Although T-Mobile’s assorted “Uncarrier” moves have done a lot to undermine the wireless industry’s traditional two-year contract business model, Verizon still thinks two-year contracts are a wonderful thing, mostly because they’re guaranteed revenue for a fixed period of time. Because of this, it’s not surprising to see Verizon is doing its best to keep the two-year contract model alive by shamelessly trying to convince users that signing a two-year deal is in their best interests. However, Droid Life points us to a new Verizon promotion that really takes things to a whole new level of stupid.
Verizon’s Facebook page has posted a new promotion telling us that we should really be happy to sign two-year service contracts because “saying no to long-term service contracts means saying no to discounted phones. Period.”
For Verizon’s sake, we hope this is just a one-off blurb and not part of a broader advertising campaign. Because while “saying no” to two-year contracts on Verizon might mean you don’t get a discounted phone, it definitely doesn’t mean that with T-Mobile, where you can get flagship phones for between $0 and $100 down and then pay off the remainder of the device’s cost over a 24-month period without signing any kind of service commitment.
And as Droid Life writes, there’s really no “discount” in the phone you’re getting from Verizon because you’re paying for it each month in the form of higher bills.
“They may be allowing you to walk away with a new phone for next to nothing, but you are still paying for that phone each month with a built-in, behind-the-scenes subsidy cost (think of it as a really bad loan),” writes Droid Life. “So each month, you are paying for that phone with a charge that won’t show up on your bill or ever receive a mention from your carrier of choice. By the end of your service agreement, you will have paid for that phone little-by-little, month-by-month, you just might not have realized it (ever wonder why your ETF lowers after each month?).”
What it all boils down to is that Verizon must think you’re very, very stupid if it believes you’ll fall for this particular pitch.
