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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Not everyone has the luxury of spending $1200 cash on a phone outright. Unfortunately, the payment plan is a big factor for a lot of people (in a “family” plan.)
How long you been buying phones? How do you not know there are far cheaper phones?
You're still paying the money either way. Buying from the manufacturer typically means paying a much lower price.
Yeah if you want a flagship, that's how they get you. You can also get pretty decent phones for a few hundred on eBay. Like a couple year old flagship for less than half the original price. But if you're adamant about having the latest and greatest, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Shit, just go to Google and you can get last year's pixel for like $500 new.
Or you can buy the newest at sticker initially, and when the next model drops, sell it to family for half price as lightly used. Rinse and repeat. They get bargains phones, you get the latest tech.
Miss me with that, I'm disabled and get less than a grand a month for all my expenses. All of the major cell phone brands offer their own financing (and all I've seen is 0% interest for 24 or 36 months), and have for 10+ years. And because you're not buying from a carrier, you aren't locked in, so you can hop to prepaid plans or even MVNOs and enjoy actually massive savings. If you actually needed to, you can get by with service at $10 or less a month, and assuming you are paying $65 a month currently (the going rate for an "unlimited" tmo plan, I don't know the math for groups) you'd save $55 a month, or $1,320 over 2 years. Enough to make your flagship phone "free".
Today's $1,200 handset can be had 24 months from now for 1/4th of that. To forestall the "I broke my phone and need something NOW!" argument I'd point out that phones like the Samsung Galaxy A15 exist, are COMPLETELY usable, and cost less than $200 brand new.
Anyone forking out $1,000+ for a new phone either has some very specific needs or is stuck in a FOMO trap.