More Help With AT&T NEXT

[apple111115]

Hello, so with the news that apple will only be using NEXT for new iphone purchases, I am trying to plan everything out and how much more expensive things are going to be. Bulleted below is my upgrade schedule etc:

-have three iPhones on individual data plans now (2 have 2 gigs of data, one has 300 MB)
-I have always upgraded to the newest iPhone in the past by using another member's upgrade, however, this will not work with Next anymore. I would then sell my old phone on eBay and make about $200.

So now on next if I want to get the new phone yearly I have to pay for it throughout the year and then trade it in? I would rather keep the phone and sell it on eBay, but then I would be charged about $500 for upgrading and not trading in my old phone?

I have also heard that NEXT is not different at all from past plans because it just starts to give you a discount after two years and you keep the phone, whereas now you get a discount after that time.

So in my situation described above, will I be losing money? I spent about two hours the other night attempting to figure all this out, but got very confused. Thanks for any help you may have!

 

[saintforlife]

NEXT is not as bad as some people make it out to be. All carriers are moving towards this model, so you might as well get on it sooner.

With NEXT the monthly payments that you pay AT&T for the phone, goes towards paying off the phone ($649, $749) etc. It is basically an interest free installment plan. Why wouldn't you opt for paying something over two years instead of paying a lot of money up front?

The only advice I give to people who switch to NEXT plan is this - DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT at any cost for any reason trade your phone in to AT&T if you want to upgrade! It is absolutely the worst thing you can do financially. Turn around and sell the phone on eBay or Craigslist, take that money and pay off the remaining balance on your phone and get a new phone with a new NEXT plan, but again, do not trade your phone back to AT&T. If you do that, all the monthly payments you have made up to that point would be like giving away free money to AT&T. Why would you want to do that?

 

[C DM]

Would one of the newer shared data plans work for all these 3 lines together? Perhaps one with let's say 10 GB of data? That way with Next you can get $25/month off for each line on Next. You'd need to figure out what you are paying now and what it would cost with the new plan to see what would work better.

That said, contracts aren't going away just yet since you can still get them from AT&T directly, so you can still do what you are doing, you would just need to get it done through AT&T rather than let's say Apple.

 

[pmb0404]

I bought my 6 on AT&T Next, made a few payments, then paid it off in full. I HATE having any kind of debt to anyone or any company. You could get the phone you want, and do the same thing. Trouble is, the market may or may not support the full price of the phone that you'd be paying. It didn't bother me, because I don't get a new phone every year....my last phone before the 6 was the 4. In my opinion, electronics are like cars....their value drops like a rock. They should be purchased if they're something you want and can afford (and no, payments does NOT mean you can afford it), but not as an investment.

 

[ftaok]

Hello, so with the news that apple will only be using NEXT for new iphone purchases, I am trying to plan everything out and how much more expensive things are going to be. Bulleted below is my upgrade schedule etc:

-have three iPhones on individual data plans now (2 have 2 gigs of data, one has 300 MB)
-I have always upgraded to the newest iPhone in the past by using another member's upgrade, however, this will not work with Next anymore. I would then sell my old phone on eBay and make about $200.

So now on next if I want to get the new phone yearly I have to pay for it throughout the year and then trade it in? I would rather keep the phone and sell it on eBay, but then I would be charged about $500 for upgrading and not trading in my old phone?

I have also heard that NEXT is not different at all from past plans because it just starts to give you a discount after two years and you keep the phone, whereas now you get a discount after that time.

So in my situation described above, will I be losing money? I spent about two hours the other night attempting to figure all this out, but got very confused. Thanks for any help you may have!

The proper way to fully break this down is to understand your current plan and what your needs going forward will be. Also, you need to disclose whether you have a employee discount plan (aka FAN account number) and if so, how is the discount applied. Also, you mentioned that you upgrade at least one phone every year, but you have 3 phones on the plan. Also, you say that you sell your old phone, so what happens to the phone that you used the upgrade on ... does that user continue to use the old phone (over 2 years old)?

OK, with that said, I can make some assumptions on your current plan.

500 minutes - $50/mo
Phone 2 - $10/mo
Phone 3 - $10/mo
2 GB data - $25/mo
2 GB data - $25/mo
300 MB data - $15/mo
Text Plan - $30/mo

That's a total of $165/mo without any FAN or tax

Three new iPhones will cost you $240 each under a subsidy, provided you can't talk your way out of the activation/upgrade fee (note that some FAN plans will automatically waive the upgrade fee).

