I don't mean to threadjack but since it came up here and I wasn't able to find a thread dedicated to it elsewhere, do any of you fine folks know whether there appears to be any rationale as to who gets the "$100 off LTE" email and who doesn't? I've scoured my inbox, trash bin, and spam folder for anything from VZW and haven't found anything... could be because I've been eligible for an upgrade for too long to qualify (it's been months but nothing caught my eye at the time until the Dinc4g was announced, and ironically I'm now considering either the Rezound, which I passed up when it was $50, or the Bionic, which even more recently was free...).
Let me set this straight since there is a lot of questions regarding this (even though i'm not 100% sure of the facts but i'm pretty close). There are in fact people getting the SGS 3 for as low as $79.99 (if they buy the 16gb version which is $199.99 - have an NE2 discount available of $50 - the $100 discount to move to 4G LTE + the $30 upgrade fee = $80.) There may even be people getting it for free, but that is not normal
Reason: VZW is going to make all their money off data and they know it.
Offered to: People WHO DO NOT CURRENTLY HAVE DATA PLANS or have an old feature phone or an old 3g data phone.
Not offered to: People on unlimited data that are using a ton of data and will stay on unlimited data. Also, anyone on a special promo plan like me ($140 for 2 lines with unlimited text and data + 1400 anytime minutes + 10 friends and family. only offered for a short window in 2010). They are not making as much money on me or others like me so why would they discount the phone.
For the people that are getting this deal, the person is like "YAY! I got an SGS3 for only $100 or LESS!! WOOT WOOT!!" and they aren't paying attention that there monthly bill is going up or they are losing unlimited data OR they have been consistently overpaying for their needs in the first place so Verizon wants to lock them in.
Bottomline: if you are a profit source for VZW they will happily discount the most popular phone in America today to keep you payings hundreds of $$$$ in data fees and even thousands of $$$$ over the term of your contract. Then discounting the phone another $100 to you makes a lot of sense.
If you are not a profit source (like me and others on unlimited data that actually use a lot or have really cheap promo plans) then they aren't going to be handing you anything extra and in my case, I will happily pay the full $250 for my phone and continue to save every month over anyone else's unlimited data plan on VZW.
If you haven't already received an email from VZW about a discount, don't hold your breath. There, hope that puts the differing prices on the SGS3 to rest
