How do you justify all the phone purchases?

[saxrulez]

Been reading these forums for awhile and I can't figure out how some of you guys do it! I bought the original motorola droid almost the day it came out and I just recently got upgrade status! Are you guys paying full price or what?



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[saxrulez]

And on top of that I'm leaving verizon just because their plans are too expensive.

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[akhi216]

Some people can afford to buy at full prices. Others buy from eBay; tech-savvy people by neglected phones from eBay fix them. Other people take advantage of Best Buy's Buy Back Program.

American Express offers AMEX Premium Purchase Protection. With AMEX PPP, you can receive 300 dollars for a phone up to three months after you purchase it, and use that 300 dollars towards buying a new phone at full retail value...or pay your ETF fee. It's pretty useful.

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[akhi216]

A good thing about AMEX Premium Purchase Protection is that you don't need to have an American Express card to enroll in it, and it's only 50 dollars a year.

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[saxrulez]

So basically people are constantly returning perfectly good phones because they want new ones. I'm probably in the Minority but that doesn't seem right to me.

I make pretty good money but would have a hard time justifying 600 more than once a year for a phone. The very newest Android phones still don't do hardly anything the original phones can't. Sure some stuff runs smoother, but that is about it.

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[saxrulez]

I would love to get a new phone every six months but I won't be returning phones for no reason. It is really shocking that the return polices haven't been changed.

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[MissJennell#IM]

So basically people are constantly returning perfectly good phones because they want new ones. I'm probably in the Minority but that doesn't seem right to me.

I make pretty good money but would have a hard time justifying 600 more than once a year for a phone. The very newest Android phones still don't do hardly anything the original phones can't. Sure some stuff runs smoother, but that is about it.

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That isn't what they said at all. Reread what was written.

 

[akhi216]

The very newest Android phones still don't do hardly anything the original phones can't. Sure some stuff runs smoother, but that is about it.

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You obviously haven't tasted 4G LTE for a week. You must be very pleased with the phone you have now.


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[Linkchomp]

Some people have iPhones which have higher resell value.

 

[akhi216]

So basically people are constantly returning perfectly good phones because they want new ones. I'm probably in the Minority but that doesn't seem right to me.

Your words, not mine...

With the Best Buy Buy Back program, they pay you half of the full retail value of your phone which you can use to buy a new phone (or pay your ETF fee if necessary); this is no different than selling the phone on eBay and using the money to buy a phone...no mention returning a phone there.

Some people pay for phones at full retail value, end of story...again, no mention of returning a phone.

Some people take advantange of AMEX Premium Protection Plan. American Express cares about people and they understand that evil businesses such as AT&Trash, Speedwalk, D0uche Telekom, and Verizifail, are so eager to have people stuck in a contract that they resort to imposing ridiculously short return windows on customers who are unwary enough to sign their life away for two years, and they understand that many of their practices (e.g. releasing the launch date of the newest Jesus phone a only a week early on average) do not have the interests of their customers and potential customers in mind. This led them to create a program that is mirrored by Best Buy's Buy Back Program. With this program people don't return the phones to the carriers; the phones that are bought from consumers with this program are refurbished and then resold, but not resold by the carrier they were purchased from, thus it people aren't returning phones. Also notable is that if a smartphone is returned to a carrier within the return window of the carrier, American Express will cover the restocking fees that carriers charge for returning lemons, over-glorified garbage, etc. for not being good at sweet-talking. With that being said Verizon has extended return windows to January 9th (I think?) For the holiday season, and people are taking advantage of it; basically "renting" phones. You may think that this is bad if you don't take into account that the carrier get away with 10x worse bull****. Over a period of five years, Verizon basically TOOK millions of dollars from people for services that they didn't use of ask for and are not in a hurry to pay it back, essentially calling for a new definition of the word loyalty.



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[saxrulez]

You obviously haven't tasted 4G LTE for a week. You must be very pleased with the phone you have now.


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Sure haven't! No 4g where I live.

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[saxrulez]

Your words, not mine...

