T-Mobile Enters iPhone Rental Wars With Bottom Price Of $5 Per Month

If you’re the kind of person who upgrades their phone every year, T-Mobile has a tempting deal on the iPhone 6S, as long as you join their Jump On Demand program. If you thought that their $20 per month offer on the device was tempting, last night CEO John Legere announced on Twitter that people who turn in their decrepit old iPhone 6 will get their new phone for $5 per month.

That’s an even more aggressive offer than competitors. We thought their initial pricing of $20 per month announced a few weeks ago was already pretty aggressive. However, this year is the first iPhone upgrade cycle where all carriers are offering financing and rental plans instead of the model where customers pay $200 for their phones and accept a carrier subsidy.

Sprint is pushing its iPhone Forever plan, and AT&T and Verizon have their own financing deals. For the first time, Apple has a program that effectively leases phones to consumers, even if it’s not officially called that.

Note that T-Mobile doesn’t say what the monthly price for the next phone will be, which Jump (I can’t bring myself to write it with the exclamation point) plan users are likely to upgrade to in 12 months, since upgrading whenever the customer feels like it is the point of the Jump On Demand program.

Yes, this deal is available to you if you already pre-ordered your phone from T-Mobile. Pricing starts at $20 if you have no phone to trade in, $15 for most trade-ins, $10 for an iPhone 5S, and $5 if you trade in the last generation of iPhone. T-Mobile wants to hook frequent upgraders.

If you absorb information best in charts, here’s a useful one from the T-Mobile fan subreddit.

T-Mobile trade-in plan offers iPhone 6s from $5 per month [TMoNews]

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