Verizon Activation Fee on "The New iPad"

I activated my 4G LTE with Verizon today and was not charged a fee. But I did it myself on the iPad in Settings - Cellular Data. I chose the plan I wanted, entered my credit card and email info and Verizon emailed my receipt. It appears Best Buy is charging you for entering your info for you.

I just got off the phone with Verizon, and the rep (who checked with a supervisor) said that the activation fee is legitimate and that they are not offering the prepaid plan with the new iPad. I had a chat with an Apple online customer service person as to why this wasn't disclosed on the Apple site, but that went absolutely nowhere.

So Verizon is offering "post-paid" and "pre-paid" data plans....the cost are the same month to month, however with a "post-paid" account you have to pay a $35 activation fee and you have to pay $10/GB when you go over your limit.....they claim that's better since you have the freedom to run your bill up!?!?! Anyway it sounds like you were signed up for a post paid account (some people actually will get discounts for post paid, but not many). You have to call and cancel your post paid and resign up on the device to get a pre-paid account. The bad news is is that Verizon will try to charge you a "$35 restocking fee" for removing the post paid account....it's a scam to collect an extra $35 from as many customers as possible. If you complain enough they may switch you to a pre-paid account and refund the fee....but it'll take quite a bit of complaining.

Verizon is in fact doing prepaid plans. I currently have one on my new ipad. I am considering going to post pay because its easer. To set it up don't even call verizon. You setup prepaid on the device itself so no need to call verizon. Just go to settings<Cellular data< view account. This page should give you the option to create a account. Just make a new one enter your information in and boom your prepaid. When you run out of data it will simply turn off and tell you that you require more data. You then have the option of adding more if you desire.

**If you already on post pay i'm not sure this will work without talking to verizon ***

Hope this helps ya m8

I was on post paid it it was not easier or more comvienent and it cost more because of taxes and fees. To switch from post paid to pre paid you need to take your iPad into a Verizon store and watch them run around like chickens trying to figure outnhownto "sell" you a new 4G SIM card. In the end they "sold" me a Moto Brionic, "returned" it and I kept its 4G card, but even then I had to call into get it approved as a prepaid card. It's a mess that you should just avoid by not buying your iPad at Verizon since they insist on activating it as post paid before you leave the store.

My Verizon store isn't bad. I bought my iPad at the Apple online store, but the Verizon store gets a lot of traffic from the Apple store in the same shopping center.

I went in Weds, and one of the salespeople I'd used when I had activation problems took one look, said "oops!" and refunded the activation fee and taxes. He said that many Verizon CS people, including call center supervisors, are pretty clueless when it comes to iPads. He said that because of the Apple store traffic folks in his store are much more knowledgeable.

His opinion (without selling or trying to sell me anything) is that overall the post pay plan is a bit better deal for the customer. Everything's working now, so I'm going to leave things as they are.

Props to Matt at the 29th St. Boulder store!

Anyone that says that Verizon isn't doing prepaid on the new ipad is either ignorant or trying to get you to sign up for postpaid because they get some kind of commission.

you can definitely sign up and there is no fee. It's only post paid cause one of their people does all the work to set it up, which is fine in theory but something tells me they don't do $35 worth of work. Maybe $10.

I was on prepaid and was going to switch because my new job has a deal with Verizon where we get 25% off and no fee if we go post paid but setting that up was a night mare. They said I had to turn off my prepaid because the MEID can only be in the system once so I did. Filled out the paperwork and emailed it to our rep. Two days go bye and not even 'i received it and it's processing'. A week goes by and nothing. I email him for an update on the status, nothing. I try connecting, restarting the ipad, doing the whole reprovision etc, nothing. 3 days and he hasn't replied to my request for an update. I try calling him. He doesn't call back.

It gets to 3 weeks and nothing so I called Verizon and cancelled the whole thing, which was also a nightmare of getting bounced back and forth. But after 2 hours it was done.

Yeah it seems insane that I would give up a discount etc but I would rather pay full price than not have working service. If ATT didn't suck in my area I'd just go get a sim card from them and settle for 3g+ etc

I ran into the same issues. I bought my Verizon ipad 4g LTE from Bestbuy and they activated it for me. I was specific in asking that i wanted the prepaid version but like everybody else on this list, i was signed up for the post paid account and was charged the $35 activation fee.

I walked into the Verizon to find why i was charged the activation and how i ended up with a month-to-month plan. They said that it was signed up and they refuse to reimbursed me for the $35. Since my ipad was within the 30 days.. i proceeded to return my ipad to best buy and just go ahead and cancel my contract/plan. Went back to BB to return it and I had 5 different best buy manager/personnel from the different departments try to persuade/borderline harass me into keeping it. I really felt like they did gang up on me.. and after running back and forth and being on the phone with customer service.. i was emotionally done. I asked them to process my return at Best buy and they were so incredibly upset with the return that they did not even bother to cancel my verizon contract. (which they were suppose to do) I had to go back to the Verizon store to do it myself. I should get my refund back reflected on my cc soon.. and I cancelled my verizon plan.

I would still buy the ipad. But this time around, I'll set it up myself so that i can get what i wanted. But never purchasing anything ever again from Best buy. Please be extremely careful when buying ipads from bb.

This happened with the iPad 2.

No one at Verizon seems to know what the others are doing.

Call Verizon.