There Is No “free” IPhone 7, Even If Carriers Offer It to You
The iPhone 7 is here , which means carriers are struggling to offer you ways to update your phone. The most popular deals now include free or significantly discounted prices for the iPhone 7. There is one catch, however.
AT&T , Verizon , T-Mobile and Sprint are offering a “free” iPhone 7 with 32GB of storage, as well as discounted versions of higher storage models and the iPhone 7 Plus. There’s just one problem: they all require you to hold your phone and your contract for 24 months, and they require you to swap it for a newer phone like the iPhone 6 or 6s. T-Mobile calls this a “free 24-month financing agreement.”
Basically, you give the carrier your old phone for the right to get the iPhone 7 without prepayment. However, if you leave your carrier within these two years, you will have to pay by phone minus what was charged to you. If you leave, you will not get your old phone back or on credit, which means that disconnecting prematurely is a very bad idea.
If this all sounds familiar, The Verge points out it’s because these free plans look a hell of a lot like a two-year contract. It’s not exactly the same, because you don’t sign anything, but the end result is the same: the operators want to block you from their services for as long as possible. If you like your operator, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s still worth noting.
Plus, all of these deals work by lending your account monthly for the amount you would pay if you paid for the iPhone 7 in installments every month, and these loans don’t start right away. This means your bill will be higher than usual for the first two billing cycles.
Verizon says it will take two or three billing cycles before credits are credited, Sprint says under the two invoices, AT&T warns it will take up to three months, and T-Mobile says credits won’t arrive until the second billing cycle. accounts. Obviously these loans will be back in 24 months, but it’s still a potential sticker shock if you don’t read the fine print.
So what’s the financial choice for you if you want this iPhone 7? It’s tricky, it changes depending on which phone you have right now, and it depends on how comfortable you feel with what is essentially a two-year contract. Our friends at Gizmodo offer several options .
However, whatever one may say, there is no free iPhone 7 here.