Samsung Stay New smartphone exchange offer-Why it isn't great?

Samsung has started a new scheme under which consumers are allowed to upgrade to a new Galaxy smartphone by returning their old Galaxy smartphone to Samsung. The scheme, named as Stay New, provides Samsung Galaxy smartphone or tablet users to upgrade to the next Galaxy device after six months by returning their old Galaxy phone.

Here are the details:

The offer is valid for few devices, mostly high end devices, including Galaxy Note III, Note II, Note 10.1, Galaxy S4, S4 Mini, SIII, and Galaxy Tab 3 (7 and 8).

Under the offer consumers can buy above mentioned devices of Samsung through onetime payment or avail EMI option provided by HDFC, ICICI, Citibank and Standard Charted banks to pay price in 18 months. Do remember if you do not have a credit card of these banks, you can't get the installment offer.

Once you purchased the said Galaxy devices, after six months you can call Ingram Micro's toll free no (18001206633) if you want to upgrade to a new Galaxy device. Ingram Micro are the partners of Samsung in the new scheme. They would pick up the phone from you and after some days, post evaluation, offer you a buy back value of your device. If you agree to that amount, they will directly send the amount to your bank and will give you the new Galaxy device after you pay the reminder fee.

The offer is valid till 31st March 2014. However, this is not an innovative offer at all. Such buy back scheme has been offered by many like Apple, Nokia etc in the past itself. It has also been observed in the past that usually handsets offered via such schemes are priced highly while you could get a much better discount if you purchase the same from online dealers, who often give a handsome discount.

Many analysts had in the past advocated a system in which top handset makers could find a system where buyers just need to purchase a handset once and can return their devices to the handset manufacturers after some time to upgrade themselves to a new device launched by the manufacturer. The Mobile Indian is of the opinion that if the buyback offer was extended to all the phones of Samsung it would have been a killer move and would have benefited all the consumers rather than a select few.