l e o wrote:

> The actual cost of the phones must be very low.

New low-end phones cost the carrier around $40 wholesale.

> why don't you tell them they should sell people a replacement
> phone at a reasonable price?

Hey, I agree with this. I think it's very unethical that they have those
fake high prices, but they do so in order to get people to sign new
contracts for a big discount. It really hurts people that need a new
phone in the middle of the contract. Few people realize the workaround
of buying a prepaid phone and sticking a postpaid SIM into it (or the
CDMA method of simply changing the SID of the phone on-line).

> So maybe this is an unspoken intended
> purposes to encourage people to start using GoPhone and then switch to a
> postpaid plan.

Yes, they would like people to switch to postpaid, as it is much more
profitable. But they don't want existing post-paid customers to get
around the whole phone upgrade/contract renewal scam.