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What Will You Do if Wireless Carriers Do away with Contracts?

  • Upgrade Each Year using Carrier Financing & Trade In Programs

    Votes: 16 13.7%
  • Upgrade Each Year for Full Retail

    Votes: 38 32.5%
  • I will Hop from Carrier to Carrier to Save $

    Votes: 9 7.7%
  • I will Upgrade Less Often 3 + or More Years

    Votes: 29 24.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 25 21.4%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
Should be able to:
  1. Get phone on 0% financing program (AT&T NEXT or T-Mobile EIP, don't know about Verizon)
  2. Enjoy for a or however long you like.
  3. Pay off the phone early using money from savings or wherever
  4. Get new phone on 0% financing program (AT&T/T-Mobile/NEXT)
  5. Sell previous phone and put proceeds into savings or wherever
  6. Repeat cycle
Well, as I mentioned, "(unless you actually paid off the whole price of the phone)".
 
Well, as I mentioned, "(unless you actually paid off the whole price of the phone)".

Yep. Just clarifying the process.

The only trick is it'll likely require planning ahead; i.e. pay off the old phone a billing cycle before you want to go get the new one. I don't have any faith in carriers being able to do a quick turnaround on closing out the the old financing and establishing eligibility for new financing quickly without error.
 
I've decided from hereon in (depending on qualifying status etc) I'm going to finance my next iPhone through Apple.

I'll trade in my old iPhone and use that as down payment and pay the rest off over 12 months as cheaply as possible.
 
Yeah, with Verizon you can always upgrade, just the price would be different--while in contract and not eligible for discounted upgrade, you can upgrade at full price essentially (or buy another device on your own and switch to it).

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Except you don't get to actually sell the phone and get that money from the sale (unless you actually paid off the whole price of the phone). That's the whole catch behind it all.

What are you talking about? You can sell the phone whenever you want. I'll sell it whenever the newest iPhone comes out and put the money I receive from the sale towards paying off the old phone. Rinse and repeat. It's pretty easy to understand.
 
What are you talking about? You can sell the phone whenever you want. I'll sell it whenever the newest iPhone comes out and put the money I receive from the sale towards paying off the old phone. Rinse and repeat. It's pretty easy to understand.
Sure, you just never mentioned actually paying off the old phone completely (just paying for it monthly until selling it and then getting a new one). You essentially either pay it off (and sell it or keep it) or you trade it in.
 
I bought a subsidised 4S on launch day in NZ, on a 2-year contract. By the time those two years had passed a competitor had done a large network build, prices had dropped across the board, and new customers were paying less than I was on a similar "level" of plan.

The same week that my contract expired I jumped to a different company (no contract), cutting my monthly bill in half while giving me more voice, rollover minutes, unlimited texts, and more data. The only downside is that I no longer get flat-rate roaming, but I don't intend to go overseas in the near future anyway.

At this stage I have no intention of going on another term contract. Even if it's slightly cheaper than buying outright, two years is a long time and you never know what competition will do.
 
I will continue to subsidize my iPhones because I have 3 lines and I use the upgrade swap every year and sell my old iPhone online. I have the unlimited data plan and the other two phones are regular no data and it is cheaper to stay on old family plan. Every year i make money on my iPhone usually about 400 dollars. I pay 300 dollars a year for a 32gb iPhone.
 
If the iPhone 6 has a larger screen, I wonder if the 5S will hold its value.
Why not? Plenty of people out there who actually don't want a bigger phone and like smaller/thinner/lighter ones.
 
Yep. Just clarifying the process.

The only trick is it'll likely require planning ahead; i.e. pay off the old phone a billing cycle before you want to go get the new one. I don't have any faith in carriers being able to do a quick turnaround on closing out the the old financing and establishing eligibility for new financing quickly without error.

It's pretty simple. At T-Mobile you can pay off the remaining balance and then the financing is immediately available for new phone right there on the spot. I'd recommend doing it in store though rather than online to make sure everything goes smoothly.
 
I basically plan on paying the lower monthly fees and just pay full price for an unlocked iPhone whenever I feel like it, whether it's four months or four years, I'll change phones on my schedule, and not my contract's schedule.
 
Pay the unsubsidized price on a card that doubles the warranty and upgrade the phone every two years on the "savings" from the lower service cost. All four of us -- mobile share -- could do that and it will still be very marginally cheaper than what we pay now.
 
Pay the unsubsidized price on a card that doubles the warranty and upgrade the phone every two years on the "savings" from the lower service cost. All four of us -- mobile share -- could do that and it will still be very marginally cheaper than what we pay now.
Unfortunately doesn't work with Verizon, got to do their Edge program for that.
 
