If you're a nerd, you already know this, but if you're not, let me, someone who spent about 4 months working at a Metro by T-Mobile store, tell you how exactly they're ripping you off.
Firstly, the sticker price next to the model phones is, in fact, the actual price of the phone. There may be a small activation fee, like $10 or something, but besides that, if a phone says it's $249.99, it actually is $249.99.
When an associate at a carrier store tells you the prices listed are corporate white lies, the truth is they are lying to you. Carrier store associates make commission, but not on the phones. They only make commission on the phone's accessories. They are not motivated to sell you a more expensive phone, they are motivated to sell you any phone, and the accessories to go with it.
The problem is that in the Amazon age, no normal everyday person would actually buy their accessories from a carrier store unless they were in a hurry. Carrier stores will charge $35 for a cheap clear plastic case with a decal that will rub off in a month. The same case can be found on Amazon for $5 with free shipping. The carrier store got that case from a wholesaler for $1.52.
So the store associates know they can't really sell you the accessories at their actual prices. So they lie. Flat-out.
"I can get you this $250 phone for about $310. And, lucky you, it comes with a case of your choice and a screen protector!" You're not lucky, you're being played. You're paying $250 for the phone and $60 for a case and screen protector.
We were actively encouraged at my store to do this. We had a cheat sheet of inflated prices for each phone hidden in a desk so we could coordinate prices between salespeople and it had to be hidden covertly when corporate would come around to check on us. We were purposely paid shit wages (9.50/hr) to push us to scam people for our own benefit. We were instructed never to use the word "free" when describing the "bundled" accessories, because that somehow made the obvious bullshitting and lying not bullshitting and lying anymore. We were told never to print receipts for the transactions because if we did, the customer would realize they'd been ripped off and get pissed off (I saw this happen exactly once and after my coworker refunded them the extra money, she actually tried to complain to me about how rude the customers had been...).
I was actually fired from my store because I didn't rip people off enough, and in one case even sold a phone to a woman at cost with no accessories because she came into my store practically sobbing that she was a single mother who had broken her phone, had little money, and desperately needed a phone immediately to be able to do, y'know, anything. For the crime of not ripping off a desperate single mother, I was fired. I just wasn't scummy enough, wasn't enough of a horrible person to work in a carrier store.
So yeah. Take it from me. Don't ever buy a phone from a carrier store. Or, if you absolutely must, take what I wrote here in there, tell them to their face that you know what they're trying to do, and that you want to pay sticker price for the phone. I guarantee, the associate will clam up and do as you say, because they're not used to people knowing about their scam.
