Recently, AT&T introduced their new Mobile Shared Value Plans.  We switched!  We’re seeing significant savings!  Still, there is some fine print â€" and future upgrades can be costly if you’re not aware of some details of these plans.  In this article I highlight the good, and bad, and how to upgrade iPhones strategically to avoid ugly surprises in your bill!
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We were on a grandfathered, truly unlimited, plan.  Well, technically, you could say it was unlimited â€" practically it wasn’t. With the unlimited grandfathered plan, whenever you break past 5 Gig of data downloaded to your phone during a billing cycle, AT&T would throttle your phone’s download speed.  With our local LTE network, I was seeing reductions from 35 Mbps to 0.2 Mbps.  I wasn’t even able to stream a YouTube video.  Our old plan simply wasn’t working. (BTW, the FTC filed a lawsuit against AT&T for doing this … I’m unclear of the outcome.)
The Good News
We’re saving about $50 from our old plan - and that’s after over estimating our data needs. With these new plans, unlimited text messing and phone-talk time come standard.  The only option you select is the amount of data you’ll share across the phone lines in your plan.  Although we never broke past 15 Gigs of data with the three lines in our plan, we opted for 40 Gigs of data/month. I’m anticipating increased consumption with two new iPhone 6 Pluses, and the added ability to tether to a laptop, which is an included feather in these new plans as well.  Again, we’re seeing savings of $50.00 as opposed to what we were paying.
The Bad News
There’s one little gotcha that can creep up and bite you with these new plans.  It has to do with the access fee.  Each phone line in these plans has an “access fee†â€" and it will either be the $40.00 normal fee, or the $15 reduced fee.  You need to make sure each phone is receiving the $15 fee.  Each line not receiving that reduced fee will be adding $25.00 to your bill!  For us, having three lines, that could mean paying an extra $75.00 per month over our regular phone bill.
There are three ways a phone line qualifies for the reduced access fee of $15.00 vs the normal $40.00 fee.
- The phone line is in an existing 2-year contract that started before March 2014.
- The phone is contract-free.
- You upgrade a phone using with AT&T’s Next ℠plan.
The first option is not going to hang around for too much longer â€" and it’s not something you can control today anyway.  The last option is not optimal as explained in the footnote.  This leaves the second option â€" you need a contract-free phone.  You may either grab one from EBay, get a passed-down phone from some family or exceptional friend â€" our you need to buy a new one.
If you’re going to buy a new one â€" contract free, then I have some tips for you.  There are two ways to do this according to the table below.  Most people know about method 2.  You simply pay the full contract-free price of the phone. But these new iPhones are so expensive, you can actually save over $150.00 shown as Method 1 in the table below.  I’ve done this, it works quite well.  I purchased my wife’s iPhone 6 Plus with the AT&T 2-year discount price.  She wanted a 64 Gig model, so we left the Apple Store paying $399 plus tax â€" that’s $426.93.  Next, I called AT&T and paid a flat non-taxed fee of $325 to end the contract .  The net result is that we got a new, contract-free phone for $156.50 less than the contract-free phone price!  This will keep her line’s access fee set at $15.00.  Otherwise, we would have been paying $40.00 fo r her phone’s access fee â€" which would have been an extra $25.00 a month!  Over the next two years, that would have been $600.00 extra!  So, the total savings is $156.50 (for the phone) and $600 (the reduced access fee over the next two years) â€" which is a savings of about an iPhone!
| iPhone 6 Plus | 16 Gig | 64 Gig | 128 Gig |
| upgrade cost for 2 year contract | $299.00 | $399.00 | $499.00 |
| local tax (7%) | $20.93 | $27.93 | $34.93 |
| contract termination fee.   | $325.00 | ||
| Phone Cost  Method 1 | $644.93 | $751.93 | $858.93 |
| nonâ€"contract price | $749.00 | $849.00 | $949.00 |
| tax | $52.43 | $59.43 | $66.43 |
| Phone Cost  Method 2 | $801.43 | $908.43 | $1,015.43 |
| Phone Cost Savings | $156.50 | $156.50 | $156.50 |
| Bill Savings over next 2 years reducing access fee from       $40 â€" $15 | $600.00 | $600.00 | $600.00 |
| total savings over 2 years | $756.50 | $756.50 | $756.50 |
Additional Perks of Purchasing a New iPhone this way
- You may immediately have you phone unlocked â€" which will bring about $30.00 higher when you sell it on EBay
- You are immediately eligible to upgrade â€" there’s no 2-year wait time since you are not in a contract.
Let me know what you thought about this article.
â€"â€" footnotes â€"â€"
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