Verizon is launching a three-year price lock guarantee for its myPlan subscribers

I don’t think anyone likes paying their cell phone bill, but it’s practically reached utility-levels of required for most adults these days. Thankfully, saving money on your monthly plan is pretty easy, so long as you’re willing to jump through a hoop or two. MVNOs, swapping between carriers to earn more rewards, and bringing your own device can help bring down your bill, but frankly, outside of MVNOs, does anyone actually like doing any of that? Thankfully, Verizon’s myPlan customers are getting an all-new price log guarantee, and it sounds like a pretty great deal all things considered.

Today’s news is surprisingly simple — at least on paper. Verizon now offers a 3-year price lock guarantee for new and existing customers that subscribe to either myPlan or myHome plans. There is no sign-up process, no confusing terms and conditions to make time to read through. According to Verizon, all myPlan customers are automatically enrolled, and whenever your myPlan tier is changed — say, if you move to a more robust, more expensive option — your price lock counter resets for another 36 months.

The carrier is also offering new phones for both new and existing customers on any myPlan whenever they trade in an any-condition phone from Apple, Google, or Samsung. Considering this is Android Police, I’m sure some of you reading this have non-qualifying devices — a OnePlus Open or a Sony Xperia 1 V, perhaps. But for most of Verizon’s customer base, Apple, Google, and Samsung phones cover the vast majority of smartphone sales, and getting a new phone on the house without having to change plans sounds pretty sweet.

Finally, Verizon is also providing its myPlan customers free satellite messaging on supported devices, as well as savings on select streaming services when they sign up through the carrier. Neither of those perks are quite as exciting as price lock guarantees or free phones, but hey, it’s something.

Verizon’s price lock guarantee sounds like the real deal

Just keep in mind how carriers usually work

If this all sounds too good to be true, just know you aren’t alone. These deals sound pretty excellent on paper, and it’s tough to see where, exactly, customers might get squeezed. Presumably, this is an attempt to get legacy planholders to jump onto new myPlan offerings, which might result in higher prices or fewer features depending on what you’ve been grandfathered into. But if you’re already on one of Verizon’s myPlan tiers — or you don’t mind switching your plan to lock down your price for a few years — I’m struggling to see the downside here.

Perhaps this is a response to Visible’s new Pro Plus plan, which my colleague Allison Johnson at The Verge called “a heck of a deal compared to its parent company’s offerings” earlier this week. Either way, it sort of sounds like Verizon customers — whether through the carrier itself or its main MVNO — are absolutely feasting right now.

The biggest question I have right now is whether Verizon’s terms and conditions might be hiding something more nefarious. Big Red is making a big deal out of being the first network to launch a three-year price lock guarantee, though it’s far from the first to do something similar. T-Mobile launched a lifetime price lock deal way back in 2017, only to pull the rug out from subscribers last year. Similarly, T-Mobile was asked to stop airing advertisements promoting its (non-lifetime) price lock, because it didn’t actually lock you into your current price — it just gave you an out should your monthly subscription cost change.

In an industry where carriers tend to follow the leader on some of their worst intentions, like slashing paperless billing and autopay discounts, I’m really hopeful that this represents a no-strings-attached effort that could be taken up by AT&T and T-Mobile. But, well, if you’re one of those cell phone bill-paying adults I referred to at the start of this article, you already know how this usually goes.