Is there any human within the Milky Way that can explain the AT&T 'Next' plan?

It is possibly the most simple plan on earth.

you pay x amount for phone service
you pay y amount if you finance a phone

X+Y= total bill

You can get a new phone ant day you wish, AT&T just is not going to finance a new one for you if you have not paid for the old one yet.

For folks that keep phones for a while this is a great deal, If you were upgrading as soon as you could before the payments remain about the same in total.

Let me help you answer the question yourself



If you wanted a new phone 1 year into a 2 year agreement, what did you do?












You had to pay off the first 2 year agreement and then start another one. What is the difference?

Next is a "Buy your phone" plan, what came before was a "Lease your phone" plan. They used to charge more for the phone service because your phone wasn't actually $199, the flagship phones have always cost $650+, but the full cost was hidden behind the lease structure of the wireless plans. T-Mobile and Sprint put pressure on AT&T and Verizon to lower rates and the only way they could do it was to take the hidden cost of the phone out of the monthly bill. That's what Next is, a cheaper monthly phone bill but the cost of the phone is not hidden from you and many people get sticker shock because they actually thought their phones cost $199, but that was never true.

You are not getting screwed more by moving to Next, in fact they are screwing some people less because the way things were on the old plans anyone that didn't upgrade every 2 years was essentially continuing to make lease payments on a phone that had already been paid off.

I am a little over a year into my Next plan which is something like a 30 month deal. Right now I can pay $259.61 to become eligible for an upgrade, but must turn in my phone. Or, I can pay $379.32 to become upgrade eligible and own this phone.

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I have no idea why this is so difficult for our customers to understand

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Really? 'No idea'?


Do you think it might be because for years AT&T (and others) intentionally obfuscated what exactly their monthly bills were paying for?

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I have no idea why this is so difficult for our customers to understand, it's amazing how frustrated some often get about it too.

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Because just when we figure out one bill they frick with it and change it to the most complicated shite on earth. I can figure out how to read surgical manuals but I can't figure out a fricking AT&T bill to save my life.

If a bill changes, something was added or a promotion fell off most likely. You'd be surprised how easily we can save you money if instead of bitching and moaning like children, you just came in and asked us to do a rate plan analysis. I saved one family over 100 bucks a month on their phone bills by doing so last week.

Also, look and see who else is an authorized user on your account because plenty of times people come in, add something on and don't tell the other parties involved.

I know plenty of people like to think we're this big bad corporation who just wants to bend you over and frick you but we actually do like to help out however we can. shite, we get in trouble if we let people walk away without telling them about different savings you can take advantage of.

1. Don't be late on your bills
2. Understand different promotions we have and when they end
3. Return your equipment on time
4. Know your credit before signing up
5. Call 611 from home and they'll go over your bill with you and how they can save you money

Believe it or not, we're human too and we understand life happens and you have other things to pay for. The people you interact with at the store don't get your money in our accounts so we really don't go out of our way about "ripping you off." I've worked retail for 10 years now and it's amazing how mad people get about their bills phones despite us explaining it to you.

And for the love of god, please get insurance. It's almost always your cheapest option and even if you're the type of person who "never drops their phone" at least look into it, it's $10 a month.

I'd have to imagine ATT would not be pumped about one of their employees saying potential and current customers are bitching and moaning like children.

So we're supposed to monitor every single persons account and look for this? The moment we saw it, we changed it. She had a plan that was older for her family, once I took a look at it, boom, done. In the end, she still chose that account for her family, not us.

Billing and Rate plan are two different things. Above what I just mentioned is a rate plan analysis that I did without even asking the customer, they came in for something else and I saw that. As for billing, know and understand everything you have with us and also make sure you know when a promotion ends because 99% of the time, that's what it is.

Again, the money you spend doesn't go into our pockets so we don't have a reason to bend you guys over like so many think.