Update: As confirmed by Verizon, to check your eligibility simply log in to your MyVerizon account and see if your upgrade date has changed - this is supposedly all automatic. If you're not seeing it, give it a couple of days and maybe phone up Verizon to see what the deal is.


You probably suspected as much, but as many carriers do during iPhone season, Verizon has rolled up its handset upgrade schedule to "now" for customers who would have otherwise become eligible for new phones in the next 2 months. To be crystal clear about it: starting today, all Verizon customers eligible for a handset upgrade on or before November 15th 2014 are eligible for that upgrade immediately. It's unlikely this offer will be widely-publicized, though - you'll probably need to call and ask about it or go to a Verizon corporate store.

This is so droves of people can go out and buy shiny new iPhone 6s and satisfy that impulse-buy urge and, in doing so, make sweet, sweet contractual love to Big Red for another two years. Or, more realistically based on today's news, about one year and ten months. This is pretty smart business, particularly since the cutoff date is around the time the holiday shopping season ramps up in the US, so people outside of the eligibility zone probably have 'iPhone 6' on their Christmas / Hanukkah / non-denominational gift-giving thing during late-Decemberish list anyway.

Here's an internal image detailing the promo, but we already have it direct from Verizon on-record that this is happening.

If you're a few days outside the eligible window, it might be worth calling up Verizon to see what they can do (maybe wait till tomorrow - I'm guessing most reps still have no clue about this). If you're a multiline subscriber, I'd bet you'd be able to swing an immediate upgrade without much fuss. Most carriers are willing to bend the rules on promos like this for people throwing them a couple hundred dollars a month as is. Considering the profit margins on Android phones are higher for Verizon anyway, they might even be eager to make it happen for single subscribers if you push it.

There's some fine print here, though, that we're still not sure about - Verizon says this special upgrade opportunity will only be around for "a limited time." How limited (eg, two weeks or two months) that timeframe is, we're not sure, so we're waiting on a reply from Verizon.

Thanks, anon!