Thought this might be helpful for people who got thier EVO 4G's about a year ago and are not eligible for a full upgrade....
The deal at Target is you trade in your EVO 4G and get a $150 discount towards the purchase of the new EVO 3D. Sounds great, but with Sprint's new tiered upgrade program, it isn't as great as it sounds.
Everyone is touting this as a way to get the new 3D for $50....well....not so fast...in order to get it for $50, you would have to be eligible for a "full upgrade" from Sprint. I was only eligible for a $75 discount towards an upgrade, and the price of the new 3D is going to be $500+ without a contract....so for me, that meant:
New EVO 3D- $500
$150 discount w/ EVO 4G trade in= $350
$75 upgrade discount from Sprint- $275
So, I would still have to pay $275 for the new phone.....no thanks!
So, I called Sprint, told them that I was very unhappy with the fact that they changed thier upgrade program, and that as a long time (3 year) customer of thiers, I expect to be able to get an upgrade once per year...and that if I left and went to Verizon I could get the new Atrix for cheaper than the new Evo 3D. I also told them that other than this issue, I was perfectly happy with Sprint, and would rather not leave...but if they were going to force me to keep the same device for 2 years I woul dhave no choice but to leave them.
The woman I spoke to put me on hold, and informed me that her "only option" was to allow me to "buy up" and basically purchase a full upgrade for $115. Needless to say, that doesn't really help much. I would still be paying over $250 for the new phone including that $115 "buy-up" fee or whatever they called it.
I asked her how much my cancellation fee was, and she told me it was $130. I told her (bluffed her, I should say) that I would rather pay the $130 cancellation fee now and head over to my Verizon store...and that I could sell my EVO on ebay for $200+ and end up actually MAKING money by switching to Verizon...at which time she sent me over to "Account Services" or something like that....AKA the retention department.
I gave them the rundown, told them that financially it makes more sense for me to pay my the cancellation fee and head over to Verizon, and that I would rather not do that, but if they weren't going to allow me to upgrade my phone once per year then I would have to do just that.
At this time, she told me that I was actually 3 weeks away from even being eligible for the $75 discount "upgrade" and technically I wasn't eligible for any kind of discount at this time at all. I told her that in order to keep me as a customer, I wanted a full upgrade now so I could go to Target and pre-order the new 3D EVO. I told her that I had no problem paying them another $200 for the new phone, and extending my contract another year (which is equal to about $1000 over the course of a year for them), and that I was not asking for a discount to my bill, nor was I asking for anything for free, I simply wanted the "privilege" of paying them an additional $200 per year for a new device, and that I was ok with extending my contract year after year as long as they worked with me.
Well, after being on hold for about 5 minutes, she said she was going to speak to her manager, and would call me back, but that she didn't think it would be a problem.
20 minutes later I got a call from her, informing me that I was immediately eligible for a full upgrade, so the new EVO 3D would cost me $200 instead of $500+....so I immediately went to Target, gave them a $50 down payment, and my phone will be there waiting for me at 10am on the 24th.
Rather than taking advantage of the $150 credit for my current phone from Target, I am going to sell my EVO 3D on Ebay for around $200-250, and might actually get the new 3D EVO AND make a few bucks on the sale of my EVO 4G!!!!
It took a while, but in my opinion it's more than worth a few hours of my time to get the best phone out there AND get it for free!!!!
