Apple Store No Longer Sells iPhone With 2-Year Contract on AT&T

[abowlby]

The cost of the phone is factored into your service plan. Someone said the calculated cost is $20 a month.

What I am complaining about is how complicated and non transparent this process now is.

For example, after two years of paying on Next, some are claiming that you don't even own the phone and must turn it in unless you pay a few more installments. Is this clearly spelled out or is it hidden in fine text?

And again: "So much FUD."

On AT&T Next you own your phone when it is paid off. You can pay the phone off 3 hours after buying it if you want. There is a trade in option, that believe it or not some people love (me)! The trade in allows you to upgrade earlier if you'd like.

And yes, it is a touch confusing, but it is actually far more transparent. You have to set aside the kneejerk reactions and understand that carriers do not price the equipment, OEMs do.

 

[BigHonkingDeal]

With NEXT, you trade your phone in, with the 2-year you can sell your phone and that works out better for the consumer if you keep you phone in great shape.

You can always pay off the phone on NEXT and sell it.... You can pay off the NEXT balance at any time.

 

[chumpy34]

Why did you subtract your iPhone 5 from one calculation but not the other?

with a 2-year contract I own my phone and can sell on the open market, with NEXT you have to trade your phone in and get $0 back. So I subtracted the $220 I received from the sale of my iPhone 5 from the 2-year contract as that was money in my pocket and lowered the amount I paid overall to get a new iPhone 6, but if I was on NEXT, I just turn my phone in, so in the end, NEXT costs me more.

 

[newyorksole]

Uuummm its 20, 24 and 30 months...

Also you pay tax upfront.

 

[mrbrown]

So, wait, like T-Mobile, AT&T is offering to finance the phone, rather than subsidizing it on a contract, but unlike T-Mobile, they're keeping their plans at the subsidized price points?

No thanks.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I did the math last fall and their NEXT program is more expensive than a 2-year contract even if they tell you differently, and when I went into an AT&T store and called their 800 number, I was told 10 different things If you are grandfathered into unlimited data or switch to a new phone every two years, then the 2-year contract is a better value by a couple hundred dollars. With NEXT, you trade your phone in, with the 2-year you can sell your phone and that works out better for the consumer if you keep you phone in great shape.

I'll bow to you doing the work here. We've always bought iPhones outright so that we had the freedom to go with any service or even hop service to service for better deals. I haven't done the math so my posts are simply looking at it at face value and thinking that what I see is the total cost of the phone being broken out to a separate fee and that fee disappearing from the bill when it is paid for. If true (and if that price is not jacked up), that seems like a better deal than the old 2-year contract where you keep paying the monthly fee established up front even after the phone is fully paid off.

The service itself could be crooked to no end (and I wouldn't be surprised one bit). It's this decoupling of phone cost from service cost that seems- on the surface- a generally very positive thing for consumers. From my own perspective, the iPhone has always been decoupled from the service portion, so I carry the perception that we have always minimized the total costs of iPhone ownership.

In our household, we're yet to find a better overall deal with any of the major carriers. What seems to deliver best value and lower prices overall is to buy the phones outright and use alternative carriers like NET10 and similar. We're yet to see a better offering from AT&T or Verizon that meets our usage needs and delivers a better price.

 

[chumpy34]

You can always pay off the phone on NEXT and sell it.... You can pay off the NEXT balance at any time.

Are you sure you can do that, I was told that you have to trade your phone in with NEXT even if you have paid your 24 months or 18 or whatever. Of course, I was told ten million different things by AT&T If you are free and clear with NEXT and own your phone, then that would change things quite a bit but ???

 

[MasterRyu2011]

I thought most people in this forum would be fine with contracts no longer existing. Don't most "phone" people who are "in the know" typically buy phones outright anyway and don't subject themselves to service contracts?

Hopefully AT&T will be able to lower their service prices for those who buy phones outright.

 

[uberman15]

Ah thank you! There is a lot of conflicting information being tossed around.

With next, can you choose to pay more than the monthly installments they quote you to pay it off sooner?

I'm fairly certain you can pay down your phone in full pretty much at any point. You can also choose a different Next plan among their few discrete options. I'm not sure why you'd want to increase the monthly payment however. It's free financing and you should just pay the remainder of the payments in full when you're ready to upgrade.

It would be silly if 50% of AT&T's business didn't come from them.

