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AT&T tries to defend why it shouldn't let you unlock your phone sooner
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Just make carrier locking illegal and have customers pay the actual price, now it's just hidden costs to the consumer.
It isn't been a hidden cost for a while. Phone companies sell the phones at full price, but consumers want the 2 year 0% APR financing.
If consumers bought the phones from a third party, there'd be absolutely no reason to lock the phone to a carrier. But when carriers also provide the financing, there's an incentive to keep them on the service until the bill is paid. Screw that.
But who is going to provide the financing otherwise?
PayPal credit is an option. No interest if you pay it off in 6 months.
There are tons of buy now, pay later services, and they make money through revenue sharing w/ the retailer, as well as when people fail to pay back the loan on time.
But ideally, this would just put downward pressure on phone prices as people look to buy phones w/ cash instead of going into debt.
Just like Smart TV's.
Honestly any moderately expensive item can be purchased through installments. Go to any electronics store and they'll have offers like that, and they use different services to provide that financing.
It's a non-issue, carriers don't need to be a party to that at all. I can literally go to BestBuy or Apple and get 0% financing on a new phone and take it to any carrier I want.
You know what you're talking about. It's nice to see that.
But if carriers didn't have phones for sale everyone would be mad about it. They might have even been mad in the beginning, so the carriers started selling phones too.