Apple's event is on September 9, and within about an hour of it wrapping, every US carrier will announce the new iPhone is free with an eligible trade-in. The discount is real. What the ad leaves out is that you're not buying a phone at a discount — you're selling three years of flexibility, at a price set before you leave the store.
Here's what's actually inside that offer.
The money comes slowly, and only if you stay
Carrier promotions aren't discounts at the register. They're bill credits, spread across the installment term — usually 36 months.
That difference is the whole thing. An $800 trade-in offer isn't $800 off. It's about $22 a month for three years, and only while you stay a customer on a qualifying plan. Walk in month 20 and the credits stop. Worse, the remaining device balance comes due and any outstanding trade-in credit typically gets clawed back onto your final bill.
The three-year term isn't a coincidence. It gives the carrier a powerful reason to keep you, and consumer advocates keep pointing out that this is the least-discussed part of the whole arrangement.
The plan requirement is where the money actually goes
The credit is tied to holding a particular plan tier, and that's usually where the maths turns.
One AT&T promotion on the iPhone 16 Pro Max required an eligible plan starting at $75.99 a month for 36 months. That's roughly $2,735 in plan costs over the term, before the $35 activation fee. The phone discount is real. It's also welded to a plan you might never have picked on your own.
Simpler way to see it: if the required plan runs about $15 a month more than what you'd otherwise pay, the term quietly bakes in around $540 of extra cost inside a deal advertised as 0% APR. It isn't interest. It behaves exactly like interest.
Locked until it's paid
Two more constraints come with the installment plan.
The phone stays locked to the carrier until you've paid it off. And switching carriers before the balance clears means paying that balance in one lump sum — so next spring's better offer from someone else is available to you only if you can clear what you still owe first.
Early-upgrade programmes exist, but most come with conditions of their own, and several quietly change what the original promotion was worth.
When the deal is actually good
None of this makes carrier promotions a scam. If you'd have bought the premium plan anyway, you plan to stay put for three years, and the phone you're trading in is worth little on the resale market, the offer is simply good. That's a lot of households.
It's a bad deal if anything might change: a move, a job that hands you a phone, a household thinking about consolidating lines, or anyone who upgrades more often than every three years.
The number that decides it
Before you sign, work out one figure — total spend across 36 months, including the required plan, activation, taxes and device installments, minus the credits.
Then run the same total for your current plan plus buying the phone outright or on manufacturer financing.
Sometimes the carrier deal wins by hundreds. Sometimes it loses by more. Either way the comparison takes ten minutes, and the answer is never the number on the poster.
Image: Mathias Reding, via Pexels
