Dana’s divorce left her with crappy credit and now AT&T wants a $750 deposit! She’s wondering if anyone has any advice for avoiding such a large deposit…
Hi there! It’s kinda embarrassing for me to write this, because I obviously have crappy credit that I managed to incur through a divorce. But I’m hoping that you have some insight.
I have been planning to buy an iPhone 3G since the second they were announced. Yesterday, just because I wanted to know how much I would be forking out for a deposit, I visited an AT&T store and asked them to run my credit to find out how much I would need. They hemmed and hawed about running it at first, but they finally did. The price they quoted was $750 for the deposit. Not WITH the phone, but just the deposit.
I’ve been a Verizon customer since last fall. When I bought my Chocolate (ugh) I paid a $150 deposit on it. And I never, EVER was disconnected for non-payment. I thought that was fair. But why $750 for a phone (an admittedly nice phone, but still.) Is this part of their effort to keep people from hacking? I asked them if they were going to offer a GoPhone for credit-challenged folks, and they said no (and I’d heard that elsewhere anyway.)
Does anyone have any idea on how I could get the iPhone without tripling the price. Thanks!
Dana
Don’t be embarrassed Dana, divorce can be rough on your finances and, let’s face it, it’s not like AT&T itself has good credit or anything. We’ve heard rumors that one can get the current model iPhone and use it as a GoPhone, (by the way, plenty of people with excellent credit use prepaid phones in order to avoid abusive cellphone contracts as a matter of personal preference) but since the new model is going to be subsidized, we’re guessing it might be more difficult to reach GoPhone utopia.
Commenters? Can you help Dana out? Or is she stuck with this crappy deposit?
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@Mayor McRib: based on ALL Judge Judy cases this doesn’t work well. If they worked well, they wouldn’t end up on her show
Patience is a virtue. The iphone2 will be launched worldwide. And in some European countries, mobile phone providers are required to offer an unlocked version. For $750, you can buy a grey market iphone2 from ebay. No credit check required. Just get a prepaid SIM and you’re all set. The only catch is that you won’t be able to access all the features, like visual voicemail. But that’s no big deal really.
Pay the deposit.. consider it an investment. A year from now AT&T will give you back your deposit, plus interest.
@newgalactic: It’s not necessarily that she “can’t afford it”. It’s that $750 is pretty damn steep as far as a required deposit. I could afford to pay that deposit, but I’d still be really pissed if someone tried to make me put that much down just to get a damn phone. I do remember that when I had a short credit history and got my first apartment, the electric company made me put down a $90 deposit that they refunded 6 months later. That’s fairly reasonable, I think. But $750 is pretty steep unless the credit issues are REALLY severe.
I have a first generation iphone, and unless you are a VERY heavy user- I doubt that most people would be able to tell the difference between it and the iphone 3g, save for the GPS functionality. It has the same processor, the same memory, the same screen, and all the same applications. The EDGE data access is fine for most everything… google maps is pretty snappy, and most web pages load in less than a minute.
Unless you absolutely, positively HAVE to have 3g data and GPS functionality, buy a used iphone! The prices on them will go down quite a bit after the new one is released, I guarantee. Your up-front commitment will be much lower, and you will have a phone that you OWN.
I won’t be upgrading to the 3g iphone until this one is dead, and I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ve had mine for close to a year and it still works great.
Yeah, all you haters are jumping to way too many conclusions. Jesus, what if she makes really good money and the credit problems are all her ex’s fault. Then you are pissing on her for ‘being willing to pay this outrageous deposit just to get a fashion toy blah blah’ when clearly that’s NOT what she’s doing. She’s trying to find an option to get the iPhone for a fair deal instead.
And to @virgilstar, who says you can get “more functionality” on another phone for “a lot less money,” please demonstrate for me how your phone’s browser does on Travelocity, Orbitz, or Flickr. Phone browsers I’ve used, other than the iPhone, can rarely handle “Web 1.0″ sites with Javascript, let alone “Web 2.0″ stuff with AJAX etc. The only way the browser app on the iPhone could be better, of course, would be if it had Flash. Now maybe you can download and load bunches of obscure apps on a Treo, a PocketPC phone (more expensive btw) or even a BlackBerry, but if her needs are more in line with “I need a phone with a browser that doesn’t suck ass” then who the hell are you to tell her that’s not the best phone for her? Also the Palm OS is crashy shit, Windows Mobile/PocketPC is crashy shit, and BlackBerry is very finely aimed at business email. None of these have a syncing solution that is easy to use for consumers, doubly so if you happen to use a Mac.
/I have a crappy-ass browser on my phone so I know a good one when I see it. I don’t have an iPhone or plan to get one ’cause I hate AT&T.
You can take the $200 you would have spent on the iPhone and pay off some debt… do that a few more times and then wait a few more years and you will be good to go. It’s called LIFE!
oooh oooooh OOOOOOOOOOH!…I want an iphone too…where can I turn in my first born child so I can have a ‘metoo’ gadget so everyone will think I’m trendy and hip?
@xkaluv: Really, because I’d like to introduce you to another concept called “reading the effing article and OP’s comments before chiming in with your completely inapplicable (as far as you know) comment”. And she already commented about an hour and a half ago, so you have no excuse.
Seriously, this place could use a few wild swings of the banhammer. I vote ACAMBRAS, Ben, Meghann, et al. do their best impressions of Mario in Donkey Kong.
