On average, I get a “courtesy call” from one Verizon service or another almost every day. As both a VZW and FIOS customer, each professional service organization tries regularly to up-sell me. So far I have not received a call from both on a single day, but I won’t be shocked when/if I do. My wife and I have the lowest possible family plan for wireless, and the 20/5 FIOS plan with home phone service. Slap that all together with their combined billing, and we’re shelling out ~$180 per month for media-related utilities. This is a much better deal than when we were paying almost $300 monthly for 3G network access on our phones.

About six weeks ago, I received a notice that my introductory FIOS rate was about to expire, giving me no price protection, and increasing my cost by about $10 per month. I called and the best they could offer me was another $10 per month for a lower data rate than I currently had, or another $20 per month for a slightly better one. My wife and I agreed that there was no sense in paying to get less, so it made better sense to pay to get more, and spend the $240 annually for slightly faster network service. I didn’t act, however, because I thought I’d call back later and see if I could haggle for a better rate.

So tonight when I got a call from “UNKOWN, CALLER” at 6pm I was generally nonplussed. They were right on time.

Tonight, however, was different. I was in an odd mood, and when the woman asked if I had a few minutes to talk about how she could analyze my calling plan to make sure we had the best possible deal, I told her she had up until my 11-month-old started crying (this doesn’t take long), and that we already had the cheapest family plan.

Or so I thought.

She looks at my account, sees that we use fewer than 100 minutes between us, and offers me a “loyalty” plan. This saves us $10 a month, with no contract extension. I double-check that we’re not losing our SMS options, and she notices that my wife’s line has a more expensive plan than mine (and she only sends a dozen or so messages a month). Fixing this saves us another $5. She also asks if I want to use my New-Every-Two and upgrade my phone. I do, but since I can’t settle on a phone I like, I have to pass for now.

Then she asks if either of us send picture messages, and I take the opportunity to note that my old phone now won’t send them — I get an error message that I had chalked up to it being old. She discover that when we turned off our internet service, it put a “network access lock” on the phones, so pictures couldn’t upload to their hosting service. She fixes it, and the call is now +3 awesomeness in Verizon’s favor, and -15 dollars in mine.

This was the best five minutes I’ve ever spent with Verizon’s customer service. Maybe luck will strike twice and the FIOS folks will give me a break as well. One can dream, right?

(Photo Credit: Verizon Ad)

Then the mysterious, aging Windows installation syndrome crept in. The phone would randomly freeze, crash or restart, sometimes in the middle of a call. When composing a text message, the phone would jump into the dialing application and start dialing numbers. I would go from three bars’ of battery life to none in a few minutes. As an internet device, it performed fairly well. As a phone, it was flat out annoying. I installed the Windows Mobile 6.1 update to see if it would resolve any of the quirkiness to no avail. Then, after taking a hard look at our budget, we decided to nix the internet service. This saved about $100 a month, but left us with two phones we otherwise hate.

At the same time, we switched to a family plan to save a bit more money, but this had the undesired effect of canceling my wife’s NE2 subscription (since her line effectively costs $10 per month, and the minimum is $50). Verizon’s NE2 plan isn’t really every two years, it’s every twenty months, meaning I can get $100 towards a new phone next month.

Yay! But what to do? I want to go simple, but I also want a few key features:

• Bluetooth Support – I’m in the market for a good headset as well, and like to sync stuff with my computers.
• A camera that doesn’t suck – 2MP would be nice, but 1.3 is sufficient.
• microSD port – I have a 2GB card, I might as well use it!

Disclaimer: I would love an iPhone. I covet every single one I see. I can’t, however, rationalize the expense of $400 up front for two phones and $150+ each month for service. It’s not economically sound, and I don’t need one. I also don’t want to leave Verizon. Their service is more than adequate and so far, from a customer service perspective, I’ve been fairly happy. Our entire extended family is on the VZW network, and I have FIOS at home which puts all of my communication utilities on one bill.

Sadly, I don’t love any of their phones, but if I’m not going to jump ship I’ll have to suck it up. Thus, I’m down to five from the current lineup:

1. Motorola Rapture – $30 (3.5/5): Pros: Cost!, Size, Looks Pretty, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: It’s made by Motorola, so the software sucks and I already have bad software.
2. Samsung Trance – $70 (4/5): Pros: Cost to some extent, Size!, killer speakerphone; Cons: Slider (never had one before, so maybe it doesn’t matter), You have to open the slide to use the camera, camera is only 1.3MP, Reviews say that the touch screen is kinda wonky
3. LG Chocolate 3 – $70 (3.5/5): Pros: Cost to some extent, built-in FM Transmitter for music, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: Size, Kinda ugly
4. Nokia 7205 – $80 or $130? (3.5/5): Pros: It’s super pretty, 2.0MP Camera; Cons: Cost, semi-odd button layout, reviews indicate poor T9 support/battery life
5. LG Dare – $130 (4/5): Pros: Pretty, 3.0MP Camera, Outstanding battery life, Tons of positive reviews; Cons: No keys!, Cost!!

To make a final decision, I’m going to need to play with a few of these hands-on at either Best Buy or a Verizon store. I’m leaning toward the Trance, mostly because of the size and my non-smartphone experiences with Samsung have all been stellar. I had an LG a few phones ago and it was terrible, so that doesn’t bode well for the Chocolate. (I’m really only considering it for the FM transmitter.) The Dare, while shiny, is just too costly and I’d be making the same mistake that I did with my current phone: buying features I don’t really need. Some field experience is going to make the final decision.