What’s Behind the Free Phones?
MyWirelessRep has recently started offering a free phone program. You can read more about that here. What’s the deal? Is anything really free? Hmmm. Well let me draw a contrast here (notice I am saying ‘contrast’ not comparison). I remember a few years ago there was a group of companies that started giving out color ink-jet printers for free; with a little catch. In order to take advantage of this offer, you had to sign up for their ink cartridge replacement program. That meant you had to buy the ink jet cartridges from them at certain intervals. You see they figured out that there was far more money to be made in the mark-up from the cartridges than the printers, so they just gave the printers away and locked you into a cartridge replacement plan. If you have an ink jet printer, you know the cost of the cartridges far exceed what you paid for the printer. The cartridges are where the real cost of ownership is.
Is Lightyear Wireless doing the same thing with their free phone program? On one hand, phones have become so cheap that, like those ink jet printers, they can be given away free. In fact, MyWirelessRep / Lightyear is not the only one doing that. You will find free phone offers with other carriers as well. The difference is that those other carriers will try to make it up on the back end (the plan) where the Lightyear plan is the same whether you take advantage of the free phone or not. So no, nothing is free but this is just another extra perk from MyWirelessRep.