It's just not an apples to apples comparison, that's all. If you have unlimited data, it might not be advisable to use Next. But I don't recall you specifying a very specific type of plan when you first linked to an article stating that Next was inferior.

It also might be inferior for <10GB plans, but I've never run those numbers. Try to get as many people together on one plan, if you can. I just wish AT&T offered family sharing with separate billing. Now that would be a nice feature.

 

[abowlby]

So much this....

It would be nice for carriers to show you up front what your costs would be over a 2 year period.

In any case I pay 130 a month for 3 lines and 15 GB of data. On next. But then again I like buying unlocked phones outright...

You get it, friend. In fact I used to use prepaid services because when I broke down the price an OEM asked for the phone into 24 parts and added that to my postpaid account fees I realized that 2 year CONtracts were the absolute worst. Now, I'm on postpaid and that allowed me to take advantage of open enrollment insurance as well. If my 128GB 6 Plus breaks, $100 gets me a new one and I dont add any installment plans. I love it.

 

[MasterRyu2011]

Very few people keep a phone more than 2 years these days. A very large percentage upgrade every 2 years or every year. This means most people won't save anything and instead will end up paying more.

People upgrade because of these contracts that allow them to only cough up the upfront cost of $0-200. I can see people keeping their phone beyond two years more and more now. Not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[peglegjack]

While I agree that life is too short for this kind of things. However, your situation is limited to your case, you $19 per month is because you are not a heavy user.

A friend of mine like to stream sports, he pulls around 10-12GB a month, if he was on Ting, he'd actually be paying through the nose. Ting is terribly expensive when it comes to data.

Yeah, I mean at that point you're really getting into philosophical differences. I never use more than 100MB of data personally. I ask myself, what do I really need a smartphone for? How does it enrich my life (from a data perspective) when I'm out and about? And the only answers I could come up with are getting subway/map directions, using notes/reminders with iCloud, iMessage, keeping stats on RunKeeper, and occasionally a weather forecast. And since I have WiFi at work and at home, I can do these things within my set parameters.

When I had a Sprint Unlimited plan paying $92 or so a month, I felt like I had to use it. So when I would be on the subway on the way home, I basically buried myself in websites. And after awhile it just made me sad, and it became this unhealthy addiction. Yet I almost felt obligated to, mainly because of the marketing tactics of saying "unlimited" data. And since it was so slow, I never used more than 700MB or so. Now you could say, join Verizon/AT&T/whatever and I could, but now that I pay way less while at the same time feeling like my well being has improved for it, I don't think I can go down that road again.

But again, people have been programmed into consuming as much as possible over the last few years, so these are mostly philosophical differences on how to live, and your friend would probably be better off with something like T-Mobile.

 

[bunnicula]

You can do even better buy buying on the used market or even refurbished. You may even save tax

I suppose that's true. I just upgrade my phones yearly and sell my old phone or hand it down to one of the kids, if they want it, then sell/trade their old phone. Works for me.

 

[KdParker]

If you're doing the Next 12 plan, you can upgrade your phone every year. You trade it in because you've only paid for half the phone, AT&T will second market the phone to make up the difference.

Not just make up the difference, but gain a profit. These next plans are designed to steal the profits from selling iPhones on secondary market to offset the purchase of a new phone.

iPhones have always should for more that the subsidized price at the end of a 2 year contract, and now with Next program you will simply hand over that profit to ATT so they can sell the phone or use again in the Next program.

Seems like this is a good deal for ATT.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

All Next is is phone leasing.
I do not like to lease.
I like to have some equity in my products.
When I upgrade I can usually get back close to the same amount that I paid for it in the beginning.
With Next, nope, you turn your phone in for what? NOTHING. No return.

I don't think that's true. At the end of a lease, your only choice is to return someone else's property. After you pay off this phone through this program, I think you own it- just like you own it when you pay it off within the 2-year contract. You have the option of trading it in for the "next" new model if you want but I think you can also just sell it to someone else too. Please someone, correct me if I'm wrong about this.

 

[ricktat]

Are you sure you can do that, I was told that you have to trade your phone in with NEXT even if you have paid your 24 months or 18 or whatever. Of course, I was told ten million different things by AT&T If you are free and clear with NEXT and own your phone, then that would change things quite a bit but ???

Yes, the option is in your account at the ATT website. You can pay it off at any time.

 

[PsychoLogicXen]

Won't be surprised if Verizon and Sprint drop the 2-year contract option in the coming months. They'd be smart to wait until after the 6S/6S Plus go on sale...

