That's a standard disclaimer, and you need to use a credit card to setup the loan, but as soon as the loan is active you can log into the Citizens One website and change your payment option to debit your checking account.
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Apple's Upgrade Program Now Available for iPhones Purchased Through Online Store
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No worries.
My original rant was at the guy who was telling people who use the Apple Upgrade Program that they're a bunch of losers because they don't pay cash for a phone. I was only saying that the Apple Upgrade Program makes it easy for me to get a new phone every year, because all I have to do is turn the old one in, and the overall cost is about the same without the hassle of selling my old phone, which is what I did before the AUP.
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You're completely clueless on this subject.
That's the whole thing about this plan. You have to decide if you want AppleCare included into your payments or not.
Don't have to worry about this then if you are using a debit card/checking account to make monthly payments. If the plan is not for you that doesn't mean it is not right for somebody else. To each their own, right?
no, once you complete the payments that is it. You own the phone and its over with. You wouldn't hand it in just before the 24 months. I mean you could, but it would not be smart. Because the phone after two years will still have a value to some extent and you would be better selling it on your own. If you are going to trade it in and upgrade you want to do it at the 12 payment mark. This ensures you only pay 50% of the phone.
- So basically you can upgrade at any point as long as you reach 12 payments (50%). You would want to do that at the latest of 12 months. Anything after that and you are wasting money because that 13, 14 monthly payment will not go towards the next phone.
- You decide after the 12 payments, do you want to keep the phone for the full 24 months or upgrade it and start the program from square one on a new device.
Yes, i have done this w/ two phones so far and my payments have stayed the same since I kept getting the same storage capacity.
no, once you complete the payments that is it. You own the phone and its over with. You wouldn't hand it in just before the 24 months. I mean you could, but it would not be smart. Because the phone after two years will still have a value to some extent and you would be better selling it on your own. If you are going to trade it in and upgrade you want to do it at the 12 payment mark. This ensures you only pay 50% of the phone.
- So basically you can upgrade at any point as long as you reach 12 payments (50%). You would want to do that at the latest of 12 months. Anything after that and you are wasting money because that 13, 14 monthly payment will not go towards the next phone.
- You decide after the 12 payments, do you want to keep the phone for the full 24 months or upgrade it and start the program from square one on a new device.
If I had the ability to upgrade an existing line on my AT&T 10GB Mobile Share plan to a subsidized $649 iPhone, it would cost me $199 down, and it would tack an extra $25/month on to the bill during the 2-year contract.
$600 = that extra $25/month tacked on for 24 months
$199 = down payment
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$799 is what I'd end up paying for that subsidized $649 iPhone.
If I bought that same $649 16GB iPhone using any of the AT&T Next plans (with $0 down), that phone would cost me exactly $649 when it's paid off.
Same with the Apple Update program.
So these plans do save some people some money.
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While I never said anything about financing something for every year, can you explain why that would be unwise to finance it @ 0% if you were getting the new devices every year anyways?
Every comment I made about the subject discussed the difference between buying the iPhone cash up front vs paying over 24 months @ 0% interest.
What you do at the end of that 24 months was never discussed.
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Yes, I know... that was my point. Why would anyone return the phone to Apple just before the 24 month termination date rather than keep it or sell privately? It's not as if you get any monetary benefit for turning in the phone.
Don't you get a trade in value? Just like when you start the program by trading in your current phone?
Most of you are INCORRECT.
I would rather have a subsidized $200 phone. I was not paying for it in my contract; adding a "smart phone line" did not cost $25/month with Sprint. I have saved a lot of money over the 4 years still using my iPhone 5. It is DONE AND PAID for and you fools are making phone payments to Apple, not even talking about your phone company yet.
You think by getting rid of subsidized phones they are trying to help customers? LOL. Apple is laughing at you all the way to the bank.
I would rather have a subsidized $200 phone. I was not paying for it in my contract; adding a "smart phone line" did not cost $25/month with Sprint. I have saved a lot of money over the 4 years still using my iPhone 5. It is DONE AND PAID for and you fools are making phone payments to Apple, not even talking about your phone company yet.
