Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

In Australia you always had to disclose the phone cost in a contract. People still keep upgrading phones.

In the UK it's changed and it's not so much that they disclose it as that you can buy them separately. In my case it's like £37/month for iPhone, data and minutes for a 2 year contract or £15 a month if you use your old handset. The latter option wasn't always there.

Often it is a bit more complicated. The last one I did it had say a $30 monthly phone charge with a $15 rebate. I guess so they could make the pone look cheaper while just building the rest of the phone cost into the service cost.

Does it show as a line item on the monthly invoice, or in the fine print of the contract?

Here in QC/Canada it's basically "90$/month for the 2 year upgrade" or "65$/month for BYOD".

Line item on the invoice, plus a non-fine print part on the contract and any advertising material.

The last time I had a contract, they had 2 line items. One for the service, one for the phone.

But prepaid is pretty good here. I haven't been on a contract for years now. I just buy my phones.

I spent a lot of time researching cell phone providers here in Ontario as I was just getting a cell for the first time. All the plans are pretty universally terrible. I ended up with Wind Mobile for $40/month for BYOD. Unfortunately, they're 3G only but it's 5GB data vs. 100MB for similarly priced plans on other carriers.

It's not exactly front-and-center, though. There's some miniscule print that says how much the phone is, whereas the overall monthly cost is in giant numbers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com