At Customer Care we only have a limited discount on our phones that we can get. It's based on 2 factors: 1. How long since you activated/since last upgrade and 2. How much is your price plan.
There are a few problems with our upgrade program...
1. If you have a 19.99 rp but you still spend almost $100/mo because of overage charges and don't realize you can go to a different rate plan then you will get a bad price because of the amount of your rate plan.
2. We have a max discount on our phones. You could be with us for 5 years on a $99.99 rp and you still get that much of a discount.
Why our company allows this to happen...I don't know. All that I can say is that if you are satisfied with the service then why leave? To save a few ...
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here's why...

generally when you see a "new customer price" on a phone, whoever sells you the phone is selling it below what they paid for it to get you to sign up. you're already a customer so if they gave you the phone for EVEN less than the new customer price, they'd be selling you a phone for WAY less than what they pay for it.. possibly a couple hundred dollars.. so basically what asking them is "since i've been a customer for so long, please give me a couple hundred dollars"

that's basically how companies look at it. it's unfortunate at best, but honestly.. the new customer price on that is a heck of a lot better than paying retail for it, which is what you'd have to do if you went anywhere else to get the phone... and if you s...
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People don't realize that they are getting a mother of a deal on phone when they are a new customer. The company is subsidizing the actual cost of the phone when you first sign up, based on the prospect of a certain amount of money they will recieve from you monthly over however long you are with their service. When you first signed up T-Mobile was likely already several hundred dollars in the hole with you, depending on what kind of deal you got on your phones and handheld. I think T-Mobile is especially generous, considering they have some excellent rebates and only require one-year service agreements. If they are willing to give you the same deal for an upgrade that they would give to a new customer, that's actually pretty good. I th...
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There are other things that factor into the upgrade program as well. First, our upgrade program doesn't include a rebate. Rebates are often not filled out correctly or not sent in at all, that means that a "free" phone after a $100 discount may actually end up costing the average customer $50. Most initial activations include rebates, which skews the pricing scheme quite a bit. I wish we had rebates too 😁 .

The wireless industry is also very low profit margin, and there is a large percentage of customers we lose money on because of the discounts we give for phones and for services. This certainly doesn't include you if you've had $3000 in payments, but we still need to create programs that include all of our customers.

Customers them...
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