alt Hacker News> If someone doesn’t have $400 to buy out the residual then I doubt they would have had the cash to pay for the whole thing up front.
That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one, but are now paying perpetual monthly payments.
There’s a reason car dealerships never ask “how much can you afford”, but “how much do you want to pay every month”.
There’s a reason Klarna is running the program for them.
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What if I don’t want to “own my phone”?
Look, I have one camera with me and one child. As long as the camera gets better every year, I’m gonna want a better camera, every year. I don’t want to deal with carriers and trade-in shopping. Unfortunately this particular deal sucks compared tot he old one.
I’m not financially irresponsible. I value these devices highly and value my time.
> That’s the entire point. They would have bought a cheaper phone
This kinda sounds like, "We should make it hard for people to make poor financial decisions." Which seems like an answer completely orthogonal to the problem at hand.
> They would have bought a cheaper phone, or held on to their old one
Or they would have just bought the new phone and sold their old one for dimes on the dollar on e.g. Gazelle.
You know those financially irresponsible people don’t need this program, right? They would have used a credit card to buy it with much worse terms
You seem tilted at Apple for offering a financing option, but your real gripe is apparently with some people who have poor financial decision making skills. Those people could (and probably would) do a lot worse with traditional options like a credit card.
Can we at least compare apples to apples (hah) and look at the actual terms of the program here? Honestly they're not bad, and I say that as someone who leans toward purchasing outright.
I think this is exactly right — when the options on the table are: - iPhone 17 (~$800) - iPhone 17 Pro Max (~$1200)
a person may reasonably make the choice that they don't need the Pro Max and buy the regular 17.
Now, when the options are: - iPhone 17 ($23/month) - iPhone 17 Pro Max ($35/month)
$12/month extra doesn't seem too bad, except the fact that after 24 months you can't afford to keep the phone and are effectively forced to upgrade to a new iPhone.
I agree that more options are generally better for consumers, but these types of leasing programs are predatory and come at a time when everything is becoming a subscription.