People Hate Price Increases, So Verizon Lost Almost 300,000 Phone Customers

Verizon reported its Q1 2025 numbers this week and the numbers are ridiculously bad. Analyst expectations were pretty low to begin with and then Verizon went even lower. Big Red reported a loss of 289,000 postpaid phone customers. Let me say that again – Verizon lost almost 300,000 of the coveted postpaid phone customer base … Continued Read the original post: People Hate Price Increases, So Verizon Lost Almost 300,000 Phone Customers

Apr 23, 2025 - 22:00

People Hate Price Increases, So Verizon Lost Almost 300,000 Phone Customers

Verizon reported its Q1 2025 numbers this week and the numbers are ridiculously bad. Analyst expectations were pretty low to begin with and then Verizon went even lower. Big Red reported a loss of 289,000 postpaid phone customers. Let me say that again – Verizon lost almost 300,000 of the coveted postpaid phone customer base in a single quarter.

Postpaid phone customers are those on plans like Verizon’s myPlan plans and are separate from those on prepaid plans. These customers tend to be the most important to wireless carriers, as they often are locked-in for longer periods of time with a carrier, typically carry phone payment plans, and are the most reliable and steady. You never want to lose postpaid customers at any rate, especially not 300,000 of them in a single quarter.

For comparison, AT&T reported its Q1 2025 earnings today and says they added 324,000 postpaid phone customers. T-Mobile has not yet released Q1 2025, but they have been adding customers for years and that likely won’t change to start 2025.

What’s the story here? Why is Verizon losing so many customers? They seem to be aware that their barrage of price increases have not helped, with their CFO saying during their earnings call that “Our consumer postpaid phone net losses … reflect the impact of recent pricing actions,” according to LightReading.

What “pricing actions” could they be referring to? Verizon started off 2024 by raising prices on older 5G Get More, 5G Play More, 5G Do More, and 5G Start unlimited plans. They followed that up by only allowing full autopay discounts to come from bank accounts. Then they raised smartwatch plan prices and put a fresh reduction on autopay discounts for older plans to finish off 2024. To start 2025, they went after myPlan customers with 5 lines or more and jacked up the pricing on insurance. They’ve since pinky-promised to lock your pricing in for the next 3 years, unless they decide to increase fees and taxes and anything not related directly to myPlan.

Verizon hasn’t done much in recent years except increase prices on its customers after introducing their not-great myPlan plans. As their quarterly numbers say, customers are over it and finding new carriers, prepaid options, etc. One could also argue that their network not keeping up with T-Mobile’s hasn’t helped either, but Verizon isn’t willing to say that part out loud.

They do believe they can turn things around on the postpaid side of things, which they’ve actually done in prepaid. In fact, their prepaid offerings are quite good and have been for years. This same quarter, they added 137,000 prepaid customers. In the same quarter last year, they were losing prepaid customers.

I’m not sure I see their current plan offerings bringing back customers or slowing the losses, but they are betting big on this price lock promise.

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