That's a total of $4,680 over 24 months

A comparable NEXT/Mobile Share plan would be the 10GB plan, which I'll outline below.

10 GB Shared - $100/mo
Phone 1 - $15/mo
Phone 2 - $15/mo
Phone 3 - $15/mo

That's $145/mo

The three new iPhones would be $650 each (or $27.08/mo)

That's a total of $5,430 over 24 months.

In this scenario, staying with the current plan looks better than MS/NEXT.

Some things to think about. FAN discounts are taken off of the minutes portion of the traditional plan, while they are taken off the Shared Data portion of a MS plan. This favors the MS/NEXT plans. But realize that some older FAN accounts sometimes take the discount off of everything. YMMV.

Another thing to consider is that on the traditional plans, the longer you go past your upgrade date, the more money you're wasting. Sometimes, if you have an upgrade available, but you're waiting to upgrade (maybe the next iPhone is sold out or not avaialbe yet), you're losing any advantage over a NEXT plan.

The best thing to do is take your bill and plug in your numbers into a spreadsheet to compare. Or you could share your plan details and I'm sure someone on the forum will help you through the math.

ftaok

 

[spacemnspiff]

I am in the same boat. I will try to keep the current plan because it saves me money over the course of two years when you include the cost of the phone and the plan. See below.

 

[ftaok]

I am in the same boat. I will try to keep the current plan because it saves me money over the course of two years when you include the cost of the phone and the plan. See below.

View attachment 560818

This is the level of analysis that everyone needs to do for their personal situations. I did the same thing last year when switching to mobile share.

One thing I noticed. In your mobile share columns, you've included the 18% discount to the $15/mo access charges. Does you FAN actually work that way? Mine doesn't and only comes off hate $100 for the shared data portion.

 

[aneftp]

NEXT is not as bad as some people make it out to be. All carriers are moving towards this model, so you might as well get on it sooner.

With NEXT the monthly payments that you pay AT&T for the phone, goes towards paying off the phone ($649, $749) etc. It is basically an interest free installment plan. Why wouldn't you opt for paying something over two years instead of paying a lot of money up front?

The only advice I give to people who switch to NEXT plan is this - DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT at any cost for any reason trade your phone in to AT&T if you want to upgrade! It is absolutely the worst thing you can do financially. Turn around and sell the phone on eBay or Craigslist, take that money and pay off the remaining balance on your phone and get a new phone with a new NEXT plan, but again, do not trade your phone back to AT&T. If you do that, all the monthly payments you have made up to that point would be like giving away free money to AT&T. Why would you want to do that?

It depends on condition of the phone whether to trade it in.

Plus sometimes around launch times. AT&T offers like $200 credit for even crappy iPhone 4 (at time of iPhone 6 launch) and giving you $200 credit for a 4 year old phone in horrible condition.

So do not say DO NOT trade in. Sometimes it makes sense to trade in. (Convinence, pricing, promos)

 

[spacemnspiff]

This is the level of analysis that everyone needs to do for their personal situations. I did the same thing last year when switching to mobile share.

One thing I noticed. In your mobile share columns, you've included the 18% discount to the $15/mo access charges. Does you FAN actually work that way? Mine doesn't and only comes off hate $100 for the shared data portion.

That is what I assumed, because the discount right now applies to my data cost, I carried that over to the Mobile Share. You have more information than I do about Mobile Share, that means the Mobile Share is even more expensive when compared to my current plan.

 

[aneftp]

That is what I assumed, because the discount right now applies to my data cost, I carried that over to the Mobile Share. You have more information than I do about Mobile Share, that means the Mobile Share is even more expensive when compared to my current plan.

ATT policy (except for grandfathered $30 unlimited data plans with still applies FAN discounts). Data plans need to be $50
Or more.

So ATT won't discount $15/mobile smartphone access FAN. Just the data portion of the mobile sharing data.

So if you have 3-4 unlimited data lines with a 20% FAN discount. That's like $6 off per line ($24 total assuming 4 lines) that you could lose if u switch to mobile sharing.

Of course ATT could just decide not to discount $30 data unlimited plans anymore.

