I don’t know about any of you guys out there, but I absolutely hate rebates. They never seem to get processed correctly and always make you sit on a phone for 2 hours to get $50 bucks back. After my first rebate experience many years ago, I always just chalk the rebate up as phone cost.
I think Verizon feels the same way as I do; they are moving away from those pesky rebates. If the net price of the smartphone is more then $150 bucks there will be NO rebate at all. If the net price of the smartphone is $149 below, there will be a $50 mail in rebate. Not sure if this will be a long term strategy or just through the dates specified on the ad. I hope it stays permanently.
Not a bad strategy really. I still feel like the carriers made a lot of mistakes early on that they are still paying for now. The rebate thing is one, the other is subsidized pricing. If we as consumers can start getting away for the carriers as the phone source, I think we could all see much better phones. Yes, that would mean full cost phones, but also no more contracts. It would also force the carriers to start competing with price plans and not with devices. Just my 2 cents on the subject.
Source: Androidcentral
