I know, I know… these titles keep getting worse.
I’ve been watching mobile phone providers roll out new plans geared around helping people upgrade their phones more frequently. It’s been interesting. It seems like they’re taking what is already a bad deal and making it worse.
The dirty secret of the mobile market is that they work hard to hide exactly what your money is paying for. Your phone? Yeah, some of that is rolled into your monthly payment. How much? They won’t say. But some, for sure. Your service? Yeah, you’re paying for that. Network expansion? Yeah, some of that too.
The thing is, they don’t do it this way in other countries. Well, they do in Canada, but they don’t in Europe or Asia. Over there, you commonly buy your device outright and then pay a much lower monthly cost for service.
The benefit to that is that you know what you’re paying for and when.
It doesn’t work in North America. Why? “Cause, we want stuff we can’t afford. We’re unwilling to wait. So mobile phone providers give us what we want. And we massively overpay for it. But, since we do it in monthly installments, we don’t mind. That’s dumb.