This last upgrade "fee" was the top I'd pay for a few years. $250. I had the option to go S8+ for $350 but even that's too much, plus it's too damn big.
I'd always lagged behind with the $50 or free upgrades when eligible but with older model phones. On rare occasion, if you killed a phone before upgrade eligible, corporate would use one of many they had in reserve (employees that left, credits they get for usage, etc.) In my case last December, it was an opportunity to get current with the phone everyone was recommending. Hell, I took a poll here...
While initially concerned about reports of easily broken glass on the S8's curved screen, I've been completely pleased with the S8 other than the PITB it was to put on a screen protector. That is, until it bricked itself. Researching the issue, I found reports of early release models bricking during user first time setup, but the issue seemed to have been resolved. Maybe I got one on the cusp. Hopefully, Samsung has worked things out and I won't have any further issues.
Since the computer could see the core processor, but the phone won't start or charge, I'm of the opinion the internal memory failed. To that point, I'd posted earlier that it was a 32GB, but I'm not seeing that they ever released a 32GB version (they did for the S7) so maybe I'm mistaken and it was 64GB. Frankly, with either option, I wasn't battling issues of insufficient internal memory like I was with my 16GB S5 and the add-on 128GB card was carrying all the data for apps that used/permitted it, the bulk of that being music and photos/vids.