anybody gotten a new iphone on ATT recently?

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bdmicarta

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Feb 16, 2012
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3+ years ago I upgraded my phone at an ATT store to an iphone5S, I think it cost about $200. My wife wants to upgrade her iphone5 so I was shopping online. All of the upgrades to 6 or 7 seem to be very much more expensive, in the $600+ range. Do they not do cheap upgrades anymore or are these prices the prices without a carrier plan? Are the carriers trying to get people to go with monthly payment plans for the phone itself instead of one time payment?
 
The new phones are much more expensive. And yes, there are no "free phone upgrades" with contract anymore. The best they do is amortize the cost of the phone over 12/18/24/36 months and still make you sign a contract.
 
The days of subsidized smartphones are over. Be glad that you're into IPhones, not Android. At least you don't have to deal with bloatware. I sort of understood that crap as part of the price you paid when the carriers helped you with the cost of the phone, but now that consumers have to pay the full price themselves and are still saddled with carrier bloat, I gotta say they are well and truly f♡({€)!
 
kamagong said:
The days of subsidized smartphones are over.
Click to expand...

But we are still paying the monthly rate as if they are subsidizing our phones, even though our phones are 3 years old. We still have to pay the higher monthly rate PLUS another $30 per month per phone to get new ones.
 
If you got them while subsidized, your monthly note is the same no matter what. They didn't charge extra for it. If you got it since subsidies stopped, and are paying a note on the phone, it will be a separate line item.

Aka, bringing in your old phone and not getting one via subsidy did not lower your note.
 
SVTFreak said:
If you got them while subsidized, your monthly note is the same no matter what. They didn't charge extra for it.
Click to expand...

I started with an iphone4, then 2.5 years ago I switched it for an iphone5S for the $200 fee. So my monthly rate included the "subsidy charge" and still does include the subsidy charge. So my wife will buy her new phone and after she gets it our monthly rate will be $30 per month higher to pay for the new phone. So essentially we are paying for the new phone twice. And since my phone is 2.5 years old I paying for another new phone that I can't even get.
 
Something seems to be missing there. Need to inquire about that fee for the other phone.
 
Yeah, no more discounted phones, you rent to own now. The best bet I've found lately are refurbished phones from Amazon. I bought a refurbished 5s recently for ATT from Amazon, it was like $125 and you get a 30 day warranty.
 
Seems they have gone the trading in a car route. I do not do it anymore. My son upgraded his a year or so ago to a 7, a little over 800.00 for the one he got. He wishes now he didn't do it. I have just been buying mine used and not having all that cost. I do not need the newest phone so I I buy the last version much cheaper. 300.00 for the 6s I have now. I do not see hardly any difference between the 6s and 7 for what I use it for.
 
Also it has been a long time sense I have used an upgrade if you can call financing a phone at full price an upgrade. Last time I got a phone from ATT was my first smart phone,an Iphone 4. I replaced it with a used 5 from unclaimed baggage (179.00) and replaced it with the 6s from a friend that changed carriers.
 
Under the "2-year contract method", as consideration for entering into a 2-year contract with AT&T, they gave you a new Iphone for $199. Thus AT&T ate the difference between the phones cost to them, and the $199 they charged you. They build in profit over the 2 year term to cover that difference.

Now the pendulum has swung to the other side and since there is no longer a 2-year contract, that built-in profit is "gone" and thus you pay full retail for a new Iphone. AT&T allows you to spread the cost of the phone over a number of months though their Next program. For instance I can get the IPhone 7 plus (32 GB) for $29 a month for 30 months. That puts the retail cost of the phone at $870. But you keep your old Iphone OR you can trade it in and reduce that cap cost of the new phone, bring the monthly payment down OR keeping the monthly payment the same and reducing the number of payments.
 
seeverscpa said:
Now the pendulum has swung to the other side and since there is no longer a 2-year contract, that built-in profit is "gone"
Click to expand...

Why is the builtin profit gone? We pay them the same amount of money per month and they no longer have to use the builtin profit to pay for the majority of the cost of the phone that they gave us, so the builtin profit is even higher. And considering what T-Mobile and Sprint are advertising their plans for, there must be more profit in the plans now than ever before.
 
I should have been more clear - my claim that the profit is gone does not equate to some amount of savings getting passed on to us consumers.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the same plan i did when I had a subsidized phone. When I went to the ATT Next plan to get an Iphone 6SPlus, the plan changed. Entirely different animal. The newer, non-contract plans of course have profit built into them, but not in the same way as the old plans. This is true even if your bill didn't change.

And do you agree they prepare a cell phone bill in the a way that purposely confounds the account owner? This is by design. No other invoice that I receive in my life has as many components and fees structures as my cell phone bill.
 
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