Best place to buy a Hero

[liltyke]

Well I'm in the middle of my contact but I would love to get a Hero. The Sprint rep I talked to said the best he could do price wise was $404 (after my $75 credit). Can retailers such as Best Buy beat that price or will I end up paying the same price regardless where I buy.

thanks for any info.

[bradart]

Originally Posted by liltyke

Well I'm in the middle of my contact but I would love to get a Hero. The Sprint rep I talked to said the best he could do price wise was $404 (after my $75 credit). Can retailers such as Best Buy beat that price or will I end up paying the same price regardless where I buy.

thanks for any info.

Pricing is a bit of a confusing subject when it comes to phones.

I'll start with outright pricing, because that is the simplest to explain.

Buying a phone without any kind of discount, sprint will have it the cheapest. When you start going to third party retailers (Me at Radioshack) we are charged about the price Sprint CHARGES for their phones so, in order to not lose money on the sale, we have to charge a bit over retail.

Now on to the red tape-ish stuff.

When you are given a carrier discount - for instance,your $75 one year upgrade - we just pull $75 off of the retail price, so you'll pay about the same price at The Shack or at sprint, because, when you renew your contract, Sprint gets to keep a subscriber, making them more money, and the third party retailer (me) makes residuals off of Sprint for getting you to not dump them. When pricing is REALLY different is on 2 year (150 $) upgrades. At that point we aer ALWAYS cheaper than Sprint. Sprint will have you pay a certain amount up front, then get mail in rebates and blah blah blah. Third party retailers, because we get residual kick backs from Sprint, do not need to do mail in rebates because the residuals cover the up-front costs you would pay at a Sprint Corp. Store. This means that we can apply our own INSTANT rebates and have you out the door with a phone cheaper than you would've gotten the phone AFTER MAIL IN REBATES in the Sprint store.

So, long story short (Too late for that i guess) on a $75 rebate, i wouldn't hold out TOO much hope for a huge price drop somewhere, but it could happen. Good luck, my friend.

[liltyke]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. That helps a lot. So it looks like I either wait for my contract to end ( that ain't happening, I want that phone soon ) or I go the fleabay route.

thanks again bradart

[Stealth86]

Two months ago when I was on the phone with Sprint arguing for my Hero I was informed by every rep that the "Save $75" and "Save $150" are NOT the amounts taken off of phone by discount and that they are just to note between 1year and 2year upgrade status....

At the time I was trying to find out why i was supposedly 1year qualified and they wanted $375 for the phone but if i was a 2year qualified upgrade it would be $179.99

I preordered at BestBuy and they checked my upgrade status and told me I'd pay 179.99 and on launch day they wanted the $375...BestBuy told me its Sprints fault.. More than 5 hours on the phone with Sprint and I ended up with it for free.

Check Ebay and Craigslist... you can get them for around $350 NIB

[athlet1c]

If you buy your phone of Ebay or craigslist you will retain your full upgrade for the next great android

[jjday7]

I'll give you some advice. CRAIGSLIST, I buy phones from there all the time. I traded my pre for my touch pro 2. That's the best site to save some money. Locally here there are about 20 listings for hero's and some are as low as 250.00.

When I am looking for another phone. I went into the android market and downloaded a app called craigsnotifica. What that does is tell you instantly when someone lists a product your looking for. Since I am the first to see it, I can jump on deals before too many people see it. Really cool.

I know you don't have the phone yet but keep that in mind if you decide to use craigslist after you get the phone. Good Luck the hero is a awesome phone.

[liltyke]

Thanks for the reply guys. I believe I will be going the Craigslist route. Still right at $300 in my area but at least I won't have to reset my contract.

I like the sound of that app JJ, sounds like a must have.

[biggggant]

I bought my Hero at Best Buy and at the time I was only eligible for the $75 rebate. I know this because I verified this on sprint.com and I also I know I was barely eligible since I upgraded to a diamond when they 1st came out. I asked the girl how much I would get the hero for and she quoted me $179.99. I asked "are you sure, are you looking at my account?" She replied "yes" And she even told me I could save an additional $50 for signing up for their insurance plan. I got a leather case, car charger and a silcone case and the hero all for $129.99 YMMV but I would suggest BB 1st and even try a couple BB's since the answers can vary.

[Knuxr]

I am getting a new Sprint contract and the best place to get it looks like Best Buy as they are going for $99 with a new contract..