New Cell Phone..had to ask?
My wife and I both have aging Samsung Verizon S-7 Cell Phones that after several years, the batteries are are starting to degrade rapidly.. Time for new phones?? Before I visit any Verizon, Costco or...
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:Bill.Satellite wrote:
I buy brand new Samsung's. The 2 I just bought this week cost ZERO dollars with trade-in. Hard to beat!
Where do you get them from?
Like anyone else that "trades in", their local store front for the carrier they are using..
Carriers like Verizon, ATT and such do a sucker deal of "free" qualified trade ins to keep you locked into that service vendor.
Works like this..
You "buy" a phone upfront at a substantially reduced price, this gets you locked into a two yr contract.. Break the contract before it ends and you have to pay a huge fee to get out of it which covers the cost of the phone (see where this is going?).
All along in reality you are paying an extra fee for the phone in the form of a higher cost of the service amortized out for the length of the contract price..
Now, if you stay the entire time of the contract, you become "eligible" and they will "reward" you with a new "free phone"..
All you have to do is go in to the store again and get your new phone and when you do you now agree to an new contract period.. Interestingly enough once the contract expires, the price does not go down..
So, in reality, it is not "free", never was free, and never will be free but folks THINK it is free But they PAID for it in the form of a higher service price for the length of the contract.
Sometimes one can take advantage of that service because of the phone getting stolen, lost or damaged just by going back to the store and getting a "free" replacement phone by agreeing to another new contract period.. But they STILL PAID for the phone so it isn't really "free".
