Become a Treonaut for Free*
*If you happen to have $25,000 to open a new account with Ameritrade…
This is not the first time that I’ve come across a company offering a Treo as an incentive for new or existing customers but to the best of my knowledge Ameritrade’s is the first completely ‘free’ one.
Considering that the Unlocked Treo 650 (GSM) retails for $599.00 this Ameritrade offer amounts to getting 2% cash-back on your $25,000 investment. Cingular Wiress, Sprint and Verizon Wireless are the three carriers available for this promotion. If you currently have a voice or data plan with either of these carriers you will be able to activate the Treo 650 with your current plan.
[Thank you RichC for the tip. I hope that you will soon find your path to join the Treonauts revolution! 
…]
Treonauts are always finding great deals… 
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» Free Treo 650 from Ameritrade from Treo Today
Ameritrade is offering a free Treo 650 smartphone when you open an account with them. The catch? You need to invest US$25,000.
You can opt for Cingular Wiress, Sprint and Verizon Wireless as your service providers. If you have $25K to spare, the... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 15, 2006 10:54:29 PM
Comments
Are they actually offering an unlocked GSM phone?
Locked Verizon/Sprint/Cingular phones are going for a lot less than $600.
i only have $24,700.00 cause i already bought a treo 650 from ebay...
It does NOT say that this is an unlocked phone and may be similar to the United deal that gave away a free Treo but locked you into a voice + data deal with Cingular for something like $70/month.
It doesn't show the unlocked GSM one, and most dealers only have the carrier-branded models. (I have an unlocked one, ordered from Palm's roadshow, and I get questions sometimes like "Why is yours a different color than mine when both are on Cingular?"). Since it says it's only available to US residents, I'd be surprised to see them offer the unlocked GSM Treo.
I wouldn't be surprised if it is similar to the United deal. It's just taking the concept of rebates when you buy a phone and stepping it up, since there's another company that can absorb some of the costs.
I was merely using the price of the 'Unlocked' model to reflect the actual value of the Treo 650 not taking into account specific carrier incentives which typically reduce the outright purchase cost to less than the MSRP of $599.00.
Whether you get your Treo for $99 with Earthlink or $229 with Cingular the actual value of the smartphone remains $599.00.
I hope that this clarifies the matter.
Cheers, A.
@Andrew -
MSRP and value are not the same thing. On a quick scan of ebay, the current value of a Sprint branded Treo is $200-300. Sprint and Palm can claim it is worth $600. It's not.
And when they give you a 1099 for $600 like it says in the fine print, and you are in a ~30% tax bracket, then the net cost of the phone is about $200 which is not too far from what I can buy the phone on ebay for.
May I activate and use the treo 700 in Argentina with a local phone company that works with cdma tecnology?
Thanks
I was going to open a trading account anyways so I took Ameritrade up on the offer thinking that I could get the phone and have it unlocked to work with t-mobile. However, after sending it to be unlocked since the e-bay solutions were not working I was told the phone that I received was not a GSM phone but a CDMA phone which would not accept my T-mobile SIM card. Go figure....
iam looking for 700p,
could someone give me an outright price
and delivery to overseas?
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