I am not sure whether it's a teenage thing, but a lot of the people I know have phone contracts as in handset + air time, 24mths that exceed £30 pcm. To me, this seems like an exorbitant amount of money, but the impression I get from speaking to them is "it's nothing". I'm trying to establish in my mind whether it's down to parents paying and therefore them not "seeing" the true cost. Either that, or it's become so established, so expected that people feel they have to have it, regardless of the cost.
The basis of this comes from a little survey I came up with. If I say I get £40 a month pocket money, they'd immediately say: "that's loads" (even when told that was total income eg no birthday/christmas cash). SO I'd ask them how much they'd get and usually get an answer between £20 and 30. After that, I ask about phone contract cost. The vast majority of people have no idea! Those that do were all on £30+. When I proceeded to explain how much that worked out to be over the contract period, the automatic response was just to shrug it off, almost as a "necessary expense". From that, then, we can establish they neither see the cost, nor query the necessity of the cost.
The iPhone 6, especially, cements this feeling in my mind. The lowest cost contracts I've seen are close to £40 pcm with an upfront cost, and they are already beginning to penetrate the market pretty quickly. And I can guarantee you one thing: a significant amount of the users (certainly that I know), will still have a contract on an iPhone 5, for example, still ongoing.
This seems to span the whole economic spectrum: I've asked people whose household income is sub 15k and those with incomes in excess of 100k.
How best to conclude this... "Out of sight, out of mind" seems to be the best, but with a helping of peer pressure and, it could be argued: the mindless following of advertisements.
What mobile contracts do you possess...?
The basis of this comes from a little survey I came up with. If I say I get £40 a month pocket money, they'd immediately say: "that's loads" (even when told that was total income eg no birthday/christmas cash). SO I'd ask them how much they'd get and usually get an answer between £20 and 30. After that, I ask about phone contract cost. The vast majority of people have no idea! Those that do were all on £30+. When I proceeded to explain how much that worked out to be over the contract period, the automatic response was just to shrug it off, almost as a "necessary expense". From that, then, we can establish they neither see the cost, nor query the necessity of the cost.
The iPhone 6, especially, cements this feeling in my mind. The lowest cost contracts I've seen are close to £40 pcm with an upfront cost, and they are already beginning to penetrate the market pretty quickly. And I can guarantee you one thing: a significant amount of the users (certainly that I know), will still have a contract on an iPhone 5, for example, still ongoing.
This seems to span the whole economic spectrum: I've asked people whose household income is sub 15k and those with incomes in excess of 100k.
How best to conclude this... "Out of sight, out of mind" seems to be the best, but with a helping of peer pressure and, it could be argued: the mindless following of advertisements.
What mobile contracts do you possess...?























