An educated customer always wins. Today I will share you some tricks which will help you to win the game of buying wireless phone. I will share some of the insiders with you today which majority of us don’t know.
How the resellers make money:
When a new customer goes though resellers such as
Letstalk.com,
A1wireless.com,
Wirefly.com or any other store locations etc and signs up to a wireless service provider (such as tmobile.com,
cingular.com) then the provider will pay X amount of dollars to that reseller.
Why the phone prices varies from store to store:
One a reseller signs up a customer and gets X amount from the service provider then it take Y amount from the X amount and purchases a phone. And that stores or resellers phone price depends on how much the Y dollar amount will be.
Example (keep in your mind that the amount is not realistic; it is for example purposes only):
Scenario 1) Billy goes to Bob’s store and gets a T-mobile service with Nokia 6010 for Free. What happened behind the picture was when Billy signed up then Bob was paid 10 dollars and Bob took out 3 dollars from there and bought Bob that Nokia 6010.
Scenario 2): Joe went to John’s store and gets the same exact T-mobile service with a Nokia 6030 for free. How? That’s because John decided to spend 4 dollars instead of 3 dollars like John and got his customer more expensive phone.
Who has the best deal online vs. storefront?
It all depends. Sometimes it better to buy online and sometimes it’s better to buy off line at the retail store. From my past experience I have seen that at least 9 out of 10 times customers will save money if you shop online.
I want 5 lines but the prices are different for the first 2 lines and different for the 3rd, 4th and 5th line?
This will happen when you shop online resellers. The reason behind is because the resellers receive more payout for the first 2 lines of services and less for anything after the first 2 lines. Since they receive less, they raise the prices for the phone.
What do I do then?
When situation like this arises, the best way out would be is go the service provider itself.
Example: Bob is looking for 3 lines of services with Cingular, he get 2 great prices for the first 2 phones at letstalk.com for the 3 one he doesn’t get a high end phone with all the bells and whistles. Best thing would be to purchase the first 2 lines of services from
Letstalk.com, and purchase the 3rd line of service form
cingular.com.
Accessories: After market and Manufacture made (OEM):
The difference is the brand name.
Example: For a Nokia 6010 you can buy a headset from both Nokia and some other non Nokia brand. The difference will be the price and the quality. You can find some Off brand products, they are almost as good as the manufactures. But majority of the time they are cheap and goes out quick.
We will update this list as we move on. Also if you have any questions just post it and we will find an answer for you. Please make sure that phone price related only.