With the Best Buy Buy Back program, they pay you half of the full retail value of your phone which you can use to buy a new phone (or pay your ETF fee if necessary); this is no different than selling the phone on eBay and using the money to buy a phone...no mention returning a phone there.

Some people pay for phones at full retail value, end of story...again, no mention of returning a phone.

Some people take advantange of AMEX Premium Protection Plan. American Express cares about people and they understand that evil businesses such as AT&Trash, Speedwalk, D0uche Telekom, and Verizifail, are so eager to have people stuck in a contract that they resort to imposing ridiculously short return windows on customers who are unwary enough to sign their life away for two years, and they understand that many of their practices (e.g. releasing the launch date of the newest Jesus phone a only a week early on average) do not have the interests of their customers and potential customers in mind. This led them to create a program that is mirrored by Best Buy's Buy Back Program. With this program people don't return the phones to the carriers; the phones that are bought from consumers with this program are refurbished and then resold, but not resold by the carrier they were purchased from, thus it people aren't returning phones. Also notable is that if a smartphone is returned to a carrier within the return window of the carrier, American Express will cover the restocking fees that carriers charge for returning lemons, over-glorified garbage, etc. for not being good at sweet-talking. With that being said Verizon has extended return windows to January 9th (I think?) For the holiday season, and people are taking advantage of it; basically "renting" phones. You may think that this is bad if you don't take into account that the carrier get away with 10x worse bull****. Over a period of five years, Verizon basically TOOK millions of dollars from people for services that they didn't use of ask for and are not in a hurry to pay it back, essentially calling for a new definition of the word loyalty.



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I wasn't familiar with the buy back program. Sounds like a good deal. I may look into that if I end up trying t mobile one day. We are leaving Verizon next month when my contract ends.

Going to try to stay contract free if possible from now on.

Thanks for the info on the buy back program. Going to read up on it.
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[akhi216]

Sure haven't! No 4g where I live.

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You don't know what you're missing.

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[saxrulez]

Majority of my phone usage is at work or home with incredible wifi! 45mbs down and 10 up during peak times.

Nearest place that ANY carrier has 4g is 2.5 hours away.

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[MissJennell#IM]

Your words, not mine...

With the Best Buy Buy Back program, they pay you half of the full retail value of your phone which you can use to buy a new phone (or pay your ETF fee if necessary); this is no different than selling the phone on eBay and using the money to buy a phone...no mention returning a phone there.

This is wrong. Kinda. Best Buy's Buy Back program only gives you 50% of retail if the phone is in good condition and between 1-6 months of original buy date. 6-12 months is up to 40% of full retail. 12-18 months is 30%. and 18-24 months is up to 20%. If you buy it with Black Tie Insurance then you get the Buy Back program for 50% off. So with most smartphones it is only $30 to opt into it.

 

[akhi216]

This is wrong. Kinda. Best Buy's Buy Back program only gives you 50% of retail if the phone is in good condition and between 1-6 months of original buy date. 6-12 months is up to 40% of full retail. 12-18 months is 30%. and 18-24 months is up to 20%. If you buy it with Black Tie Insurance then you get the Buy Back program for 50% off. So with most smartphones it is only $30 to opt into it.

The point of me not getting into specifics about the Best Buy Buy Back Program was to make the point that the phones aren't returned.

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[MiTroll]

The Razr seems to be more ready and able to do more things than the Droid X. I'm really pleased with it thus far. However on the 10th day I decided to see how the Mirror Mode worked and mine didn't. Verizon directed me to the store to have it checked out. I had a bad port. Then I had to go home and set up a new new phone.

Regarding cost - My Droid X died after 13.5 months. No spills, no dropping, it just stopped working and got stuck on the M. No way does any sort of hard reset work on it. I wasn't planning on dropping another $300 on a phone just now. I think it was a software issue that messed up my Droid X.

Regardless, provided there are no more problems, I think the Razr is great. It does some cool things with photo albums. It's just different enough that it feels kind of special and new but yes it is basically the same phone as the Droid X, just smaller and I had to give up carrying around extra batteries. I have one of those IGo things though, for emergencies.

