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Apple Considering $50-$150 Rebate on iPhone?

bignumbers said:
The problem with the iPhone is the long-term contract. The iPhone is sure to be upgraded during the two-years following introduction. Faster data, more memory, faster processor, who knows what else. What happens when six months goes by and they have a new model with a feature I want? It might be worth the cost of a new phone (selling the old for peanuts on ebay or trading in) but not if I get stuck with a cancellation penalty.

Imagine if you bought an iPod Shuffle, then six months later decided you wanted more features and went to buy a 4GB Nano. "That'll be $199 for the Nano and a $499 cancellation penalty. Thank you."

That'll be my first question after introduction, how will they handle hardware upgrades.

Luckily the contract on my Treo 650 is up next month.
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That's a good issue to raise. My cingular 8125 was upgraded to the cingular 8525 within 3 months of my purchase. I went in and talked to the cingular people about the change and my desire to have the newer/faster phone. They said "sorry."

I would imagine that, if this cellular phone is treated the way the US cell phone companies have historically done business-- once you buy it -- you've got it for the duration of the contract. That's not to say you can't upgrade- certainly you can - but you'll pay full price for it.
 
Screw the rebate, I want the cheaper plan. If you can't manage to save up the cash, then you obviously don't want it that badly.

Um, of course, you could say the same thing about the plan I guess but don't go injecting reason and logic into the thread.
 
Better Idea

You know what would be the Perfect Phone for me?

A GSM Tranceiver & SIM card slot in my MacBook.

I've got it with me all the time anyway. Build a speakerphone and/or bluetooth headset phone into the next model (that can work with any GSM carrier), and I would be lining up the night before to cheerfully pay outrageous sums of money for it.
 
jblodgett said:
That's a good issue to raise. My cingular 8125 was upgraded to the cingular 8525 within 3 months of my purchase. I went in and talked to the cingular people about the change and my desire to have the newer/faster phone. They said "sorry."

I would imagine that, if this cellular phone is treated the way the US cell phone companies have historically done business-- once you buy it -- you've got it for the duration of the contract. That's not to say you can't upgrade- certainly you can - but you'll pay full price for it.
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Usually the way it goes is that you can upgrade to a newer phone whenever you want, you just have to pay full price for it (and also possibly sign a new contract). I'm guessing they said "sorry" because you wanted the phone at the "contract" rate. When you go into a phone store and they have phones on display for free, or $50, or $100, that's always the price when you sign a new 2-year contract. The full price of those phones is like $300 or $400. Anyone can go into a cell phone store and ask to buy a phone full price with no contract. But if you're already on a contract with the company, and you want to upgrade the phone, as long as you pay the full price for the phone, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. You're not locked into the phone, you're locked into the service.

Anyway. I can't wait for the iPhone to come out. I'm already crossing the days off my calendar. The only thing is that I HATE rebates... In fact, I was supposed to get a $150 rebate on my current phone and never got one in the mail. The rebate company claims that they never recieved my rebate submission and that I should try to send it again. When faced with the obvious question of "if the rebate requires the ORIGINAL sales receipt and UPC from the box, and i already sent you those, how am i supposed to send the originals again?", I get a "well that's not our problem". So... I've made it a policy to never buy anything on rebate again because it's too easy for the rebate company to convinently "lose" your submission, or claim that they mailed the check and that it must have gotten lost in the mail, or whatever.

I was going to get an iPhone anyway at full price, and if they want to offer a rebate, well I'll go ahead and try. What I'm REALLY not looking forward to is finding out how much the voice + unlimited data is going to cost. That's going to hurt... I'm thinking maybe $100+ a month. BUT I also have to figure that my current voice-only verizon phone is about $50 a month after taxes and fees anyway. So the "$1200 a year" price really only comes out to "$600 extra a year", which isn't so bad. I mean, one way or another I'm going to pay at least $600 a year for voice anyway.

What would make the iPhone really worth it would be if I could use it as a modem on my power mac. I'll be curious to see how fast the data is and if it could serve as a replacement for my DSL. If the iPhone voice + data could replace my current verizon voice and DSL, then I'd break about even on the iPhone service costs.
 
job said:
Holy crap, $75-$100 per month for plan and data rates?

I get annoyed when I have to pay $40 per month.

I'd much rather get just a voice plan without any network connection and leech off free WiFi at coffee shops, etc.
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Yep, I'm not shelling out any more than the 48.00 bucks I pay now. They better have a voice only plan or I'm not buying.
 
Tara Davis said:
You know what would be the Perfect Phone for me?

A GSM Tranceiver & SIM card slot in my MacBook.

I've got it with me all the time anyway. Build a speakerphone and/or bluetooth headset phone into the next model (that can work with any GSM carrier), and I would be lining up the night before to cheerfully pay outrageous sums of money for it.
Click to expand...

BT headsets already work! I've used mine from my phone for TeamSpeex playing WOW! :D

B
 
vniow said:
Getting something expensive for cheaper than usual certainly doesn't devalue anything in my eyes, it just means I get something for a better price. In fact I'm more likely to see it as getting more value out of it than paying higher for it.
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The value to YOU depends on the price you pay.

But by "devalue" I think we're talking about the perceived value of the item to the public, which isn't quite the same. Examples: The fact that a given make of automobile can sell above list price gives people a favorable impression of that company, while the same consumers would much rather find a nice rebate if THEY were buying one. Designer clothes can be more desirable no matter what quality they are simply because they cost more and everyone knows it.

Presumably, Apple would rather see you pay full price for an iPhone and get a discounted service plan, while AT&T would rather see you get a discounted iPhone and pay full price for the service plan (as it typically works now). To the consumer making a purchase, only the total price makes a real difference and the value they get for their money.
 
I think 3 months free of PDAMAX or iPhoneMAX and a $25 iTunes card would work a lot better.
 
It's not what it cost to buy...

As the old adage goes...

It's not what it cost to buy; but what it cost to keep.

I'd happily pay a kilo-buck for the phone and $18 / month for the service. It always amazes me that Americans don't see that. Oh-well. No iPhone for this geek.:(
 
if apple is serious about increasing market share in the computing world, they should offer a rebate when you purchase a mac and the iphone together. whattya think? :cool:
 
Rocketman said:
Related to this, I just heard on CNBCW (world), Vodafone is the expected carrier in Europe and this news is taken quite positively by Mac geeks there.
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Where is that information from? I can't really imagine that this is good news, the way Vodafone does branding is just ridiculous!
 
i remember back in maybe febuary asking a cingular rep about plans for the iPhone. He assumed that you would have to get a data plan, is cingular making it mandatory to get one?
 
I doubt this will happen, shawn wu has been wrong in the past and I think wrong on this one. Apple will not want to bring down the cost of the iPhone to keep the percieved value high (and also to seperate the product from the normal iPods which if there were a $150 rebate the iPhone would be the same as the 80GB iPod.)
 
It's not the hardware... stupid

Re: "The argument goes that the subsidies devalue the hardware in the consumer's eyes"

It the provider that devalues the hardware!!! AT&T make it not worth getting.

I would pay $500/$600/$800 for an iPhone if it came with a service that worked. Verizon or Sprint even T-Moble but AT&T?!?! No Way!

I had AT&T and they are right when they say they have the least dropped calls... that's because they have the lease connected calls. I can't tell you how many time I would have to make a call to get through just once!

As long as AT&T is the only provider of the iPhone I will not be purchasing one (and I bleed in 6 colors and have been an Apple Developer in 1986)
 
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