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Comment by Jolter | Hacker News Reader

Most people seem to be subscribing to a cell phone already. Not us techies, but most normies seem to have expensive phones on three year ”plans” while locked to an expensive network.

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Financing a phone is dumb for most people imo, but at least it has an explicit end where you own the phone outright.

This phone requires a subscription in perpetuity, on top of the full purchase price.

The last couple times I got a new phone the price of the phone + plan without financing for 2 years was greater then plan with 2 years of financing. So yeah, I got the financing.

This was in Canada however.

Yeah I'd never do that. I just buy it outright.

I don't have a cell phone subscription either. I use prepaid which actually is cheaper.

Sometimes prepaid is a bit more expensive because you're paying for 28 days and not a month. You basically have 13 cycles per year instead of 12 (28*13 = 364 days)

I suspect the OP means prepaying for the year. AT&T is like $25/mo for 5GB data + unlimited everything else if you pay upfront for the whole year ($300). Prepaid MVNO plans are even cheaper.

No that's not what I mean. And I'm not in the US. A €20 prepaid data bundle here on orange is much larger than a €20 contract. And the prepay has built in overcharge protection.

Financing is not a subscription.

This has been made illegal years ago in Europe.

Legal in the EU but the consumer has to be notified about it.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PETI-CM-580731...

Network locks are not illegal AFAIK, but consumers can request an unlock.

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