We Need to Talk about the Note 8

TL;DR: If you want the Note 8 on AT&T, and your current phone is paid off, you can probably trade it in for $300 off your Note 8 purchase, even if it's not worth much, plus get either a free wireless charger and 128GB microSD or a cool gear 360 camera toy if you order by September 24th. If your phone isn't paid off, but you have paid enough to trade it in, you can go to Wal*Mart and buy a Moto e4 for $40, and trade both phones in for $300 off the purchase, plus the aforementioned freebies. If you aren't yet eligible for a trade in, just hold onto your phone for now. Prices will drop in a couple months for the Christmas rush anyway. YMMV, as always.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. If the room is my head and the elephant is a big grey phone with two cameras and a stylus.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm talking about the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

A year ago, my husband and I both upgraded our phones. I to the newish Galaxy s7 and he to the already almost a year old Galaxy Note 5 (they skipped Note 6 in their numbering).

I was immediately jealous of his s-pen. He doesn't use it often, but I do so much of taking quick notes on my phone, and filling checkboxes as I fill out my digital Bullet Journal, that I think I would use it all the time. Just a week or so after we bought our new phones, the Galaxy Note 7 dropped, and I was really really jealous. I even briefly considered returning my phone and getting a Note 7 instead.

But then they started exploding, so... you know.

I said even then that I wanted a Note 8, and now that it's here, I haven't changed my mind. But it's also almost a thousand dollars, which is a lot even if they spread it over two years.

I said the day I started this blog that I like to write things out to help me think them through, and I said in my recent blog post about use cases that when I make a big purchase I like to think it all the way through to see what's the best I can get out of my budget. Finding markdowns, bargains, and discounts - and figuring out how to make them stack - is a huge part of that.

So how much can I manage to get it marked down?

1. Because I opted for the Next every year plan, I'm allowed to upgrade now because I already paid off more than 50% of my s7's purchase price. That essentially means that AT&T is willing to give me almost $400 to give it back to them, better than even anyone else can do.
    
2. Samsung is offering $300 for s7 models or the Note 5, and up to $300 for other phones unless you were a Note 7 owner whose phone was recalled, then you may be eligible up to $425. But I would have to pay the balance to AT&T, so definitely not worth it for me, but a good option for others.
    
3. Best Buy offers $100 off for AT&T customers pre-ordering the Note 8, spread over your AT&T Next payments. They have other similar preorder offers for Sprint and Verizon, but obviously my research is focused primarily on AT&T because that's the carrier I'm using.
    
4. Costco offers a $150 cash card. Better than the Best Buy Deal, but only if you are going to shop at Costco anyway. Sam's offers $200 in gift cards and a waived activation fee.
   
5. AT&T is also offering a Buy One, Get One Free offer, but it only applies to traditional DirecTV satellite customers. Bare minimum of $35 a month for service. No use for me, but might be good for you.

So, none of those offers are really stackable, except that I can send my s7 back to AT&T even if I upgrade at Costco or Best Buy. But a Costco gift card or a purchase price marked down to "only" $849 aren't that appealing.

However:

6. The "Trade In and Trade Up" program AT&T is offering directly is actually an offer for a guaranteed trade-in of $300, as long as your phone is valued as a $20 trade-in or better. AND it's stackable with offer 1 above - so I can turn my s7 back in, and give them another phone, so my s7 balance is wiped clean and I get an extra $300 off the purchase price. (offer is second in the scrolling advertisement)

Now, trade-in values suck, so none of my old phones were eligible except my Nexus 5x which came in around $25, but I'm hesitant to trade it in, because it's just about the last thing I can play around with modding and ROMing now that almost everyone has given up on the Nexus 7. But a little bit of digging led me to find that:

7. The Moto E4 - a very nice prepaid phone that costs about $100 unlocked - has a similar $25 valuation from AT&T. And it's on sale at Wal*Mart for $40. (Amazon too, but they were listing it as shipping in 1-4 weeks at the time of writing. Best Buy may agree to price match Amazon if you prefer going that route.)

YMMV, but I took my newly purchased Moto E4 to the AT&T store this evening and they confirmed that I could trade in the Moto e4 for $300 AND trade up my s7 to avoid having to pay it off. The AT&T Trade in and trade up offer is good through 9/30/17, but Best Buy's preorder deal is only good for actual preorders. Since the phone is officially released on Friday, today is the last day to get option 3 - $100 off at Best Buy. My guess is that if I were to wait it out, that come Friday, Best Buy may have access to the $300 Trade In and Trade Up offer too, but it will likely be distributed in the form of Best Buy gift cards. Very tempting for me, but $300 directly off the AT&T bill is by far more responsible, and on a rare occasion I like to be responsible when I'm being irresponsible. So for now my plan is to wait it out a couple days to see if Best Buy throws an unexpected curve ball, but otherwise buy at an AT&T store on Friday.

8. And one last freebie - Samsung is offering either a wireless charging stand AND a 128GB microSD card (though I have heard many reports from people who have received 256GB cards instead, ordering from Samsung directly) OR a Gear 360 camera. It's offered through Samsung, but is good for anyone who "preorders" from any store, though it actually just requires a purchase date by 9/24/17. My first thought was to obviously go with the practical option, but then I remembered I already have a wireless charger, and I have a 64GB SD card which is likely sufficient for my needs for now, and the 360 degree camera, while really weird, is also suuuuuper cool. The sales guy demonstrated it to me at Best Buy. If you pair it with a Samsung Gear VR headset, the person wearing the headset can turn his head to look around as if he were actually in the location of the camera. My exact words were "that's creepy, but also awesome." And it's not some weird uncanny valley 3D VR rendering, but actual video of the real world. I imagine people are sharing video files from their Gear 360s when they went skydiving and you can look all around, seeing things even the dude actually skydiving couldn't see. 

Did I say I didn't want those Best Buy gift cards? Maybe I wanna rethink that one.