In old days I got fan discounts off my $20-30 texting rates but they stopped it circa 2010/2011.

 

[AJsAWiz]

Hello, so with the news that apple will only be using NEXT for new iphone purchases, I am trying to plan everything out and how much more expensive things are going to be. Bulleted below is my upgrade schedule etc:

-have three iPhones on individual data plans now (2 have 2 gigs of data, one has 300 MB)
-I have always upgraded to the newest iPhone in the past by using another member's upgrade, however, this will not work with Next anymore. I would then sell my old phone on eBay and make about $200.

So now on next if I want to get the new phone yearly I have to pay for it throughout the year and then trade it in? I would rather keep the phone and sell it on eBay, but then I would be charged about $500 for upgrading and not trading in my old phone?

I have also heard that NEXT is not different at all from past plans because it just starts to give you a discount after two years and you keep the phone, whereas now you get a discount after that time.

So in my situation described above, will I be losing money? I spent about two hours the other night attempting to figure all this out, but got very confused. Thanks for any help you may have!

Oh no! Besides paying full price (in installments) for your iPhone under the Next Plan, they want you to trade in your old phone as well. That does not sound desirable at all to me. Under those terms I don' t think I'd ever go with the Next plan . . . . . . "next" LOL

 

[C DM]

Oh no! Besides paying full price (in installments) for your iPhone under the Next Plan, they want you to trade in your old phone as well. That does not sound desirable at all to me. Under those terms I don' t think I'd ever go with the Next plan . . . . . . "next" LOL

If you pay off the phone then you don't need to trade it in as that is there only if you want to upgrade early and don't want to pay off the whole price of the phone--you have the option to trade it in in place of whatever remains on your financing of the phone, or to simply pay off the financing and do whatever you want with the phone as it is yours.

 

[saintforlife]

It depends on condition of the phone whether to trade it in.

Plus sometimes around launch times. AT&T offers like $200 credit for even crappy iPhone 4 (at time of iPhone 6 launch) and giving you $200 credit for a 4 year old phone in horrible condition.

So do not say DO NOT trade in. Sometimes it makes sense to trade in. (Convinence, pricing, promos)

I think you are mixing up different things here. When I say trade a phone in on the NEXT plan, it is usually for people who upgrade every year (like the OP was suggesting). At the end of the first year, NEXT makes it possible to trade your phone in and get a new phone, but the monthly payments you have made it the first year is gone. AT&T keeps it. At that point it becomes like leasing a phone for a year and giving it back to AT&T. I was suggesting for people that like upgrading their phones every year to not trade it in, but to sell it and pocket more money and use that to pay off the remaining balance. They will always come out ahead this way.

AT&T offering $200 credit for a 4 year old crappy phone is a completely different discussion has nothing to do with trading your phone in as part of NEXT every year or before your have made all your monthly phone payments. I hope the OP didn't get confused by this tangent.

 

[aneftp]

I think you are mixing up different things here. When I say trade a phone in on the NEXT plan, it is usually for people who upgrade every year (like the OP was suggesting). At the end of the first year, NEXT makes it possible to trade your phone in and get a new phone, but the monthly payments you have made it the first year is gone. AT&T keeps it. At that point it becomes like leasing a phone for a year and giving it back to AT&T. I was suggesting for people that like upgrading their phones every year to not trade it in, but to sell it and pocket more money and use that to pay off the remaining balance. They will always come out ahead this way.

AT&T offering $200 credit for a 4 year old crappy phone is a completely different discussion has nothing to do with trading your phone in as part of NEXT every year or before your have made all your monthly phone payments. I hope the OP didn't get confused by this tangent.

Again it all depends. Never say never trade in even NEXT phones after 12 months (as oppose to reselling on ur own).

My LG G3 was $599 back in July 2014. After 12 months I would have paid $360 with $240 remaining balance.

Now look at eBay SOLD prices for lg G3 (a former flagship phone released less than 12 months ago). Selling prices are around $250. Add eBay fees plus shipping fees and you net may be around $220.

I have attached latest "sold prices for lg G3".

Now ask yourself. Do I trade in lg G3 after 12 months on ATT next (easiest solution with no fraud, no scammers). Or do I risk eBay Craigslist swappa whatever.

The easy answer is to trade in lg G3 after 12 months on ATT next.