Why You Shouldn’t Sign Phone Contracts (and What To Do Instead)
Clever phone companies will give you a “free” phone or a heavily discounted phone if you sign a one or two year contract with them. That contract means you must pay them a monthly fee the time of the contract, if you wish to cancel the contract you must pay a large fee - often as much as you still owe on the contract. You may upgrade your phone at specific intervals as long as you expand your contract another year or two. At any one time a person could owe two years on a monthly phone contract.
Why would people sign such a contract? For a discounted phone. You will sign one to two years of monthly payments for a cheaper or free phone that is locked. “Locked” means that the phone will only work with the specific phone company you have decided upon. You won’t be able to take the phone to a different service provider until you have unlocked it.
When you sign a contract with a phone company you do not have a leg to stand on. When they mess up your plan or your bill or you get poor customer service what will you do? You will do nothing because you stupidly signed a contract. They can do anything they want and they know full well you cannot go anywhere with either paying them the remainder of the contract or messing up your credit in the process.
When you do not have a contract with a phone company you may demand perks and privileges and they will likely give them to you because they do not want to lose your business. Without a contract you can cancel your service at any time when a better deal comes along. Without a contract you as the consumer have the power.
When you sign a contract you stupidly give the phone company all of your power. “Here you go sir, here’s my power! Thanks for the cheaper phone!”
What to do instead of signing a phone contract:
Step 1: Purchase your own unlocked cell phone. An unlocked cell phone is a phone that can be activated with service by any major carrier.
New cell phones sold by phone companies are priced very high as a deterrant to you purchasing one outright, they want you to sign a contract because that’s where the real money is. To get you to sign a contract they price their phones too high for the average Joe or Jane to afford.
There is a simple solution: Purchase an unlocked cell phone online at a discount. You may even purchase a used or refurbished cell phone at a hefty discount.
Step 2: Pick the best provider and set up monthly service and do not sign a contract.
When you find a better monthly contract you may switch any time you wish.
For the truly Spartan reader:
You can pick up cheap cell phones with pre-paid minutes at phone companies, gas stations or online
. You may use these cell phones as you would use any other cell phone. When the minutes run out you simply purchase more minutes. This way you never, ever pay a standard monthly fee. You only pay as you use minutes. If you don’t use the phone as frequently as the digital media obsessed phonesters you can save a lot of money this way.
Phone of choice for BOLD & DETERMINED:
For the businessman nothing beats the Blackberry.
A Blackberry is nice for a businessman, anyone who must use the phone a lot, and anyone who must use e-mail frequently. One cannot make money in this day and age without using e-mail and phone calls. The Blackberry simplifies all of that. E-mails come directly to your palm in real time and are sent back out just as fast.
The blackberry can also be used for it’s navigation, web browsing, calender, and notepad.
Most blackberry’s have a real keyboard with buttons you can actually push, which eliminates the frustration of touch screen phones.
Is a Blackberry necessary? No. Is it helpful? Absolutely.
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Check out some new and used Blackberry’s here.
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Nick
There’s good and bad in this post. An u. Looked phones good, but the power to take your business elsewhere is golden. But contracts and deals are just dollars. Get a great deal on a phone, and a contract can be worth it. I signed a contract 2.5 years ago with sprint. Got a phone for a price that I could have paid the cancelation fee, and sold it on fleabay for a profit. 6 months later I turned a 20 cent fee increase to a $20 discount.
Nowadays there are data heavy prepaid plans?. I’d seriously look at them first. Above all else it really is about the dollars and cents.
Recently I wound up tossing the phone on the john. I got an Android replacement, but with sprint and Verizon there’s no moving your phone no matter what. I dearly miss a real keyboard, and but I don’t have many doubts android can be used for business.
Best deals are a generation or 2 older then current and used but not abused. I could resell this phone and get a new one and not lose much. Used as many advantages.
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Scrouds writes: “An u. Looked phones good”
Uh… what?