Best Verizon S4 full retail price discounts/cashback?

[vacaloca]

I've noticed that Verizon's full retail price is $650, I want to keep my unlimited data so I'm probably buying full-retail. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas for getting a discount? If it's anything like the past, I think I should be able to get the $50 Verizon rebate, even if I don't re-up.. certainly had worked a few years back now with other phones that came with a rebate, even if the terms said otherwise.

For those of you that are planning to get it with a new contract or an extension/renewal, Wirefly has it for preorder at $179.99 -- http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05...-and-upgrades/ and one could stack a cashback portal referral on top of that. However, for my case, a lot of sites don't give you much if you're just buying the phone without a contract.

I thought about VZW gift cards bought from gift card marketplaces, but couldn't find any. I also thought about buying gift cards at a discount for Radio Shack, but it seems their full retail price is $700, so that won't do much at ~10% avg discount, plus I'd miss on the (possible) Verizon rebate... so buying direct might be the best option I can think of.

If anyone has any ideas to drop the full-retail price further I'm all ears

I might just end up waiting until slightly used phones on eBay jump down in price, though...

 

[chris2k5]

Buy at Verizon Store for $650. If you can get an employee discount, try it. You're in NH so no sales tax already. Make sure you look into cashback on credit cards. A lot of cards give you a % or points back. Or use a miles card.

 

[vacaloca]

Yep, I think that's what I'm going to end up doing -- getting it direct from VZW. If I can get them to bill it to my phone bill, I can use the Amex SimplyCash card to get 5% off the full retail price. My last employee discount for VZW didn't save any $ on phones, but I'm starting a summer internship soon, so the new employer might offer something better -- I'll check on that. Thanks for the reminder!

I dropped by my local Best Buy to check out the Sprint version and one of the employees mentioned they would pricematch Verizon's full-retail price, so that might be another worthwhile avenue for others. I won't attempt it because I'm not confident they'll actually do the match and I wouldn't be able to get much more than 5% discount for their giftcards and it's a bit of a hassle when I can get the same 5% easily taking it to the monthly bill.