You think by getting rid of subsidized phones they are trying to help customers? LOL. Apple is laughing at you all the way to the bank.
I'm Swiss and was surprised by that chart. I checked Allianz' report and had one reason in mind for those numbers: housing prices. Google didn't lead me to an source that could prove me right or wrong. What I found is the following:
Median home sale price in the US: US$ 188'900.- according to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/median-home-price-2014_n_4957604.html (other sources confirm this)
Median home sale price in Switzerland: US$ 900'000.- would be my educated guess (real estate is part of my job)
Both countries require a 20% deposit. Do the math yourself.
And some more info on credit in Switzerland. Max interest rate is tied to Libor. So currently at about 10% with a general max limit of 14.95%. Plus credit check which should make it really hard for consumers to create credit debt that exceeds their income.
Interesting article on credit card debt in the US. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/average-credit-card-debt-household/ I've seen that it states different numbers than the Allianz research.
Didn't find any numbers on the average credit card debt in Switzerland. There's in debt information by the federal bureau of statistics, unfortunately only available in German language: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/20/02/blank/dos/04/02.html
Take-aways:
- Most important debt (mortgages excepted) is car leasing, which affects 20 % of population
- In the last 3 months before the research, 3.8 % of the population had a credit card invoice not paid on time and 7 % had a bank account, which had been overdrawn at least once.
That is staggering!
I had assumed the Swiss were up there at top simply because they have both wages and cost of living that are well above average in the Western world. Therefore it would make sense that the "dollar" amount of debt would also be well above average, and is not necessarily a bad sign.
Wait, so you think Sprint sold you a $649 phone for just $200 and wasn't recouping the rest of the cost by baking it into the price of your monthly service?
How much did your bill go down after the 2-year contract for your iPhone 5 ended?
The $25/month extra was to add a subsidized smartphone to one of the newer share plans. That fee goes away when the 2-year contract is over and the phone has been paid for.
On the old plans (all US carriers), that subsidy fee was perma-baked into the monthly service cost. It never ended. So if you weren't buying a new smartphone when the contract was over, you keep on paying for that part that covered the subsidy, even if you didn't have a phone on a subsidy at that time.
This is precisely where the new plans can save people like you (who hang onto phones longer than two years) money.
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If you need to finance a phone you cant afford it. Dont go into debt over a phone or be locked into this vicious upgrade cycle.
I truly don't understand this logic.
For over a decade, virtually everyone's been "financing" their phones with their carriers via signing 2-year contracts (which typically required dropping $199+ down), and that's been perfectly fine.
But now that the are more options that are basically the same thing (making monthly payments for the phone), there's all of this "OMG DON'T FINANCE YOUR PHONE".
Or the "IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY THE PHONE OUTRIGHT, THEN YOU DON'T NEED IT". Like everyone was buying $649+ phones outright back when 2-year contracts were still around. Really?
Virtually all of these carrier and Apple upgrade programs are no-interest loans. Functionally, they're about as close as how the 2-year contract worked, except that most of they don't require a down payment, and they (and their monthly payments) end after you've paid off the value of the phone, and not a penny more.
I have never used Sprint because their service is horrible where I live, but I would bet money that sprint is the same as the rest of the companies. The recoup the money from the subsidized phone in their phone service plan.
And, even if everything you say is true, your situation is very different than most people, so your method would probably not suit most.
I disagree. This is essentially the same as having subsidized phone contracts. As far as I know, no one is locked into anything more than a typical 2 year contract.
I am not sure why many are so against financing when many of use have been doing it already, just not through Apple.
The network operators DO NOT subsidize phones, they amortize the cost for you over 18 months or so and then keep charging you that monthly cost once the phone is paid for!
Yea, calling the plan a subsidy was never a correct way of explaining the program. But, some how a long time ago, that was the way it was described when talking about contract phone plans.
I guess they did indeed up-sell me the Apple Care+ where I would not have thought about getting.
But I simply don't see how is that a predatory thing...