 

[Tycho24]

Have you ever tried to purchase an iPhone while off contract? I have every other year and it always defaults to the lower price.

Yes.
Also, I work at a cell phone shop.
I'm assuming you are talking about ordering online? Glitch, maybe...

 

[Pearl-g]

Soooo, for us with unlimited data, and buy the phone with a subsidy every other year.. is our plan going to get cheaper? It seems as if they are trying to force people off the grandfathered unlimited data plan. Or are they going to be dicks and not change our plans cost when the 2 years has passed and make us pay full boat for the phones?

I can see this hurting their sales possibly...idk

I just checked AT&T online and you can still get a 2 year contract paying 199.99 for the phone.

 

[ricktat]

The only people that NEXT doesn't work for are old grandfathered unlimited and people that use like 1 GB of data.
For all others NEXT is cheaper or the same.

 

[uberman15]

Are you sure you can do that, I was told that you have to trade your phone in with NEXT even if you have paid your 24 months or 18 or whatever. Of course, I was told ten million different things by AT&T If you are free and clear with NEXT and own your phone, then that would change things quite a bit but ???

I'm 100% sure you own the phone free and clear after making all the necessary payments. Upgrading early is an option and not a good one at that. But if you choose not to upgrade, you keep the phone.

Source: https://m.att.com/shopmobile/wireless/modals/next-faqs.html

What if I don't want to trade in and upgrade my smartphone and I want to keep it?

You don’t have to trade in your smartphone. You can continue to make your monthly installment payments until your installment agreement is complete.

 

[abowlby]

with a 2-year contract I own my phone and can sell on the open market, with NEXT you have to trade your phone in and get $0 back. So I subtracted the $220 I received from the sale of my iPhone 5 from the 2-year contract as that was money in my pocket and lowered the amount I paid overall to get a new iPhone 6, but if I was on NEXT, I just turn my phone in, so in the end, NEXT costs me more.

This and by proxy, your math, is objectively wrong.

 

[blairh]

I bought my 6 Plus with Next. No BS upgrade fee (which I always got waived off with a phone call later in the past but still nice now not having to do that). I'm simply paying off my phone in monthly installments.

The hidden subsidy is no longer hidden with AT&T. If you signed a 2 year contract, you will pay more monthly. With Next you are paying for your phone monthly and you know exactly how much you paying for their service.

 

[aajeevlin]

Yeah, I mean at that point you're really getting into philosophical differences. I never use more than 100MB of data personally. I ask myself, what do I really need a smartphone for? How does it enrich my life (from a data perspective) when I'm out and about? And the only answers I could come up with are getting subway/map directions, using notes/reminders with iCloud, iMessage, keeping stats on RunKeeper, and occasionally a weather forecast. And since I have WiFi at work and at home, I can do these things within my set parameters.

When I had a Sprint Unlimited plan paying $92 or so a month, I felt like I had to use it. So when I would be on the subway on the way home, I basically buried myself in websites. And after awhile it just made me sad, and it became this unhealthy addiction. Yet I almost felt obligated to, mainly because of the marketing tactics of saying "unlimited" data. And since it was so slow, I never used more than 700MB or so. Now you could say, join Verizon/AT&T/whatever and I could, but now that I pay way less while at the same time feeling like my well being has improved for it, I don't think I can go down that road again.

But again, people have been programmed into consuming as much as possible over the last few years, so these are mostly philosophical differences on how to live, and your friend would probably be better off with something like T-Mobile.

Actually I agree with you completely. I have been experimenting with cheap plan as well as cheaper phones. I even go as far as to see if I can replace most of my iPhone function with a cheap Android phones (recently purchased a Moto E for that matter). One thing I find rather annoying is that fact that the phone is constantly pulling data in the background, and it was rather annoying on my iPhone to have to close down lots of background operation and such. As far as Ting, I actually really like their plan. But I still stand by the fact that I think they can charge a bit less when it comes to data. I think I would jump on board with Ting if they ever lower the data rate.

 

[chumpy34]

You can always pay off the phone on NEXT and sell it.... You can pay off the NEXT balance at any time.

I just did a chat session with ATT and they said you can sell your phone after your installments are completed and then just start over with a new NEXT payment plan. if this is true, then NEXT could end up being cheaper in the end. I might stop in an ATT store to ask this again as I always get varying answers, but glad you brought this up.