If you’re really into mobiles, and the chances are high that you are if you’re here, you’re going to really like this service.
Rentobile allows you to spit in the face of long term carrier contracts and commitments and flit like a bee between providers and more importantly, handsets. You can rent a mobile for a little as a month, before getting your hands on something even newer and shinier.
At a cost obviously.
So suppose you’ve been hankering after a new (or “like-new”) Blackberry Storm (I have no idea why you might have been, but maybe you just want to make up your own mind about the reviews). You go to their website, search and find out that it costs $56 a month if you’re a member (from $10 a month) or $84 a month for non-members (plus $9.95 p&p).
Clearly, that’s quite a premium over what you’d pay if you had the same phone with a contract from Verizon – $1,210 in total, including a basic plan on a 2 year contract if I have my maths right, or about $50 a month. But that includes 450 minutes of calls a month and the Rentobile price means that you pay for calls and data on top – at least that’s the implication of the website. If their price includes some kind of call and data package, that’s not stated, so I’m assuming, like most people I think, that it’s not.
Obviously, that’s only one example of an expensive handset, but then you’re not going to want to use this service for a Razr or something, are you?
So the sheer additional cost of this will mean that this is going to be a very niche market, appealing to hardened gadget junkies, who are rich, successful and probably slightly dim. And there are only so many David Beckhams in this world, when all is said and done.
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