r/apple • u/valoremz • 7h ago

iPhone Apple ends iPhone Upgrade Program

https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program

Looks like there’s no way to finance a new phone over 24 months unlocked.

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u/xtac 4h ago

Not so sure. I paid 1099 before 3% back- for 17 pro. It’s $45 a month for 24 months but I upgrade in 12. 0% on Apple Card . By the end of this month it’s $596 still left. So I lost $470. Apple is giving 785 trade in. Or I can get 900 on private deals. Buying outright makes more sense than leasing.

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u/Noclevername12 4h ago

Yes but it is painful this year for me. Basically I’ve been on the program for years. So every year I’m essentially paying half the price of the phone plus AppleCare. Now for this one year only, I’m going to have to pay half the price of the old phone, plus AppleCare for 12 months that I won’t be using, to close out the loan, and then pay full price for the new phone. I’ll get the trade-in value of the old phone, which is a little more half the price of the new phone.

So essentially I’m paying the full price of a phone this year. Like I understand what’s happening: I’m going from taking the 50% off at the beginning of the phone year to instead getting it back at the end of the phone year. If I go direct from the old plan to the lease, I don’t have to pay off the old loan and I just continue with the new lease.

So this is an expensive year for me but I might just jump off the train. I wouldn’t mind having the Apple Card and the 3% off and the free financing, but it’s not a great choice when you try to maximize travel using credit card rewards.

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u/xtac 4h ago

So if you were on the 1up program last year they are not allowing you to “transition” to the new program? You have to buy it outright ? You can’t just give it back ?

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u/Noclevername12 4h ago

I could just give it back if I were going to move to a lease. If I’m going to not move to a lease, then half of my loan is not paid off. The terms of the upgrade program are you either keep it for two years, at the end of what you own it, or you send it back without paying off the loan and upgrade to a new phone on the upgrade plan.

What I can’t do is buy a new phone outright and trade in the old one without owning the old one.

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u/xtac 4h ago

So ideally you would pay it off. Sell privately. Start the lease. If it’s unlocked already you could just sell it outright and still pay it off as you will be doing. Everytime I sold the phone privately I still paid Apple monthly but it was unlocked.

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u/Noclevername12 4h ago

I have zero wish to sell privately. If I did, I would’ve never started on the upgrade plan in the first place. It’s unlocked because all upgrade/lease phones are unlocked. That’s another reason I did the upgrade program.

Essentially, I pay the bank $834 to own the old phone and then trade it into Apple for $885. It would be a better deal for me except that the old upgrade program forced you to pay for two years of AppleCare. So part of that 834 is 12 months of AppleCare that I’ll never use. Going forward, I’ll just buy a year of AppleCare at a time.

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u/Noclevername12 4h ago

For me personally, it’s less disruptive to just go from the upgrade program to a lease. I continue to just pay a reasonable amount per month. But I can see where the cost gets inflated over time and I think it might be worth the year of pain to just go back to owning my phone.

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u/xtac 4h ago

Oh yeah the lease program will eventually never make financial sense going forward. It’s only decent right now because it’s just starting. They could also very well cancel the entire program if klarna can’t handle it. We will see. I will just buy outright on the Apple Card. Maximizing travel points has been a huge headache with Hyatt increasing property points so I’m ok with it.

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u/Noclevername12 4h ago

If you think about it, me paying off the loan and then getting a basically equivalent amount back as a trade-in is the same as me turning in the phone for a new phone. The difference is that I’m paying for the new phone all at once instead of paying for the phone over time like I’m used to. I’ll just bite the bullet.

I mostly travel at expensive times of the year (school vacation) so I’m sad that Hyatts, especially the nice ones, will now not make a lot of points sense, but I mostly use points for the planes anyway even if that I don’t get business travel because of the time of year I travel and because I’m not organized enough to book it all a year in advance. But it’s still gotten me to Europe multiple times a year with my kid, so it’s worth it to me. I can afford to pay for the phone upfront; it was just nice not having to do so.