I was wondering if anyone here leases their smartphone either via ThinkSmart through the Carphone Warehouse or similar?
I initially took out a lease through the Carphone Warehouse because I usually sell my phone every 12 months and put the proceeds towards the latest model.
For me the pro of leasing is that I don’t need to make sure my phone is in pristine condition and can upgrade after 12 months on the condition I take out a new 24-month contract and pay an admin fee of £50
I have just found out that in order to upgrade, I have to pay a £400 to settle the lease first and I have to return the phone back to the Carphone Warehouse. For me giving the phone back is a huge blow, since I would expect that if I settled the lease I would then get to keep the phone use this as a trade in towards the latest model.
This all sounds like a bit of a con to me. Has anyone been in a similar situation?
Apple Upgrade programme is this isn’t it. I quiet like it, means I get a new phone every year, quick fix if I break it, and on a contract with a network it would cost me about the same to be on a 24 month contract
I have a sim only deal which I am happy with, The leasing is just for the smartphone. the lease comes with with an option of upgrading after 12 months, I was told there would be a fee, but they sold this as the admin fee, but the actually the fee is £350 on top of the admin fee.
With a contract you can’t get out or upgrade till after 24 months or a couple months before, but then you won the phone outright
I am just disappointed they in order to now upgrade I have to pay 400 including the admin fee
Now that sounds like a great deal and I kind of what I thought this was.
It looks like I didn’t read the fine print. But at the same time saying that the fee will be less than the value left on the lease is misleading when they only knock around £100 off.
Looking at their prices, its cheaper to actually buy the phone than lease it. As an example IPhone XR has cash price £749, total price paid £889.75 for leasing over 24months…
Paying 889.75 still does not entitle you to keep the phone, to be eligible to keep the phone you need to pay another 4 additional payments on top of the 889.75. that’s another £148, total £1037.75
Yeah you need to pay another £140 on top of the £890 to keep the phone. So leasing would set you back over £1030 whereas you could buy the phone for £750 and still sell it after 24months probably for £200 meaning its only cost you £550. So nearly half the price compared to leasing
It’s a complete joke, I was just told by someone at the carphone warehouse that they wouldn’t recommend customers sign up for the lease. Which is lovely to hear since last year they were keen to take my money and accept my old phone as a trade in.
o2 do it really the way you sound like you wantl, you give back your phone after 12 months to get a new 24 month contract, you don’t pay anything on top of what you’ve already paid.
The advantage is your phone and airtime contracts are separate, so if you don’t upgrade your phone and your contract ends, you only pay for the air amount and not the ‘full’ amount, which some networks would happily do forever if you don’t get in touch with them to ask why your bill is still so high.
I stated buying my phones outright and selling them after 12 months which covers half the cost, and the other half is what I’d pay to the network anyway in a year.
That what I was saying it seems to just be a short contract.
But if you have to pay an exit fee that is the rest of the price of the phone - it doesnt sound much different from a normal 24 months contract with 3 or ee etc.
