Wud never pay for a handset on a contract, it should always be free! Well if ur going for a 18month 35+ then yea. If they want money for the handset jst go elsewhere dnt waste ur time with em!
A gud way to look at it is to tally up the contract total an the handset price they are asking then u can see that u cud might as well buy it sim free an jst get a pay as u go sim with a monthly bolt on :-P