Hello All,
Yesterday, my wife decided that it was time to replace her iPhone 5 with a newer model. She opted for the 32Gb iPhone SE. We purchased it from Best Buy for just under $200, a substantial saving from the $399 list price. She was told that it was a prepaid phone. We took this to mean that we bought it outright instead of making 24 monthly payments.
The phone came with do it yourself activation instructions. However, since Verizon, our service provider, had an office on the way home, we decided to stop in and confirm the steps necessary to substitute this new phone for her old phone in our Verizon Family Plan.
We learned that doing so wasn't that straightforward. In order to activate the new phone, we had to sign up for 6 months with a new plan. The new phone would have a new phone number. After 6 months, we could change that number to the number of her current phone. The minimum monthly plan for the new phone is $40. The cost of the new phone is now $440 ($200 plus 6x$40)
If we chose to deactivate her original phone, we could do so for up to 90 days for a savings of $60(3x$20). Verizon doesn’t allow deactivation for more than 90 days though the salesman suggested that they might make an exception for us.
My wife wouldn’t deactivate her current phone number. Too many people contact her routinely on that number. Maintaining her current phone number active until it could be transferred to the new phone 6 months later adds $120 (6x$20) to the overall cost of phone replacement.
BOTTOM LINE COST for going the route of the iPhone SE prepaid phone $560 and substantial inconvenience.
We opted to purchase the iPhone SE directly from Verizon at the list price of $399 paid over 24 months at 0% interest.
The moral of the story is that the $200 iPhone SE deal is only a deal if you don’t mind getting a new phone number. Keeping your old phone number is possible but takes 6 months and comes with substantial increased costs.
Ralph Sutter
