<p>My husband needs to get a new smart phone as the one he has is several years old and has become cranky. </p>
<p>So in doing his research, he went to the t-mobile site and narrowed it down to one of 3 Samsung models. They are all available from the t-mobile store for a 2 year monthly fee. He did the math to determine how much they will cost in the long run. </p>
<p>Then he went to Amazon and found them (unlocked) for much less. Can anyone explain to me if there is an advantage to buying directly from t-mobile? Since the phone companies are not known for honesty (we’ve had the sales people tell us things that turned out to not be true), he’s rather hesitant to ask them why he should buy from them instead of Amazon (or any other company). </p>
<p>Any advice for us? Thanks in advance. This stuff makes my head hurt!!</p>
<p>One of the benefits to ME in buying from a bricks and mortar place is that I can go there if I have issues or problems and they have been helpful. If you buy at Amazon and things go bad, you have to try to contact the seller and/or Amazon. That said, generally I’ve heard that Amazon tends to be good to buyers (this said by a seller).</p>
<p>I still rather patronize bricks and mortar stores that I can go to if I have issues or problems that crop up. I have had the BestBuy where we bought our iPhone help us out with a few problems that we had. They also transferred our contacts and data, as well as they could from our old phone.</p>
<p>They also sold the phone to us at an amazing price, matching the best price we could get anywhere else (in our case, WalMart). We bought our iPhone5 for $128 at BestBuy and then got free activation and a $100 signing bonus from Sprint. Didn’t shop around beyond local bricks & mortar stores but we felt those were excellent prices and Sprint has the unlimited data S wanted.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, if you choose to purchase from Amazon or other online vendor, do your due diligence. Only purchase from a US seller with lots of recent positive reviews as seller. There are some scammers out there. Also see what warranty the sellers offer and be sure the phone is compatible with the network you’ll be using.</p>
<p>Big advantage with unlocked phone is you can use it on other company network that has compatible system. For example, you can move from t-mobile to at&t. This is why a used unlocked phone of the same model is more valuable and more expensive than a locked phone on ebay or craigslist.</p>
<p>So, from a business prospective, how do the phone companies sell cell phones when they are so much cheaper when purchased elsewhere? </p>
<p>I understand that the phone companies offer a monthly payment option, but shelling out a few hundred for a cellphone (paying less up front instead of the ultimately higher monthly option) is easy for many to do. Are that many attracted to the monthly option? Or is there some other benefit from buying directly from the phone companies?</p>
<p>Upfront cost, especially on a very high-end smartphone. New high-end smartphone would cost upward of $500+. For young persons or relatively not well-to-do persons living pay check to pay check, they might not be inclined to shell that much up front. But a lot of them still want the very high-end phones and plans. Moreover, a lot of contract plans take into account the subsidy and people don’t get that much of a break bringing their own phone that is already fully paid. Maybe that is the way it used to be and things are changing a little bit now.</p>
<p>Another point, locked phones usually have the bloat ware or programs that the carrier put on that can be quite a resource hog and slowing down your phone or take up a lot of memory. You have a lot less of that with unlocked phone.</p>
<p>I bought an unlocked Tmobile Samsung Galaxy II on ebay for about $225 when the Galaxy III was the current model. S recently bought one for even less. Great phone, no contract requirements, great price. </p>
<p>If you are happy having the second-to-last model–and IMHO there is virtually no real reason not to be–you can save a lot of money and not get trapped in one of their contracts.</p>
<p>I look at it this way. I can buy a new Apple IPhone 5S for $500+ elsewhere or I can buy it for $199 from Verizon with a 2 year contract. Cell phone reception is awful with most of the other vendors so why not just lock in a contract and buy the locked phone? (and yes I am on the waiting list for an IPhone 5S fro Verison). H is incredulous, but I look at it as a camera and a phone.</p>
<p>Personally, the $199 or even the $500+ are not the problem, it is the $90-100+ per month fee that you have to pay Verizon that is what I can’t get over. If you are willing to compromise a on data speed, you can buy an iphone for $500+ and go with other Verizon MVNO for less than $50 a month. You get good Verizon coverage but no 4G LTE but you save easily a thousand dollars over 2 years.</p>
<p>I pay $225/month for 4 iPhone 5 lines with Sprint unlimited data and text and more talk time than we’ve ever used. We had free activation and our phones cost a net of $28 apiece new as they were $128 - $100 new customer rebate). Yes, we did like Verizon for excellent voice coverage but Liked the unlimited data and relatively reasonable rate we got with Sprint. </p>
<p>I think we have a pretty good price for unlimited data.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They will unlock iphone after 3 months of use. I unlocked mine and went overseas to insert a sim card in it from another carrier. It did have a sprint sim card in it before I swap it out, be careful use it overseas as it will connect. The roaming charges will kill you.</p></li>
<li><p>I have bad reception in my garage where I have my office, so they send in an internet connected “signal enhancer” called Airvana, for free. I am getting all 4 bars now.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am not promoting Sprint, but just sharing my experiences.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. We have only ever gotten phones from our cell phone provider, but we have not changed phones in quite a few years now so we knew that we had some research to do. He did go to a T-mobile store and heard their spiel as to why he should get one of their phones, was unconvinced and ended up buying a better phone online for less. </p>
<p>Fingers crossed that it will all work out smoothly. The seller has tons of good reviews but hopefully we won’t find out the hard way if they actually honor the warranty they offer!</p>
<p>We considered that option emeraldkity4 and he was seriously considering that option but he came across a phone deal that made it worth it to get a newer model. Considering the amount of business he conducts on his phone (he runs his own consulting business), the better phone is probably a better option for him. </p>
<p>It pays to get a smart phone, now a days. I insisted on a dummy phone with a voice only plan for several years, when i switched to a smart phone two years ago i just realized what have i been missing all those years without mobile internet and text messaging.</p>
<p>With the VW plan I’m on, an extra dumb phone will boost charges by about $36/mo including taxes but without additional data charges. An extra smart phone is about $46 per per month. Both are for unlimited voice and text messages. Can’t understand why they pushed up basic phone monthly charges that much.</p>