I had to upgrade one of my lines because a phone stopped working. I chose the iPhone 11 Pro Max. I used to go in and get a two-year contract that made the device cost about $650. (according to Verizon`s website). So I went to the store and talked to the Verizon representative there, and he told me it would be cheaper to get the monthly payments compared to the two-year plan. I opted for monthly payments without thinking too much about it. Especially if you are currently paying for access to the $40 line with a $25 discount outside the contract (net access to the $15 line). Put a contract phone on this line and it will go up to $40/month. Make a device payment or pay for it directly, and your access to the line remains at $15. Then, your line wasn`t under contract until your last purchase, as you claimed in your original post.
The other community member only used the information YOU provided to personalize the likely situation of what happened to your account. However, all of this ignores a key placeholder: the resale value of your phone. A high-end phone like the iPhone 6 can potentially earn you $400 after a year or about $300 after two years if you use a website like eBay or Gazelle. Once you`ve factored in your phone`s resale value, the payment plan option is simply the worst way to go, no matter which direction you cut it off. It`s no wonder the phone companies push them the hardest. In addition to not paying upgrade fees or ETFs, EDGE customers receive a per-line discount on their monthly access fee for each phone in the EDGE program. For a two-year contract, the monthly access fee for a smartphone is $40 per line. On EDGE, you get a $15 or $25 discount on these fees per line. The reduction depends on the amount of data on your plan. Accounts with 4GB or less get the $15 discount per line, while accounts with 6GB or more of data get the $25 discount. Make sure you don`t buy the iPhone 7 with a traditional contract.
It must be listed on the device`s payment plan. For how much do you buy the iPhone 7 plus 32GB? It should be $769, spread over 24 months. If it`s around $319, then it`s a contract and $40 is okay. The other relevant fee for a two-year contract is the ETF. At Verizon, the ETF for a two-year contract for a smartphone is $350 when you first buy your phone and sign the contract. This $350 ETF on “Advanced Devices” (smartphones) remains for the first seven months of the contract. From month 8 to 18, the ETF drops by $10 per month. From 19-23 months, it drops by $20 per month. In the last month of your contract, the ETF will be reduced by $60.
The two-year contract allows you to buy an expensive phone (for example, the iPhone 6.B for $649) at a seemingly cheap and subsidized price ($199). Of course, however, the cost of the phone will be etched into your monthly fee, and if two years have passed, you`ve paid the full price for the device. My current plan is “More Every Loyal TLK TXT 6GB”, so it sounds like your warning “$480 extra over 2 years on increased access fees” applies to me when I go with the 2-year contract. Is that right? 2-year contract prices for equipment are reduced relative to the total retail cost (as well as sales tax based on location). Of course, it`s a numbers game, while some consumers are put off by the high cost of retail pricing, the best savings vary depending on the details of the pricing plan and device offerings, so it may be worth doing the overall calculation as you did. As you said, you had “restarted the existing two-year contract,” so the line access fee for that number was not changed because the contract lines would have been $40/month compared to the lines without a contract. Verizon occasionally runs promotions on device prices that are mathematically consumer-friendly in the long run with free or discounted phones, but as you realized, it doesn`t work as a big long-term benefit with all devices/prices, by. B example with iPhones evaluated by the manufacturer and incurring above-average costs. The Verizon EDGE service has been around for nearly two years and is the program Verizon will switch to exclusively in the near future.
On Verizon EDGE, you get your phone for free and pay the total retail price of the device over 24 months. .