Quote Originally Posted by Whitey View Post
Never understood why people let them to get screwed over by these partial payment phone options. Just buy a damn phone and you pretty much get to pick and choose how much you pay for calls/texts/data.
It depends on what carrier and country you're in, different places have different rules.


In Finland (pretty sure this is the same for all carriers here) you buy a plan/contract/subscription (whatever you call it) and phone separately, but you can bundle them together for convenience.

Example:
I pay 44,80€ total for my phone bill (+ a little extra if I go over the monthly minutes or messages)
Of that bill, 19,90€ is the price for my mobile plan (500 minutes, 100 messages, unlimited 4G). I can change this to a different plan at any time, even a different carrier if I want to. (Although I think I can only change once per month, can't remember exactly). I'd still ofc have to pay the remaining part of my phone to my current carrier.

24,90€ is the price per month for my phone (lumia 920) which will be paid in full in December this year so this cost will disappear after that date. When I bought the phone via my carrier I had the option of either paying it in full at once (599€) or 24,90€ over 24 months = 597,60€ so I chose the payment over time option.
Now because I chose the payment over time option, it locked me to my carrier for 6 months, so I couldn't have changed my plan during that time, but after those 6 months I was free to choose whatever I wanted. Had I paid it all in full at once I wouldn't have been locked at all.

So really it's not a contract as such; You just pick a plan you want, pick a phone if you want, and then if you choose to pay over time you'll be locked with that plan for a while, but not for the entire time you pay off the phone.