AT&T Iphone 6 ETF

What does AT&T give you for $15 a month?

Canceling your account and paying the ETF will also lose your phone number.

I can not see a $15 per month plan doing anything for a smartphone.

 

Yep, $15 a month will not satisfy the needs of AT&T's contract to subsidize your phone cost.

 

OP, is within their 14 day return period;

Why doesn't the OP just change to ATT next. Simple.

this isn't rocket science here. Just tell ATT instead of paying the subsidized price, go on ATT NEXT. And you can pay off the phone in full whenever you want (after 2 payments).

Remember there are taxes on the $325 ETF. You pay taxes on that plus the $40 upgrade fee. You are not saving any money trying to pay off ETF a few months later.

Just go ATT next. You have time to switch over.

 

If u are on a mobile share with 3 or more lines than with Att u should do next. You mentioned $40/line access. So I assume u are on mobile share.

If you are on traditional voice plan than the math gets complicated.

 

Not sure why you wouldn't want to do Next. It keeps your $15 per line, takes you off contract, gives you time to pay it off whenever you like or trade it in on a new phone after a year. 0 down and 0 interest. If you took your down pyt refund and your ETF amount you were going to pay, you can apply that to the Next payments and have it paid off in no time and keep your value plan pricing.

 

I am unsure, but you may be able to just port your number to another account, activating the ETF on the old account, but keeping the old number.

 

I ran the numbers on this myself back in June and paying the ETF and then going off contract outright made no sense. Also, I'm not sure AT&T even knows how to do that. You 'd have to cancel, port out, wait for some time and then port back in.

What I DID end up doing was unlocking my phone, porting out to T-Mobile, and then letting them pay my ETF. Originally the plan was that I would wait it out there, and then port back.

However, coverage on T-Mobile has been decent enough that I'm no hurry to switch back to AT&T anytime soon. Plans are cheaper on T-Mobile, too, even without the employer discount I used to get.

Anyway, if you have T-Mobile coverage that's good in your area, you may want to consider jumping ship, at least temporarily. Then you can port back after they pay you your ETF reimbursement, if you like, and get the cheaper off-contract plans from AT&T.

 

I've yet to see a reason to actually USE the next plan...
why would you want to pay full retail (do the math...)for the phone when you can pay the subsidized price? Only thing I can think of is that they wont let you keep the plan you have unless you pay full price, but we're still on our original plan after upgrading our phones every other year...

 

If you're on the 10GB (or higher) plan with 4+ lines, Next comes out better in the end.

 

it's a flat fee per account? not per line?

 

Just go to the AT&T store, pay the ETF and keep your plan. Simple as that. You'll keep your current plan and number unless you request to get rid of either.

 

Well, no. I just mean when you do the breakdown. The more lines you add, the cheaper per line cost becomes, with the new plans. Basically it's $100 (for 10GB) plus $15 per device. Each $15 device you add makes the per device service cost less.

One device = $100 + $15 = $115 per line
Two devices = $100 + $15 + $15 = $130/2 = $65 per line
Three devices = $100 + $15 + $15 +$15 = $145/3 = $48.33 per line

And so on....

If you sit down and compare the numbers between various plans on contract versus off, 3-4 lines seems to be the sweet spots where you see an overall savings.

 

A rep told me you can buy out your contract for the $325. You don't need to cancel or port out to go month to month. Not sure if this is true or not. She told me it's an option I could take.

 

You are paying full price for the phone even if you subsidize. I don't know what your plan is or how much you pay each month, but you should do the math. Sometimes the value plan saves you money and sometimes it doesn't. A lot of people think that you get a discount doing a two year contract, but in reality you're not.