidebar there will be several links that you can click. Find the one that says Change Minutes, Text or Data and click on it.

You’ll be taken to a page where you can change your data plan. Simply bump it up to the next tier to avoid paying overage fees for that month. Then, you can bump it back down to where you had it before when you move on to the next month.

Don’t Sweat it Too Much

In the end, don’t get too bent out of shape if you happen to go over your data allowance. If you forgot to temporarily bump up your data plan, you’ll only paying $5 more than if you were to remember to do it.

Of course, if you do go over and pay the overage fees, that should give you enough of a wake-up call so that you know not to go over the cap again, so don’t get too overwhelmed when you discover that you used way more than your monthly data allowance. You can always bump up your plan for just $10 more per month, or simply tone down your data usage by hopping on WiFi more often.

17 Comments

17 Comments

  1. Robyn

    01/15/2015 at 12:24 pm

    In the Verizon app, you set notifications notify you when you are getting close to your limits. Thanks to my notifications, I have never gone over my limit and i know exactly when and if I need to bump up my limit. I don’t know about others, but I don’t née another app if I already have one doing the same thing with more options.

  2. Abc

    09/22/2015 at 5:05 am

    So I can avoid paying overage fees by monitoring my usage and not going over my limit? Holy hell… #lifehack

  3. Jefferson Airplane

    09/29/2015 at 8:03 pm

    Thanks for this paid Verizon piece Craig, really awesome. NOT.

  4. moviemuscle

    10/06/2015 at 4:48 pm

    What a worthless article. I was expecting some useful tips. Instead, I got a bunch of no-brainers. Keep track of your data usage. Awesome!

  5. Tom

    02/06/2016 at 3:02 pm

    We have the technology. We could take care of our customers by shutting off the data and prompting our customers to add more data… but that would be to easy…and we make some much on overages.
    Thanks Verizon

  6. LIBERAL 101

    03/15/2016 at 7:59 am

    i just want them, to stop my data when i run out i dont want to pay more

  7. N8

    03/15/2016 at 4:36 pm

    What a load of non-helpful crap.

    Just throttle me back to 3g speed Verizon until the next billing cycle!

  8. 59cottoncandy

    04/28/2016 at 12:29 pm

    I would like to see an option on the app to increase my data usuage FOR THAT MONTH ONLY instead of having to go back later to reset my data back to the original amount before my next billing cycle starts.

  9. Andrey Mazurets

    05/06/2016 at 2:40 pm

    Got bill for 3200.95 for using 300Gb in 2 days Sat. and Sun .Nobody was in the office

    • Suz

      12/27/2016 at 9:17 am

      Were you able to rectify the problem? If so, what happened?

  10. Kate

    05/20/2016 at 4:09 pm

    I was at 21 GB on Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday night (end of bill cycle), somehow by 11 PM I was at 32.9 GB!!! Seems a little strange that a day when I wasn’t in the office I somehow used 45% of my normal data allowance, which is now an overage, the day before my bill started a new cycle. I called to ask what the heck happened and they said no error on their end! I just owe an extra $195 this month!

  11. jenjen

    06/20/2016 at 6:42 pm

    I watch our data use like a hawk. Have the notifications for verizon to inform me at 50, 75, 90 & 99% The past few months Data use has skyrocketed despite all my attempts & telling everyone on our plan not to use the data! The only way to stop the overage is to pay the $5 for “familybase” or lose the grandfathered program we are on to switch to another program…. and we all know if I try to switch back to my grandfathered program it won’t be an available option for me. Similar to when they took away our unlimited everything plan without informing us of this when we upgraded our phones. After 15 yrs of Verizon I may have had my fill of the game.

  12. Kristi N

    11/23/2016 at 4:42 pm

    I was told to change my LTE to a slower mode … thereby stretching out my data until the end of the month (especially if I was only a few days til the end).

    I sort of expected this type of advice.

  13. Ralph Bennet

    04/25/2017 at 1:57 pm

    I am 16 years with sprint and am getting the same crap. The small print keeps getting smaller. Maybe it’s time to go back to the wired phone on the wall in the kitchen

  14. Robert

    10/04/2017 at 2:28 pm

    Thanks so much for the sales pitch Verizon. Craig, is this really what you want to do with your life?

  15. Irritated

    10/31/2017 at 7:50 am

    You cannot just hop on wifi. VZW is smarter than that. They make it impossible for me to get wifi on the road. Plus, it wasn’t until I was 10% away from my limit that I got any notifications, even though they were supposed to occur at 50%, 75%, etc! This seems like a sleazy scheme on vzw’s part to screw customers out of money.

    As for you, Craig, you are full of s**t! Can you say “tool??!!”

  16. Roger

    09/30/2019 at 3:46 pm

    You sound like a complete shill for the industry. I think Verizon intentionally makes my wi fi not work, so my data plan kicks in JUST so they can get people to go over their data allowance.

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