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Other Who else misses subsidies
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Yeah my bill has not gone down either. So I don’t see how this is better than before. Now before let’s say I paid $80 a month but could only upgrade once every two years with a discount on the phone. Now I pay $80 a month plus I have to finance a phone for $50 more or so a month. And get to upgrade every year.
So basically I pay $50 more a month than before for the privilege of trading my phone in every 12 months. And ppl on this board say but at least it’s better than subsidies. Lmao!
I don't miss them because my bills are cheaper without. Even comparing ATTs old iPhone 3g unlimited pricing, four lines is cheaper this way that they would have been before. Granted, we likely wouldn't have four lines of iPhones because it would be cost prohibitive. I lay $140 for four lines of unlimited; the data alone in four lines before would have been $120.... the cadd in the texting and voice packages and faxes (which the $140 includes) and you're hitting $200. On, and I'm also getting g my Netflix covered, which I would be laying anyway, so you can effectively say my four lines cost $129
One thing I guess I do miss, in a strange way, is justifying a new phone yearly because I'd miss out on the subsidy if not. I would lay the $400 early upgrade, sell the previous device for more than that, in be happy as a clam.
Buying phones yearly doesn't make sense anymore for s multitude of reasons not the least of which being they just seem to last longer. We have a 6s and an se that are still running wonderfully especially with iOS 12.
One thing I guess I do miss, in a strange way, is justifying a new phone yearly because I'd miss out on the subsidy if not. I would lay the $400 early upgrade, sell the previous device for more than that, in be happy as a clam.
Buying phones yearly doesn't make sense anymore for s multitude of reasons not the least of which being they just seem to last longer. We have a 6s and an se that are still running wonderfully especially with iOS 12.
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They were/are making money hand over fist. If you understand how business works it’s all about making more and more and more. They are making more money now because they cut out that $450 every 2 years. They don’t need to incentivize you anymore because now smartphones are seen as a standard part of life. It’s like drug dealers handing out free drugs until the whole neighborhood is hooked, then raising the prices.
Apple is doing it...carriers are doing it... consumers continue to get bent over.
From what i remember the last subsidy phone was the 6 and 6+ with the 6+ being 850$ and 400$ subsidy price. All the ones before that where 200-300$
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How? 80$ was the cheapest att plan available. No Verizon plan was as cheap as what I was paying.
I’m not talking about family plans I’m talkkng about individual plans.
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That’s you. An individual plan I couldn’t of found cheaper plan on a major carrier like att or Verizon.
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Well, yeah it's me lol. I can only share my experience and why I feel how I feel, right?
You made no requirements you just asked who misses them. We currently get more service for less money than we ever did when subsidies were a thing.
I just pulled up that receipt. I paid $399 for the 64gb 6 plus in 2014.
I mean if people are happy spending 45$ For their phone they are leasing then yes. After the two years of payments you will of paid twice as much as a subsidy. I personally rather pay 400$ down and no payment then 45$ a month for a year year after year trading in your phone.
I think the best thing about the subsidies was that you HAD to pay for any amount above $450 out of pocket.
Today, the system is much more eager to get you to finance the full $1100 of a phone.
Today, the system is much more eager to get you to finance the full $1100 of a phone.
I’d gladly pay 550$ Down for an xmax and have no cell phone payment monthly and the phone is mine after two years then pay 50$ a month payment.
Except that’s not how it ever worked.
If you do the math, I'm still saving money by paying my phone off rather than doing a down payment plus a "subsidy".
In my example I'm paying $35 per line all in. The includes minutes, texts, and data. Before I would've been paying about $60 per line, potentially more depending on how the minutes and texts were factored in. That's a $25 a month difference. Factor in you're $400 down over two years that's another $17 a month. We are now at $42.
With the subsidy I'm required to upgrade to "get my moneys worth" because I'm paying the price of my phone built into my service. Without it I can pick and choose when, if ever, to upgrade devices, decide I might want last year's model, or maybe even a used device to save even more money.
I've sat down and done the numbers and I'm honestly way better off at the end of two years and am even better off still if I ever decide not to upgrade at all on any given mine any given year. One of our lines has never run an upgrade because it's the hand me down line. This wouldn't have made sense with the old subsidy system because it wouldn't be cheaper to do hand me downs. We would be "missing out" on a subsidy and paying the higher monthly rate regardless.
