Samsung last week quietly kicked off a reservation promotion for the upcoming Galaxy Note 10 series. At the time, we told you that you had time to reserve your Note 10 until August 7th, which is when the phone will be unveiled. We also said Samsung included a couple of exciting perks in this reservation promo. You get free accessories worth $50 if you order them at the same time with the phone, as well as a discount of up to $600 if you trade-in an iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel phone during the preorder period.
Almost a week later, Samsung has made tweaks to the offer, prompting some to say that this terrific reservation promotion is gone. They’re wrong. The reservation sale is still up on Samsung’s site and you can still take advantage of these killer deals that make Samsung’s $1,000+ Galaxy Note 10 price tags much easier to swallow.
As much as Flipsy would like you to believe that Samsung has just pulled “a fast one” pre-launch, that’s not the case.
Samsung’s trade-in reservation deal is still in place, but Samsung has made a change to the way it shows the trade-in values of eligible phones. Instead of showing the discount you get, which could be anywhere between $200 and $600 depending on the model (as seen in the image below), Samsung now displays text that reads “Special trade-in value revealed on 8/7.”
There’s nothing wrong about that, and it’s unclear whether Samsung changed the trade-in values of the phones it supports. The company might want to avoid comparisons between these devices, or with other trade-in services. As Flipsy points out, Samsung’s $600 trade-in deal beats all the prices you’ll find at other buyback stores.
The fine print of the deal hasn’t changed. You still have to reserve your Note 10, trade-in included, by August 7th at 11:59 PM EST. After that, you have three days to actually preorder the phone in order to take advantage of the reservation deal. If you don’t like what you see when Samsung reveals that special trade-in value, you can still bail on your reservation without having to pay anything or mail in the phone you recorded as a trade-in. No money changes hands during this reservation process. And that’s the main reason Samsung isn’t pulling any “fast ones” in the first place. It’s up to you to turn that reservation into an actual preorder.
Moreover, on top of this reservation trade-in deal that Samsung is ready to offer, it’s likely that buyers who preorder the phone will be provided with even more free gifts, including Galaxy Buds wireless earphones or the new Galaxy Watch 2. The specifics haven’t been confirmed, but leaked Note 10 imagery and Samsung’s history both support that idea.
On top of that, carriers are preparing their own Note 10 deals for next week, which include buy-one-get-one (BOGO) promos that might be too good to pass up. Preorders will likely start soon after the Note 10 press event on August 7th, with the phone expected to hit stores on August 23rd.
