How I got conned into getting a second phone and why I don’t mind.
Back in September, when I was on vacation in Washington, DC, I upgraded my old iPhone 7 to an iPhone Xs. It was just under 2 years since my last upgrade, but the iPhone 7 had a tiny scratch on the camera lens. I was facing either $80 to repair a two-year-old phone or $1000+ to buy a new phone with a much better camera. I went with the upgrade.
While I was there at the Verizon store in Union Station, the salesperson excitedly told me that because I was 55 or older, I qualified for a buy one get one free offer on a second phone. “I don’t need a second phone,” I told her. “I’m one person.”
“But it’s free,” she said.
“What kind of phone?” I asked, figuring I could get it and sell it on Craig’s List. “An old flip phone?”
“Any phone we sell that lists for under $1,000,” was the surprising answer.
“And what about using it?” I asked. “Do I have to pay more every month to have it?”
“No, she told me. “Your monthly service cost will be the same. You just have to keep it for two years.”
It’s pretty and I am partial to red.
This sounded too good to be true, even though I couldn’t sell it right away. The way I saw it, it would be an insurance policy; if I broke my other phone, I could use this one. I was hooked. I picked out a red iPhone 8+, which is known for having a good camera. That’s the big screen iPhone. Too big for everyday use, in my opinion, but what the hell. It was free.
Except it wasn’t. I had to pay sales tax on it. That was nearly $80.
She activated my iPhone Xs and I tossed the boxes for both phones in a shopping bag. I finished my vacation 2 weeks later, packed them in my luggage, and brought them home. I put the boxes on a shelf in my office, never even bothering to take out the red phone.
Fast forward to the other day. After getting a phone call while I was recording a video, I decided it might be nice to use a different camera for all these YouTube videos I’ve been making. I thought immediately of the red phone still in its box. The big screen would make it easier for my 55+ eyes to see what I was shooting. I retrieved it, plugged it in to charge its dead battery, and called Verizon to make sure I could activate it and use it without paying additional fees.
I was on the phone for over an hour with the customer service person. Turns out that the Union Station salesperson wasn’t exactly truthful. Although my bill was about what I expected every month — higher than the old bill but just enough to cover the cost of the $1200 iPhone Xs I was paying off over 2 years — I was paying extra for that new phone. I didn’t know it because I never bothered looking at my bill. Service was $40 each per phone and I’d been paying $40/month since September for a phone in a box just draining its battery.
Imagine how pissed off I was. Maybe you can’t. I can get pretty pissed off. I could feel my blood pressure rise.
She did more research and we discovered that my old plan had been $85/month for my one phone. That included unlimited talk, text, and data. The new plan with the BOGO phone was $60/month for one phone or $40/month per phone for more than one phone. So, in reality, I was paying slightly less for my plan every month with two phones than I had been paying for one phone.
But I would be paying $20/month less if I had just one phone. Still, $20/month wasn’t going to break me. Hell, I hadn’t even noticed the difference.
I thought about the situation I’d found myself in. In my mind, I was basically getting two phones for the price of one. At the end of my two year period, I could sell both phones and come out fine. (I keep my phones in pristine condition with cases and screen covers.) In the meantime, I could use this new phone for video stuff; it had exactly the same plan as the one I was using every day.
To sweeten the deal, the Verizon customer service rep put a $100 credit on my account, basically covering 5 months of what I’d paid ($80/month paid – $60/month what I would have paid with one phone = $20/month).
Of course, I wound up keeping the phone. It was a hell of a lot easier than fighting with Verizon about taking it back. And I really do like the phone for the video work I’m doing. The big screen rocks and the camera quality is better than I need.
But I did learn a valuable lesson: The next time I upgrade my phone, I’m taking my bill along with me and will compare the current bill with the new bill. I’m not going to pay for equipment I’m not using again.
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I can’t get my head around that deal. While it makes some sense for you (a dedicated camera phone for occasional use, even if it is too large to be a constant companion), it cannot make much sense for Apple unless their sales on that model have completely tanked.
I suppose a phone in use on a cheap contract makes some money, while an unsold phone in a nice box makes none at all?
If you can sell it after two years it looks like you have the ingredients for that rarest of deals, a ‘win-win’.
I wasn’t buying the phone from Apple. I was buying it from Verizon, which is the cell phone service provider. I suspect it was part of an inventory they bought from Apple and had too many leftover when the new iPhone models were released.
When you look at the reality of the deal, I’m actually paying $20/month more than I would have without the phone, even though it was $5 less a month compared to my own plan. (So to me, it was a better deal than I had.) Take that $20/month, multiply it by 24 months, and you get $480. So the phone isn’t really free for me at all. I have no idea what they paid Apple for the phone, but remember that I also paid full price (over time without interest) for the phone I actually came there to buy.
I will definitely take the phone off my plan when the 24 months are over. By that time, I hope to have a tablet with a better camera that I can use for some of my video work. Two years is a long time in the computing world.