I've talked with three different agents multiple times and I am still confused. Of course, we understood phones are not actually "free" although that word certainly gets thrown around a lot. Over the course of two hours, I remember being told our existing phone plan was outdated and should be changed but I did not realize that trading in our phones and getting new ones required us signing on to a plan that was substantially more expensive than our prior plan. Our salesperson started writing down figures about costs per month for three years which puzzled my husband and myself and finally we just said that we wanted to pay those costs up front and not pay them over three years. The salesperson didn't really answer if this was an option or not at this point. There were some set-up charges and we bought some cases, etc so we understood those charges and the whopping 8.25 Texas sales tax. Our paperwork says they credited us for the new phones and financed ? us for our trade-ins. They told us our first phone bill would be more expensive. I have no idea what to expect with my upcoming bills but I know it will be more expensive. I think Verizon should stay away from the "free phone" sell and just be upfront about the 3 year hook. I would probably not have gone ahead with the process if we hadn't already been at the store for about 3 hours at that point. I like Verizon and my phone but it turned out to have too many surprises for my comfort level.
