Re: samsung $200 trade in promotion
to be honest, i think you're gonna have to put up quite the stink here. best buy employees have no idea what's going on, and it sucks because it screws us hard.
from my experience as a Verizon sales manager 2 years ago, I can tell you that this deal makes no sense for off contract.
think of it this way:
back when i worked there, we'll use the galaxy s3 as an example. the phone buying cost for us was 575. we sold on contract for $200, but we would make a nice percentage off selling it on contract from verizon. no matter what, each sale was a profit obviously, because that's how selling upgrades and new lines worked.
back then, the off contract of the phone was probably $599. so ok, we'd make $25 bucks, whereas lets say on contract we made a hundred and something (i don't remember numbers honestly but it was a lot more than off contract price difference.)
what was our incentive selling off contract? none. so we marked prices up to like $650 for off contract. nobody ever bought off contract, though.
so let's say best buy gets in bulk from samsung for, idk, $500 a phone (i have no idea what big corporate pricing bb gets though.) so their price is $700, and giving you $200 off would just make them break even. sure, it wouldn't happen often as most people buy plans, but even a big corporation wouldn't really want to be breaking even or even potentially losing money. the money grab is contract, and they're sure as hell gonna push the contract. when i go into corporate verizon stores now, those reps give me such a hard time buying full price because they're making NO commission on it whatsoever. so yeah. take that story with a grain of salt, but it's why i don't think any of that pricing applies to off contract phones for this deal.