Why am I required to make payments on my phone?

[ejbpesca]

I bought a Galaxy phone.  The salesman would not let me pay cash for it.  He required me to make payments.  Why?  He told me it was, "Just the way it is."  

[MicCheck · Accepted solution]

Unless you received some sort of promotion, there shouldn’t be a reason that Next is required. Go online and pay off the phone if that’s still what you want to do. 

[lizdance40 · Accepted solution]

Promotions require installments.   Authorized retailers often will not allow full price purchases. 

Best Buy wanted my Verizon account to process a purchase but gave up as soon as I Said I was a prepaid customer.  

[ejbpesca]

Yes, there was a free tablet involved in the package so dealer would not accept full payment.  I see, I can pay it off now.  Still a bit confusing as to why at POSale I could not just pay it but I guess there is some reason.

[sandblaster]

I hope you realize that “free tablet” requires 2 years of cellular service. 

[ejbpesca]

No I did not realize that I had to pay two years cell service and cannot use cell service on it anyway due to the signal being so weak at home. It will work on wifi. If I travel with it, yes, I can get streaming service over it in some areas and I boosted it to unlimited cell service but did not know anything was required for two years.

I had to boost to unlimited for at least the tablet because all the massive ads on Direct TV Now are not part of your free data for the streaming so a limited amount of data without having unlimited will shut it down in little time…and you cannot use the unlimited as a hot spot. My main device a Galaxy S8+ will use its couple of gigs up on ads so fast that using it for a go anywhere TV….(anywhere there is proper signal) it is not dependable for DTVNow viewing as speed goes to 2g after data cap it hit which is too slow for DirectTVNow. None of that was explained to be at purchase time. It has been a mess but at least with unlimited I can watch TV on an island I visit with very little traffic. Where I live is a nightmare of congestion over the cell systems. Just go a few miles away and poof…it works but my exact home location is in the crossfire of massive use of cell devices.

So many caveats or gotchas as I call them.

[sandblaster]

No I did not realize that I had to pay two years cell service

You’ve got 14 days to return it.