Yesterday, I had the joy of going to Verizon Wireless. My girlfriend’s cell phone wasn’t charging anymore and she has had her heart set on a Blackberry Storm 2, so we went to look at them. A little while ago, we had combined our two lines onto a family share plan which helped us save about $30 per month. I am happy to save $360 per year. I knew my line was eligible for an upgrade. Actually, my line has been for a while, Verizon doesn’t have very good smartphones mostly due to the fact that I’ve avoided Blackberrys.
So we start talking to the sales guy. I ask him about the Storm 2 and the mail-in rebate they are offering. It’s funny, I think every phone in the place had some form of a mail-in rebate. $50 here and $100 there, nothing upfront all mail-in. So the Storm 2 costs $179.99. That’s what they tell you. So I’m like no, how much do I need to pay. Because I pay $279.99 out of pocket and then get a form on the receipt to fill out and mail-in for my rebate. Time to get rebate 2-6 weeks, but they guy said it usually comes closer to 2. I’m sure it does.
Then I inquired about the buy one, get one free. That’s a good deal, how do I get that? So the guy had to look my account up. Of course he starts off by telling me how my number is eligible for an upgrade and I have an upgrade credit of $100 (which I knew about). Great! Then he looks and says the other line on the account is not eligible for an upgrade until February. So I can’t get the buy one, get one free. There’s the catch, both lines need to be eligible for an upgrade. My first thought is ‘does that ever happen?’ But of course if you open two lines at the same time then your upgrade eligibility would be at the same time.
- Tip: If you’re on a family share plan, do all your phone upgrades at the same time. That’s how you get the best deals.
I never thought of that. Unfortunately, we couldn’t wait another 4 months because we basically had a broken phone. So I start asking the guy if there is anyway that we could get the buy one, get one free. His response, ‘get another line’. My first reaction is ‘how does that make any sense?’ I go through the math in my head. It’s a $180 phone. The new line would be at least $10/month plus with a Blackberry you need to have the data feature which costs $30/month and you need to sign a 2 year agreement. So that means that I would pay $40/month for two years just to get a free phone. That’s paying $480 to save $180. Does that make any sense?
The sales guy then tells me something that I almost fell over at. He says “It’s a way to finance your phone”. What?!? Why would anyone do this? He says it happens all the time. Let’s do the math. Taking an equation from Wikipedia, the interest rate comes out to 63.299%. How do you feel about that? I guess the best sales technique here is that they never mention rate because it’s not an actual loan. So people say oh $40 a month I can afford that.
I’m not a Verizon guy but I think you could technically move the phone to your main line and reduce the cost of this new line to $10 per month. I believe the Blackberry would need to be on the line for 24 or 48 hours (something like that) and then you would need to transfer another phone on that line, to pull this off. This would then reduce your payments to $10/month instead of $40/month. Now let’s look at it. Using the same equation I came up with 15.470%. That’s a little better, I guess.
I’m going to be honest. My original thought was to get the free phone and sell it on ebay. I figured that I could make money off this deal. My phone is fine so why do I need a new one. I am waiting to see what comes over to Verizon at the start of 2010. With rumors of the Palm Pre and even possibly the iPhone, I have no problem waiting until next February to upgrade my phone. The Storm 2 retails for $539.99 so I figured I should be able to get $400 or $500 for it. That would be cool. However, it doesn’t work as easy as I wanted it to, so I didn’t do it.
I also learned that people come in all the time and pay full retail price for phones. A cell phone seems to be a great example of people trying to make a statement or status recognition with their possessions. Whatever it takes to get the coolest phone right? Full retail or some form of ‘financing’. Is it a scam to use the term ‘financing’ to get someone to make a sale? Do Verizon Wireless employees get paid commissions for sales? Initially, this was my basis on writing this post but it’s changed as I been writing and now I need your help.
I just came up with something while writing, please let me know what you think. Is it worth it to open up this other line and get the free phone? I mean I could pay $10/month and sell the free phone for $450 (let’s say). Is that a good deal? Leverage the free phone to make $450 – $10/month. Or maybe it’s better to cancel the line. The termination fee is $175. So instead of paying $10/month for 2 years or $240 I would instead pay $175 and not have to worry about it. So I could keep the line active until I sold the Storm 2 on ebay then terminate the line. So even if I got $400 for the Storm 2, the most it would cost me is $40 for the first month of service plus a $175 termination fee for a total of $215. I would make $185. That sounds like a good deal. What do you think? Should I see if I can pull this off even though I bought the phone yesterday? They should let me change my mind right?
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