Less expensive - ETF or just pay thru contract end date?

[joker2979]

My contract with VZW ends in two months and I'm looking to jump to Sprint now.  Does anyone know if it would be less expensive to keep paying my monthly bill until September or just cut the service as soon as I activate with Sprint and pay the early termination fee?

[21stNow]

  That's a question that only you can answer, since we don't know how much your monthly bill is.  We also don't know how many phones are on your account that the ETFs that Jim listed above would apply to.

[silver6056]

Do you need to jump to Sprint now for some reason, or is there a possibility of moving once the contract ends?  That is almost certainly the cheapest alternative unless there is so a huge price difference that it will pay for the ETF within two months.

And if you do have to switch, I would suspect that with just two months to go, it's probably better to pay for the two months, as ETF is per phone, and $130 per handset may be more than two months of plan, again depending on the plan and the number and type of handsets!

[Marla526]

Question on ETF....we have three phone, regular, not IPhone. Is the ETF a flat rate or is t calculated by months left on the contract for each phone? Thanks.

[silver6056]

As jimfitzgerald said above, it's a standard formula with the charge going down each completed month.  So for "advanced devices" the ETF starts at $350 and reduces by $10 per completed month, basic phone starts at $175 and decreases by $5 per month.  (And of course at contract end it becomes 0, even though those figures would have $110 left on a smarthphone!)