Well, what a difference a morning makes!
I popped into the telephone company’s shop to see how my iPhone 17 Pro order was doing, and in the process, discovered that the deal I thought that I had signed when buying my now venerable iPhone 13 Mini was not the deal I’d imagined that I had signed. Instead of having finished paying for it months and months ago, it transpires that there are six months yet to go! The rate (and thus total price I thought I was paying), was a starting point for some period that was finite, before reverting to some other rate after that. As the darn thing was on offer, and I had the brochure in my hands, I had congratulated myself on obtaining a good price. Years later, I obviously no longer have that brochure nor any leg upon which to stand.
To add salt to the wound, the hundred euros trade-in offer I had turns out not to be that, but a fee that I have to pay to end the contract! Were that so, why did she want to examine my current phone before making her “offer”? You wouldn’t believe it. To make matters worse, the girl dealing with me today insisted that my acceptance for the new phone had been for payment over three years, that longer was not possible, whereas I had said four. She then called across to the other girl in the office, the one who had made the 17 deal with me, who confirmed that yes, it was four years. I had also been told that if I died before completing the payments, the phone needed only to be returned and no further payments would fall upon my kids’ heads. I no longer believe a word of it. I cancelled the entire deal and walked away.
My conclusion is simply that if I still think I need a longer iPhone lens when this old contract does expire, then no more contracts, just do it at list price in one payment and be out of the shifting sands once and for bloody all.
