New Cell Phone..had to ask?

fj12ryder wrote:
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.


While this is most likely the way it went. To assert that this is the answer is "ASS-U-MEING", and we all know how that works. I would like to know how it was done, since I also believe that "free" very rarely is "free", but sometimes it does happen.

Suppose someone told you that you could read all the books you want and it won't cost you a dime. And they are popular books, not just ones nobody is interested in. Sounds like a scam if you don't have a library card.

The "answer" I gave IS what happened and I am not "ASS-U-MEING" anything.

The supposed "new phone" someone got, to THEM it seems like it is free because they didn't have to pay one red cent to exchange the old phone for a new phone. In other words no money exchanged.. If no money exchanged they THINK it is free.. BUT WE know that because of the contract they had to agree to they ARE paying for it in their monthly price.

You can opt for a "contract" service or you can opt as a "pay as you go" no contract service.

For instance, we moved from Trac to ATT a couple of yrs ago so we had no ATT compatible phone.

We went with the "Pay as you Go" service which has NO CONTRACT and is month to month.

We had to PAY RETAIL PRICE on the phones we wanted.

In return, we ended up with a MUCH LOWER monthly service cost at $30 each phone with unlimited talk/text and 1 gig of data. We WILL NOT ever be "eligible" for a "free" phone either, we break it, lose it or want to replace it we HAVE to BUY another phone at retail prices.

If we opted for a contract agreement we would be paying $50 each per month for TWO YEARS for the lowest cost phone and it goes up from there. That is $20 MORE than "Pay as you go", $480 for the two yrs contract.

That IS how cellphone companies can "give away "free" phones" and most folks have no idea that they have been hoodwinked..

People just got used to exchanging phones anytime after their contract expires and call it "free"..

Therefore, it IS NOT "FREE" which is the point I was making.