As we revealed last month, Rogers has been prepping a new way to pay for connected tablets, and today made public its solution, dubbed Easy Pay.
The gist is simple, and something that both Bell and TELUS have already implemented: customers can amortize the price of a tablet in equal payments over 24 months, similar (but more linear) to the cost of a smartphone. For example, the Nexus 9 LTE costs $669.99 outright, which Rogers forced users to pay up front before adding a data plan. With Easy Pay, that number is divided into chunks of $27.91 paid each month for two years.
The only major stipulation of Easy Pay is that it must be tied to an existing Share Everything plan, so prospective customers must already have an activated smartphone on a 2-year contract to take advantage of the deal. Doing so allows that account holder to share data between a number of smartphones and tablets, so there is method to the madness. The tablet itself costs an additional $10/month to add to a Share Everything plan, but there are no additional data charges; only a $20 connection fee, which applies to all devices.
Customers can still choose to subscribe to a Flex Tablet data plan, which costs $40 for 5GB at the high end, but the tablet itself will need to be bought at full price.
Rogers has three tablets for sale at the moment: the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5, for $649.99; the Nexus 9 LTE, for $669.99; and the iPad mini 2 16GB, for $469.
The company is also giving away two years of basic Next Issue Canada with each Easy Pay signup, which would normally run some $240. The company partnered with Condé Nast in late 2013 to offer the digital magazine subscription, which costs $9.99/month for over 100 monthly publications. A $14.99/month tier offers select weeklies like Maclean’s and The New Yorker. The deal is available to every Easy Pay customer except those in Quebec.
[source]Rogers[/source]