 

[saxrulez]

I just can't think of anything major the new phones do that the old ones don't. Overclocked my OF Droid can run gingerbread very smoothly while browsing, playing games and everything else 99.5% of people do.I would love to have a brand new phone with a huge display, but they really don't offer anything worth signing a new two year contract or spending 400+ on.
Email, text, fast Web browsing, phone calls, Facebook, and the occasional video game. Even the old phones do it well!

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[akhi216]

I just can't think of anything major the new phones do that the old ones don't. Overclocked my OF Droid can run gingerbread very smoothly while browsing, playing games and everything else 99.5% of people do.I would love to have a brand new phone with a huge display, but they really don't offer anything worth signing a new two year contract or spending 400+ on.
Email, text, fast Web browsing, phone calls, Facebook, and the occasional video game. Even the old phones do it well!

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If you don't feel that there is anything out there worth buying, you don't. They don't have something for everyone, it's understandable. The thing is that you have to find the closest thing to what you want because they're not gonna put something out that there that will totally please you. If they haven't put out anything that wowed you yet, they aren't gonna put out anything that wows you. They drive a hard bargain, they target specific types of people, have manufacturers make the phones, then push the phones out to the masses; that's how they make money. No one will hurt them by withholding their money from them because they will always find people who will. People who frequently get phones know what they're looking for in a phone and get the closest thing to it until another phone that is closer to having what they want.

We do it because we can; it's that simple. All jokes aside, it's our money. I for one don't particularly care to have a particular reason to get a better phone.

Until you see 4G in action for yourself, you will probably never feel like there is another phone worth buying. I'm sure that you would think that it would be nice to tether your 4G phone to your Xbox 360/PS3 and play online games with no lag on your end whatsoever, something that is impossible to do with an OG Droid. Having a video load/buffer in 2-3 seconds with no more loads/buffers after the initial load is something that is very hard to leave after trying it for 10-20 minutes. And think, you had to root you OG Droid to get it to be able to perform many of the tasks that more modern smartphones can perform; think of what you can do when you root to unlock the potential of today's phones. Nothing beats having a page that normally loads in 18-23 on 3G seconds fully load in 6-8 seconds on 4G LTE. It's nice to play a game and have it load in 5 seconds as opposed to 20+ seconds, and that's only if you don't have any tasks running in the background. There are a lot of things that makes newer smartphones better than older smartphones, but you'll never find out for yourself unless you work up the nerve to take the plunge and get one. If you're sold on leaving Verizon, be warned that you will literally get what you pay for if you switch to Speedwalk (Sprint), D0uche Telekom (T-Mobile), or AT&Trash(self-explanatory). You should have unlimited data even when 4G eventually does come to your city, and with Verizon's through the roof prices, that's a valuable item: there are people who will pay you for your unlimited line.





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[saxrulez]

That's just the thing, a huge majority of the country does not have 4g. Basically if you don't live on a very large city, you are SOL. Even so 4g doesn't hold a candle to a good cable connection. Right now I can download at 45+ mbps on my cable connection. It just seems odd that so many people are upgrading so fast when there is little to no reason when they don't get 4g anyways.

Tons of guys at work have the latest and greatest Droids and iPhones. They watch YouTube, text, email and browse the same as everyone else.

I did root my phone, however my wifes phone is not and it does just fine as well. That was mostly just because I enjoy tinkering and I wanted to check out gingerbread instead of waiting for verizon's updates constantly. While at home or at work on Wifi, my phone and my wifes will open up a youtube video in less 2 seconds easily and stream the whole thing. 4g would be nice while not at work or home, but the reality is, in my ENTIRE state, there is ONE city with 4g. One.

Not a chance in hell I would hook up my xbox to a ~5-10mbps connection instead of a 50 mbps.

All that said, if my area got 4g, I would consider buying a 4g phone. Until then, or some other quantifiable reason, I will deal with my outdated phones.

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