By Imagine being able to get a phone upgrade every six months (best value for least amount of time) over the life of a 24 month contract. Do I have your attention yet? UK carrier Phones4U has introduced a new model called JUMP, or “Just Upgrade My Phone.”
“Technology is moving fast and innovative handsets are launching all the time on the market but to date there’s been a disconnect between the frequency of smartphone releases and the length of mobile phone contracts on offer.
We want to give our customers the freedom to own the very latest smartphones like the iPhone 4S without having to wait 18-24 months for an upgrade. The idea for JUMP was born out of research we conducted that revealed people were frustrated by the inability to upgrade their handsets sooner.”
With JUMP, you have the option of paying more per month in order to get a new phone after however long you want. Let’s say, for instance, that we want to sign a 24 month contract and upgrade to an iPhone 4S (we know, but just bear with us).
A £2.99 charge on top of your monthly rate of £35 for a Galaxy Nexus would have you paying £37.99 per month, split between airtime (£15.00 a month) and the JUMP agreement (£22.99 a month).
If you decide to get a new phone after 6 months, they’ll subtract six months’ worth of JUMP payments from the overall amount you’d have paid for JUMP over the life of the contract.
You then trade your old phone(s) and subtract the amount gained from those from the remaining JUMP balance. You’ll get a new rate plan depending on which phone you get + the standard JUMP pricing + new supplemental JUMP charges, and from there you do the same for your next phone, and so on and so forth.
You can keep doing this until your contract expires. You won’t be getting free phones as you would for upgrading a standard contract but being able to get such discounts on new phones without having to pay full MSRP is worth it. If you’re still confused, consider Recombu’s breakdown of it below (where my figures were initially pulled from):
In the examples we’ve been given Phones 4u looks at a price plan for an iPhone 4S with £20 worth of minutes, messages and data etc:
JUMP to an iPhone 4S after 6 months:
Balance outstanding on JUMP
= 18 months @ £22.99 £413.82
Trade in value of old handset £175.00
Balance remaining £238.82
Split over new 24 month JUMP contract £9.95
(No need to pay upfront)
Monthly cost of iPhone 4s on JUMP service agreement £28.49
+ £9.95 over 24months
Total new JUMP cost £38.44
Plus airtime (dependent on airtime package chosen) £20.00
New monthly price plan £58.44
JUMP to an iPhone 4S after 6 months:
Balance outstanding on JUMP
= 12months @ £22.99 £275.88
Trade in value of old handset £150.00
Balance remaining £125.88
Split over new JUMP contract (per month) £5.25
(No need to pay upfront)
Monthly cost of iPhone 4s on JUMP service agreement £28.49
+ £5.25 over 24months
Total new JUMP cost £33.74
Plus airtime (dependent on airtime package chosen) £20.00
New monthly commitment £53.74
I know I wouldn’t mind being able to upgrade every six months without incurring early termination fees or buying devices outright. We don’t see many contract carriers, in the UK or otherwise, catching on to this but we will certainly keep our fingers crossed.
My only point towards allowing customers to pay for the ability to trade in 6 month old phones is that typically the public wouldn’t perceive a 6 month old handset as “old”, so it’s resale value should be much higher than that same phone after 12 months or longer.
The math still doesn’t quite work out for me, but I appreciate that they’re trying out something new. Options are always better…
Wow. I love that another carrier is coming up with a more fair way to treat new phone financing and treating it like the loan it is, rather than pretending they’re giving you money.
Way to go, phones4U.
Quick point, phones4u are a retailer of phones for all the UK networks (my first ever contract was with them). But it is quite a clever idea, considering the rate at which phones are developing. What does concern me, however, is you could end up paying something mental a month for a contract, considering you can get virtually any phone for free on a £30 per month contract…
I find the opening statement from phones4u very misleading there and feel this is just a greedy ploy wrapped up in marketing once again. I might be a cynic, but here is my reasoning.
“Technology is moving fast” is it? I know that the evolution of technology is exponential, but this is still based on the linear fact of Moore’s law. Being that the transistors per square inch double every 18 month, or in layman terms, technology doubles every 18 months.
Phone contract started out at 12 months in the early days, then when people didn’t switch after 12 months they increased the length to 18 months, then to 24 months.
If you look at the total cost of a 18 month contract compared to a 24 month contract, you pay much less on a 18 month contract and the networks get much more on a 24 month contract. Only they don’t take as much up front so it seems cheaper initially, plus you get a new phone sooner with 18 months, that is twice as powerful as your old one.
Now some people don’t mind paying more to get a new phone early, that is their right. Alot of others cannot really afford to, and that is why I see this as being a bit greedy by the retailer. Selling extended contracts with ever increasing monthly costs seems a little excessive, unless of course you don’t mind paying over the odds for it all. Its a great plan to sell to people that can afford it and don’t mind it, but looks like a time bomb for people who get enticed and stretch to afford it.
It is the consumers choice and they are capitalising on the fickleness of their target consumers, which is all very well. But I think there are ethical issues here and ethical phone salesperson are rare… although they probably do exist. I wonder if people might eventually have to foreclose on on these JUMP deals a couple of years down the line.
Rant over…
-Dan