Verizon To Offer “Instant Rebates” On Phones Priced Over $150 [Verizon Does Away With Rebates On Expensive Smartphones, Now They'll Just Take The Price Off For You - Another iPhone-Related Move?]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Friday, 28. January 2011 under: Mobile/Cell Phones

It’s just a little while before Verizon starts offering the iPhone, and more shuffling from that company. They’ve done away with their “New Every Two” upgrade plan, but introduced a new phone trade-in program. And now, something else. Phones that cost over $150 will have their rebates eliminated… sort of. Instead of forcing customers to fill out a rebate form and mail it in, you’ll get an “instant rebate” with the price automatically adjusted.

As you can imagine, several blogs ran the headline “Verizon Does Away With Rebates On Smartphones!” which caused anger in lots of blog readers. Well, no. They’re just doing away with the extra paperwork and whatnot. I should say that this is coming from a spycam picture that is allegedly of a note inside Verizon’s internal database system that was originally posted by AndroidCentral.com. So, it’s not confirmed fact that the company is doing away with rebates and instead implimenting “instant rebates”.

Readers may be aware of Best Buy doing something similar. The retail giant has for a long time taken care of carrier rebates by just taking the rebated amount off the purchase price. Best Buy corporate deals with the rebate on the back-end and you don’t have to worry. It’s a nice feature, I guess. But now, if this post is to be believed, Verizon is taking care of it themselves.

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