I have fallen into the craze and am going to get the new “Special Edition” Black Razr v3 phone. Since I found out that Cingular actually has decent signal in my area, I decided to switch providers. And I've been dying for a bluetooth phone. So how am I going to afford this phone, which Cingular now offers for $200? Yes it is more affordable than the price in December, when the silver version was just released. Yet I’m still on a budget. So I need to find a deal right? Not so easy…. I figured I’d pass on what I discovered, in case it might be useful to someone.
I realized that most of the on-line sites offering free Razr phones are actually supported by a company call Inphonic, ie intelenetwireless.com, wirefly.com, buy.com, A1wireless.com, etc. On some of these sites, you’ll notice that the company address and phone numbers are the same. There are steady complaints from the customers in regards to difficulties receiving their rebates or fixing problems with new phones. Also if you want to keep your phone number, sometimes they’ll port it before your phone is shipped, so you won’t have a phone for a few days. The good points about these companies? Well the phones almost always come unlocked and are extremely cheap, sometimes you can even earn money. There were some satisfied customers, I've had friends who used the sites and never had problems with the phone or rebates. But they were "earning" money and initally spent a lower amount so had lower risk.
(Side note: if you ever want to see some of the most pessimistic ratings/reviews for on-line stores reviews, go to resellerratings.com. More positive ratings/review can be found at bizrate.com.)
Amazon.com has better reviews and will still offer the phone for free. In general, customers are satisfied with the customer service, and they have a reputation to maintain so they won’t scam you on the rebate. I heard that they're pretty good with replacing/fixing malfunctioning equipment, and they'll pay for return shipping. The bad thing is they can’t port your old phone number to a Cingular phone. They're OK with other providers though.
For Best Buy, the on-line deals are much better than the store deals. I understand though, that you can order a phone on-line and pick it up in-store if it's in stock. It sounded odd, so I’d probably want to double check that one. But the phone isn't free. The black Razr v3 phone is offered for $150 in store, and $90 on-line. I heard you shouldn’t go for their extended warranty, since their service isn’t that great. But again they're pretty reliable in that they'll try to fix any of your problem and they won't try to scam you on the rebate.
The Chinatown option was suggested to me by friends. Many people know that Chinatown usually has some awesome deals for cell phones. In addition, you can bargain for free accessories, they can unlock it for you, and when paying cash you can avoid taxes. These guys usually know what they’re doing. You can get the phone immediately and they’ll port it for you. But Chinatown isn’t the most reputable place to receive a phone. If you walk into the wrong store you might be getting a bootleg version. I'm not sure if just going to “authorized dealers” will solve the problem. Also you might have some difficulties in getting problematic phones fixed or your rebate back, if the store manager wants to be difficult. But if you have no problems after the fact, you’re set. I've had friends who bought phone there with no problems as well. I also heard that if you really have issues with the phone, you can try going directly to the manufacture (in this case Motorola) and they'll help you there.
Btw if you’re wondering how these guys can afford to offer free phones, there is an unconfirmed rumor that the dealers tend to get extremely good commissions (over $200) for each new account they activate. Plus, you get locked into a 2 year contract with these deals. I guess another condition for the dealer is that the s/he has to show proof that you are a good customer and fully paying off your bills, because most rebates you need to show a fully paid bill after 6 months. Amazon allows you to send in a statement showing your bill is fully paid after one month, but they have in fine print: if you default on any of the bill in the next 6 months, they can charge your credit card for the rebate amount.
So what am I going to do? I’m going to try for Amazon, and just give up my phone number. If I really wanted someone to get in contact with me, then I probably gave them my e-mail too. But don’t worry if I still like you and remember you exist, you’ll probably get a message from me with my new phone number in a couple weeks.
