David ordered a refurbished iPhone from AT&T. What he received was a brand new empty plastic bag. Apparently, AT&T has 500 backorders for refurbished iPhones, so for some completely unknown and nonsensical reason, they’ve decided to start shipping empty plastic bags. Let’s join David as he tries to track down the iPhone he ordered…
David wanted a refurbished unit to test-run iPhone applications he was developing for work. AT&T gave him a a mishmash of conflicting information after he placed his order. One CSR said the unit would ship that day. Five days later, another CSR said the unit would ship within 3 days, but that was also wrong, and the package shipped that night with DHL.
DHL delivered the package the next day:
My wife calls to tell me she found the DHL delivery, but it’s not a box. It’s a shipping envelope. She asks if she should open it. I tell her please do.
“It’s just a bag.”
“It’s a what?”
“It’s a bag. It’s an empty plastic bag.”
“Well, um, er, is there anything else in the package at all? A note or anything?”
“There’s a shipping label. But this is just a bag like you’d get if you bought something in their store.”
When David called for an explanation, a supervisor explained that “there was a memo telling him that refurbished iPhone shipments had a technical glitch in shipping and would be delayed for a few days.”
David isn’t alone. AT&T’s heavily moderated forums are littered with similar complaints. When David tried to post contact information for AT&T’s executive office (877-734-0766,) he received the following reprimand:
Hello,
We’d like to ask that you not post contact info for the Office of the President in posts or PMs until an AT&T moderator can PM you. Failure to follow moderator directions can result in loss of posting privileges.
regards
David only wants the iPhone he ordered. The applications he designed just don’t work the same on AT&T’s Empty Plastic Bag ®.
AT&T is shipping empty plastic bags to iPhone customers [Where's My iPhone?]
More From Consumerist
-
Report: AT&T Discontinuing HTC First After Facebook Home Fails To Impress
-
T-Mobile iPhone Preorder Customer Rewarded With Getting Her Phone Next Wednesday
-
Just How Fake Is HGTV’s House Hunters?
-
A Future XBox Might Finally Make All Of Our Holodeck Fantasies Come True
-
Is That A Tyrannosaurus Rex Skeleton You’re Trying To Import Illegally Or — Wait, Dinosaurs?!
@2719: I’ve been an AT&T customer for over 5 years and I’ve never had a problem with them. Even through the switch from AT&T to Cingular, then back to AT&T. I guess it all depends on what experiences you’ve had personally. I don’t have a bad thing to say about them, but that might be just me.
@silencedotcom:
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s just you…
@ngth: free country indeed but the internet isn’t a free country. It’s the internet. It’s their boards. they can be asshats all they want on their servers.
Of course… You can ALSO be an asshat back and take your business elsewhere. That’s what I’d suggest. AT&T sucks.
@JN2: Apple has been known to ship updated/upgraded hardware when customers ordered older machines, but usually, that’s directly from Apple, and the new iPhone isn’t really an upgrade but a new one.
I really don’t understand how this is an issue, in this digital age.
Dell has practically real-time inventories of its refurbished systems. Hell, your cart gets erased after 15 minutes of shopping at their Outlet website.
How AT&T/Apple managed to accumulate a backorder of over 500 refurbished iPhones is beyond me. It’s quite simple. If you don’t have it, don’t sell it! It’s a completely unpredictable business. After more than a year, you may be able to get a good baseline of how many refurbs you can offer in one month, but that’s it. You can’t guarantee to any degree that you will have “x” units available in the coming month(s).
Maybe if you place an order with AT&T for an empty plastic bag, you might get an iPhone instead!
I read something online where someone ordered an iPhone online. They received the iPhone and a separate package with an empty ATT bag.
According to them, the empty bag was packaged better than the phone.
Perhaps the iPhones are on backorder, but the bags aren’t?
The iPhone bag thing is strange. The stores have bags that are exclusively used for iPhones. From what I understand, they’re actually not allowed to put anything but the iPhone in them. They even have their own SKU and UPC, which can be seen in the picture.
They must have some ridiculous policy that every iPhone customer must receive an official iPhone bag, even when the phone is bought online.
I was sold a Blackjack 2 and was given an iPhone bag. I later had to make a return on a bluetooth headset and went into the AT&T store with that bag. The ATT employee asked me about the bag and whether I purchased an iPhone. I told her no, and she told me about the official iPhone bag policy and said that the employee who sold me the phone could get in trouble for giving me the wrong bag. She then confiscated my iPhone bag and replaced it with the standard AT&T bag. I’m not even making this up.
I very much appreciate all the gasoline and Jet-A that AT&T is frivolously wasting on overnighting empty plastic bags to everyone who orders, not to mention the petroleum used in making the useless plastic bags.
I wonder how much the price of crude would drop if AT&T would seek help for its obsessive-compulsive shipments of empty bags?
We should all start a movement to make AT&T sales reps heads explode. Whenever anyone buys an iPhone at an AT&T store, after it’s all wrapped up pretty in that iPhone bag, take it from the rep.
Then rip the iPhone bag open, take out the iPhone package, pull a cheap plastic grocery store bag out of your pocket, and stick the iPhone in the cheap plastic bag. Throw the iPhone bag on the floor and walk out.
@HairyJew: It isn’t. Bu this is still ridiculous.
Writing to the president of AT&T’s mobile division is pointless anyway, so I’m not sure why they’d care about anyone leaking his contact information.
@rmric0: lolz
The real question: Is the plastic work on Apple OS?
humphrmi: But the iphone bag “just works”.
lol “Your World Delivered” is AT&T making a statement with that bag? I’m upset they didnt deliver my world? I’m gonna have to make a few phone calls to fix this ASAP.