Mainstream Service Providers

My first customer well-being post will be about my specialty, cell-phone service providers. Almost everyone needs a cell phone, and service providers know this. In the previous post I mentioned that I work at T-Mobile. This is only partially true. Your guys' first lesson in my posts will be the difference between a service provider's corporate company and it's exclusive dealers. I work for an Exclusive Dealer which is where I would personally direct a customer to. An exclusive dealer is usually a start-up or small-mid sized business that buys cell phones off of mainstream providers for their market value (smart phones range from $130-$650) and then sell those phones with 2 year contracts. One the sale is made, the mainstream provider pays the exclusive dealer revenue based on the type of plan that was sold. This means that exclusive dealers can adjust the prices of the phones to their hearts desire as long as the revenue of the plan sold is higher than the cost of the phone to the company. So why don't the corporate dealers adjust their prices in the same fashion? It's because mainstream providers need to stay competitive with the other companies. Exclusive dealers don't even make corporate that much more money. It's the fact that these exclusive dealers are out in the malls locking people into two-year contracts. So if corporate loses even a little money on these phone sales, they'll always have 24 monthly payments of $80 on average coming in as pure revenue. Win-win for corporate. So when you go buy your next cell phone, go to a dealer and talk him down. He won't want to, but he can easily lower the price of your phone and the plan as well (up to 25% for some dealers). So get out there and show that salesman who's boss! Good luck consumers.