I would still upgrade every 2 years under a payment plan (although no contract would make it hard to resist upgrading every year) as long as the bill was discounted to cope for the cost of the payment. The bill should be discounted by at least $25 a month.

If this were the case, I would probably switch carriers. AT&T would be my choice (currently on VZW) as their service pricing discounts for being on Next are pretty good while Verizon's Edge discounts are nearly non-exsistant.
 
I would still upgrade every 2 years under a payment plan (although no contract would make it hard to resist upgrading every year) as long as the bill was discounted to cope for the cost of the payment. The bill should be discounted by at least $25 a month.

If this were the case, I would probably switch carriers. AT&T would be my choice (currently on VZW) as their service pricing discounts for being on Next are pretty good while Verizon's Edge discounts are nearly non-exsistant.
Seems like the new Edge discounts for VZW are more or less along the lines of those of Next for AT&T. The main difference being not having a discount when the phone is actually paid off (or you bring your own).
 
If the iPhone 6 has a larger screen, I wonder if the 5S will hold its value.

There is always a market for previous models, was wondering what I would get for an iPhone 5 16GB Black when the 5S came out, sold it 3 weeks later for $465.00 so it just depends on the model, condition, GSM draws more money than CDMA from Sprint and VZ.

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I would still upgrade every 2 years under a payment plan (although no contract would make it hard to resist upgrading every year) as long as the bill was discounted to cope for the cost of the payment. The bill should be discounted by at least $25 a month.

If this were the case, I would probably switch carriers. AT&T would be my choice (currently on VZW) as their service pricing discounts for being on Next are pretty good while Verizon's Edge discounts are nearly non-exsistant.

You will also be able to sell an AT&T Unlocked GSM iPhone for more money than a Verizon iPhone each year. I think VZ with their new pricing still charges $40 per smartphone regardless if your under contract or not. I moved to the new family plan on AT&T ( I was already with them so it was easy) so now I pay $15 per iPhone and $100 for 10GB of data, I was paying $241.00 on the old plan.
 
I switched from AT&T to Tmobile. I went from 160 to 90 a month. Ended up buying a iPhone 5c for 300 bucks on craiglist and tmobile gave me a free month.

kind of freaked me out that they asked me where I live and go to see my coverage. If it ends up sucking I can always go back to AT&T. So far so good tho. Noticed no changes so far. Had it for for 2 weeks.
 
There is always a market for previous models, was wondering what I would get for an iPhone 5 16GB Black when the 5S came out, sold it 3 weeks later for $465.00 so it just depends on the model, condition, GSM draws more money than CDMA from Sprint and VZ.

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You will also be able to sell an AT&T Unlocked GSM iPhone for more money than a Verizon iPhone each year. I think VZ with their new pricing still charges $40 per smartphone regardless if your under contract or not. I moved to the new family plan on AT&T ( I was already with them so it was easy) so now I pay $15 per iPhone and $100 for 10GB of data, I was paying $241.00 on the old plan.
VZW iPhones come factory unlocked and can support even more than the GSM ones, especially as of 5S/5C and in some cases even 5. So for those they can be even worth a bit more than just GSM models, or at least not any less.
 
Unfortunately doesn't work with Verizon, got to do their Edge program for that.

Sounds like a good reason to switch(so long as you have good coverage with an different carrier).

You will also be able to sell an AT&T Unlocked GSM iPhone for more money than a Verizon iPhone each year.

As someone else already pointed out, the Verizon iPhone 5c/5s have a better resale value than unlocked AT&T variants. If you're paying full price for the phone, there isn't a good reason to go with anything other than the Verizon model; it's just more versatile.
 
Haven't done a contract in years so nothing will change for me. I'll use my phones until they break or I see something that I like. Whichever comes first.
 
I upgrade at full price anyway in order to maintain my Verizon unlimited data plan. Will probably continue to do so because I do not think they will change this policy.
 
I'm unsure why there's any sort of question here?

When a new iphone comes out, I decide if the new model benefits are worth the cost of upgrading from my current phone. If so, I upgrade. If not, I don't. I don't see how there's any time factor here, just cost/benefit analysis.

Contracts (or lack thereof) merely affect the cost of upgrading. You could ALWAYS upgrade while in contract on AT&T, it was just a matter of cost. Did Verizon force you to keep the contract phone on the line?
Mostly because the subsidy used to be built into the plan cost regardless of whether you upgrade or not. The only reason data is so expensive is because majority of the cost is intended to pay for the device subsidy. I've always felt compelled to upgrade to the next version because paying the device subsidy while not getting a new device feels like a ripoff.
 
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