Also consider the fact that subsidy plans
Effectively took $450 off of msrp. It would sting even more on an x or x plus having to drop $550-$650. That's basically buying a phone outright back when subsidies were popular. With both ATT and Verizon raising the prices of their older unlimited plans, the disparity between my old plan and my new plan only grew with age.
A phone is only a lease if you plan on turning it in. Otherwise it's a 0% loan for the full price of the device. My point is that the subsidized cost of devices was built into the plan pricing anyway. I wasn't ever paying just $200 for a phone. I was paying the $200 plus the remaining $450 worked into my monthly plan rates. You have so many more options today than we had even five years ago. Plenty of competitively priced mvnos out there too, some even running on ATT and Verizon network, if coverage is an issue. Hell, if I wanted to, I can hop over to cricket and get my four lines for $100 and save even more money, but I'd lose out on Netflix as well as some international roaming and hotspot perks. You'll never find me pining for a subsidy because it was pushing me to buy phones at least every two years per line.
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I still dont see how my plan was cheaper then it was. 80$ for a single line att unlimited plan. Its the cheapest plan they had and still have(since they dont take school/business discounts for the unlimited plan now).
How was the phone baked into my already 80$ plan?
400$ down and no payment. same 80$ a month plan.
Plans are MORE expensive now without subsidies. my plan has gone up 15$ since 2008. the unlimited plan is still 90$ and can't use discount on it so my plan is a few dollars cheaper but still more expensive then it was.
IT might of been different if you where on a family plan... What single line plans had the price of the phone baked into the plan with a subsidy?
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if you can explain my previous post to "how it worked" then id be all ears.
I tended to upgrade when eligible back in those days.
And not being able to upgrade for some time into the contract. Though for people who bought iPhones when they first came out, the carriers sometimes moved up eligibility a month or so so people could upgrade to the new iPhone at release the next year.
again I'm not talking about your plan. I'm talking about mine. I guess I assumed since you were asking people if they miss subsidies that their own situation comes into play.
I've been on a family plan with my (then) girlfriend and mom since the very first iPhone. Same family plan now except we added our son. We pay $35 a line. Not $80. At the time, ATT was doing $30 for just the data per line and voice minutes and texts were extra (if I recall they were pools, and texts were $20 for the account). Relating tocto yournsituation, however, if you want to pay $40 on an ATT mvno you can easily do that though and save money immediately. You don't need your subsidy to achieve this. And this is an option that really wasn't available in the days of iPhone subsidies, so its a brand new option fornyou to save. AND you can still get your iPhone with the iPhone upgrade program through Apple.
To be fair, back with tiered minutes and text pricing, I was certainly using my phone less as a phone, still had a home phone, etc. times have changed and so have the structure of pricing mobile voice and text plans. I don't even know if you can pay by minute anymore unless you're holding into a legacy plan. Most plans have many more perks as well such as long distance (not limited to just same carrier phones), and many allow Canada, Mexico, and evencroaming to various countries.
You also need to factor in inflation to make an apples to apples comparison. $80 in 2008 is the equivalent of about $100 today.
I'm not discrediting your situation. I'm simply sharing mine and trying to factor in real world data in doing so. Apologies if that side of the discourse wasn't what you intended for.
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If I hadn't paid off my X early last January, I would still be making payments and my phone would still be locked. I wouldn't have been able to use it here in England on vacation without paying some travel pass rate.
Instead, I switched to prepaid (so I couldn't use my ATT number here), got a local SIM for my trip, and get to worry about battery life all day since camera use really drains batteries.
I guess I should of worded it better for single line plans since that makes more sense to my situation.
im just holding onto my grandfathered data plan because its 2-3 dollars cheaper still then att's unlimited plan because of my discount and the discount they gave me for unlimited texts for 10$ instead of 20 for life back in like 2010.
Even if my phone was paid off after the two years my plan would of been the same price as if I had a brand new phone (but subsidized).
It probably hurt people with single lines that never upgraded after the two years and still continued to pay the same amount for their plan even though I never saw carrier plans cheaper than what I was paying and still dont today for the major carriers.
It just made the most sense to get on a contract with half the price of the phone paid in full and sell your phone to cover cost of the subsidy 2 years later that covered the new phone.
