Got booted to moronic monday by a bot for this, but here's how I got 5x on a new iphone purchase from Verizon

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I am not sure if this is known, but I just tested this out, and it was a bit tricky, but it worked so I thought I'd share since 5x can net a significant amount of points. Generally, while paying your cell phone bill through Verizon gives you 5x, buying a phone from them does not (different billing codes are used). Thus, if you upgraded to say, an iPhone 7 and paid in full at checkout, you would not earn bonus points on the Ink. A user on Reddit had alerted me to this, so I experimented with something different: at checkout I chose the financing option (no extra fees associated with doing it in this context), where I paid $0 down at checkout and paid only the taxes on the new phone. As expected, I did not earn points on the taxes ($100). However, once I received the phone a few days later, I paid off the device in full on Verizon's website and did receive 5x. Note: you would also receive 5x on the installment payments if you chose to remain on the plan, but I had no desire to and I suspect others here wouldn't want to either. http://imgur.com/vetjJVr

So tl;dr don't pay off the phone on Verizon until you receive it to earn 5x on the Ink.