Last week during CES, Verizon quietly increased its upgrade fee from $20 up to $30. This charge is applied whenever a customer either buys a phone outright or splits payments up monthly with Verizon’s device payment plans.

Those are pretty much the only valid ways to buy phones from Verizon at this point, since the company also got rid of two-year contracts last week — this time for good. Subsidized contract pricing had remained available to existing customers after being phased out for new subscribers in 2015. (The upgrade fee had been an even more expensive $40 for contract customers.) The $30 upgrade fee is separate from the activation fee that Verizon applies whenever you set up a new line of service.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere…

Continue reading…