Can anybody tell me what they think my plan was if I brought a purchased phone to att with my original 80$ a month plan? Because from my understanding it would of never gotten lower then this
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if you didn't upgrade after the two years your phone bill would be exactly the same. At least in my case it was. So upgrading and selling my phone that was mine after the two years paid for my new upgrade. Thats not the case now with paying 45$ a month for your phone.
Paying $45 a month, the phone is still yours after the two years are up. You can still sell it it just ovvsiouly won't cover the full msrp of the next device.
If I'm understanding your question correctly, your original $80 plan wouldn't have dropped in any way if you brought your own phone. When att first introduced next they had some really confusing pricing structures where if you stayed on an unlimited plan they racked on an additional fee to stay on "next". I never got a sensible explanation of why that structure existed. I mean I knew why, but the pr speak was that the new plans were a better value.
youd still be paying 1080 over 24 months for your phone at 45 a month. a subsidy of half the price of the phone with the same pricing of the plan seems better to me.
ATT has just been upping the grandfathered plan 5 dollars here and there and its 15$ more now a month. so my 80$ original plan is now 95-8 for the discount so its still a tad cheaper then the unlimited data plan they offer now at 90$
ATT offer a $70 unlimited plan now. Of course they're doing different tiers of said plan. Sontheres that. Have you looked into their "unlimited and more" plan?
I didnt know about those new plans but just looked. seems like the 70$ plan has 480p streaming which is crap. Id have to pay for unlimited + plan of 80. saving 8$ as of now. but I have to figure out all the details on it all.
Im more than likely going to switch to version and get a family plan with my mom to save money and get her a new phone and pay about the same im paying now.
I'll say this one more time.
If you were or are currently still on a grandfathered A&T or Verizon unlimited plan, then the end of the subsidy model sucks for you. This is because both Verizon and AT&T wants to get you off of that plan (although it's probably a moot point now as they both offer a different Unlimited type plan). When other plans got the monthly charge reduced after the phone was paid off, the unlimited plans didn't.
This is the reason why you didn't see your plan price drop. IIRC, my plan dropped by $20 or 25/mo per phone after the 24 month period. Subsequently, we bought our phones outright and the monthly fee stayed at the reduce rate.
You can't compare the regular plans to the grandfathered ones because the carriers never gave you a discount. From your perspective, the end of the subsidy model meant that you are now paying $450 extra every two years. Of course it sucks for you, but that's what the carriers wanted. They wanted you off those plans.
If you were or are currently still on a grandfathered A&T or Verizon unlimited plan, then the end of the subsidy model sucks for you. This is because both Verizon and AT&T wants to get you off of that plan (although it's probably a moot point now as they both offer a different Unlimited type plan). When other plans got the monthly charge reduced after the phone was paid off, the unlimited plans didn't.
This is the reason why you didn't see your plan price drop. IIRC, my plan dropped by $20 or 25/mo per phone after the 24 month period. Subsequently, we bought our phones outright and the monthly fee stayed at the reduce rate.
You can't compare the regular plans to the grandfathered ones because the carriers never gave you a discount. From your perspective, the end of the subsidy model meant that you are now paying $450 extra every two years. Of course it sucks for you, but that's what the carriers wanted. They wanted you off those plans.
I've used 480p streaming and honestly it's typically actually much higher... they just limit the bandwidth a video stream is given if they can identify it as a video streamand most compression algorithms are so good that you're getting a much better feed. Next to licenses data is probably the highest cost for these companies so itsnwithib their best interest to reduce the data they're pushing you while limiting perceived quality reduction as best they possibly can.
I guess it depends on what's worth it to you. I didn't notice a difference between 480p and 1080p when I toggled it on and off on my account on Netflix, again because compression algorithms are so good anymore. You can easily test this on a data plan by switching back and forth to WiFi.
Anyway, use what you need to best fit your usage needs.
PS I went ahead and ran both lte and WiFi Klein fist previews just now to give you an example of what I'm talking about. I tried to screenshot at the exact right time but I'm not a magician haha. I did get pretty close. Only editing I did was labeling as lte and WiFi. If you're viewing this on pc maybe there's a difference. I'm viewing on iPhone X and legit cannot tell.
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A family plan is just multiple line charges. The data is shared. So shave off one line access charge and you're paying less than $80. Sure, not half, but less.