Out of curiosity, I would imagine that if someone goes the carrier-financing route, they’d still be on the hook for the cost of the phone even if they jumped to a different carrier? I don’t want to sound like I’m in support of at&t, but it doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable to keep a customer in place while they still have a balance on the hardware, or is there something else I’m missing?
I’m not from the US, but where I live it’s either (or a combination of):
Your contract runs for two years. You can cancel it before, but still have to pay for the first two years. Often prices depend on which category of phone you want (say 20€/month for the service, 25€ with a “smart” phone, 30€ with a “premium” phone, 35€ with a “power” phone,…)
You have two separate contracts, one for your phone, one for the mobile service. In this case you might pay for your phone 24 months, or 36, or whatever you agreed on and you can cancel the mobile service independently (assuming it’s not also locked to 2 years)
Some carriers even allow you to only get a phone without a contract for the mobile service.
If you finance a phone with your carrier, they’re legally bound to tell you what you pay for your phone monthly and how much for the service - there are many ways around that, unfortunately…
Yeah. I always saw it as a trade-off. “Here’s a cheaper or zero interest loan for a phone. You get this in exchange for paying us a cell phone bill for the next year or two.”
What pusses me off is that none of the big three give any discount if you have your own phone. If the guy next to me gets $600 off his cell phone purchase and pays $80/month, how come I still pay $80/month with my own device?
Wow, I pay £10 a month for unlimited calls/text and 45GB data. Not even on contract, it’s a monthly rolling bill, I can cancel at any time. The reason for this, there’s pretty good competition between carriers/NVMOs in the UK at the moment, driving prices down.
Out of curiosity, I would imagine that if someone goes the carrier-financing route, they’d still be on the hook for the cost of the phone even if they jumped to a different carrier? I don’t want to sound like I’m in support of at&t, but it doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable to keep a customer in place while they still have a balance on the hardware, or is there something else I’m missing?
I’m not from the US, but where I live it’s either (or a combination of):
In any case, you get an unlocked phone.
Yeah. I always saw it as a trade-off. “Here’s a cheaper or zero interest loan for a phone. You get this in exchange for paying us a cell phone bill for the next year or two.”
What pusses me off is that none of the big three give any discount if you have your own phone. If the guy next to me gets $600 off his cell phone purchase and pays $80/month, how come I still pay $80/month with my own device?
Wow, I pay £10 a month for unlimited calls/text and 45GB data. Not even on contract, it’s a monthly rolling bill, I can cancel at any time. The reason for this, there’s pretty good competition between carriers/NVMOs in the UK at the moment, driving prices down.
Yeah most of europe is waaaaay better when is comes to mobile plans compared to the US.
I don’t use use that much data, but my 8gb plan is just under €6 per month.
In the US, I had a plan like this for over $30…