For all the people saying that the bad credit isn’t her fault–
One of the most commonly misunderstood things about divorce is that creditors don’t give a rat’s patootie who the judge said needed to pay what bill. If both names are on an account, BOTH parties are responsible for paying it.
The way credit gets trashed in a divorce is someone defaults on the bills that were split, but both people are responsible for.
That’s right– BOTH PARTIES are responsible for ending up with a bad credit rating.
The FIRST THING you do in a divorce is close all credit accounts so that the debt situation is frozen, then use shared cash to reduce the debt as much as you can. That which you can’t eliminate, you REMOVE the name of the party not responsible from the account.
Thus, failure to pay on the part of your ex doesn’t impact you.
So, lessons learned, but in order to have such bad credit that AT&T is demanding nearly a thousand dollars in security deposit, the credit must be really, really bad. Buy an iPhone contract free if you want to avoid the deposit, but you obviously pay more for it if you do it this way– AT&T will give you the deposit back after a year, meaning the phone only cost you $200, instead of $500.
That said, the liklihood of a video capture app coming out that is decent is pretty slim. You’re working against hardware limitations at that point. I would never buy an expensive phone on the idea that it might be hacked to do something I want.
@alexander: *shrug* Can’t help her then.
Seriously, a journalist using an iPhone for newspaper photographs? No wonder the photos in my local paper look so awful. What happened to the Snapper McGee types with their Speed Graphx cameras on wooden tripods? Thems were the days!
@LatherRinseRepeat: She could also just buy an unlocked iPhone 3G from AT&T for $599.
Once upon a time, I worked at a store that sold both ATT and Sprint. If someone had a $500 deposit on ATT, we would run the credit on Sprint and often times the deposit would be from $50-$150. But, then again sprint has been shooting for the high risk customers. Anyway, once I ran a credit check for ATT that came back “Possible Undesirable”. Any other phone jockeys ever seen THAT one? I think that is the worse possible response that ATT can give. To me it means that they won’t take that persons business, even with a huge deposit…
Once you can unlock the iPhone 3G, buy on on eBay or have a friend pick one up then pay the cancellation fee immediately. Then put in a prepaid SIM card, or use T-mobile’s flexpay or an equivalent. Paying the ETF for AT&T is still better than paying their other prices for the phone. Or you could always buy the last gen iPhone on eBay and do the same. AT&T’s 3G service is way expensive, and its the only benefit of the new model verses the old besides GPS.
Some of you people don’t seem to understand. Buying an iPhone is about a lot more than just getting a cell phone, it’s also a guaranteed ticket to getting a handjob from the emo-cutter barrista at Starbux. Priorities people!
@Geekybiker: Oh, that old gag. So what? 3G plans cost more money, but it’s not up front in one lump sum. Also…
“Compared with a similar 3G phone on AT&T, the iPhone 3G costs exactly the same over two years as AT&T’s HTC Tilt (minus $100 for the increased initial phone price).”
I’ll say it now, most of the people posting here are idiots. The deposit is required to cover her service. It doesn’t matter which phone she bought.. if she wants a contract with AT&T she needs to put down a deposit.
The whole iPhone part of the story is immaterial. As long as she isn’t going pay-as-you-go, she’s going to be hit with the exact same deposit.
Finally, after a year, the deposit is returned to her in the form of a check, complete with interest earned. It’s no worse than sticking $750 in a savings account, only it helps repair her credit.
sept of 2006 i was also quoted a $750 deposit .
So i had to use gophone.
Earlier this year i bought a 2nd hand iphone with the intention of using it with gophone ( which is possible) but when i went to activate it they mysteriously approved my credit with NO deposit !
I have done nothing to repair my credit, bought nothing on payments so i doubt there could be that much improvement.
If you have to put down a $750 deposit to have a new trendy fashion accessory (and don’t act like the iPhone isn’t, because it is.) you probably have OTHER things to worry about. This isn’t about being anti-apple its called being wise rather than a damn fool. Don’t come crying to us about how your life situation precludes you from iphone ownership.
@krispykrink: Similar thing happened to my dad. His second wife after he booted her no good ass out of the house went and opened up a home phone line in HIS NAME racked up a $500 bill and fled.
@battra92:
I dunno. Maybe Eyebrows McGee knows.
@ErinYay:
Nokia has a MUCH larger market share last time I heard, in the hundreds of millions of phones. What’s thinking different about carrying a Nokia?
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@ Dana
I think you’re screwed. Back when I had no credit, no one would would touch me for under $500 except for Verizon, who wanted $400. I agree that this was the “go away” price, because once they said that, the CSR was ready to say goodbye and hang up. When I said “OK, I’ll do it” to the Verizon deposit (no other choice at that point), the CSR literally said “I’m sorry that we couldn’t help you.” and I said “No, I mean, OK, I want to do the deposit.” He said “Oh.. wow… Hold on a second.” and then disappeared for 5 minutes. Sad, but even when I offered to attempt to prove that I had never defaulted on my rent which was about the total cost of the 2 year contract for 1 month, they still didn’t care. They really wanted that $400, but at least they proactively returned it and gave me the interest as well.
Ok if you want and iPhone 3G there are 2 things to do.
After July 11th pick up a used iPhone 1st gen (just like 3g but slower network and no on board GPS, but will be upgradeable to the new 2.0 software). Get a Pick you plan account for 1st gen iPhone from at&t (just like pay as you go but they auto bill your credit card each month, No Credit check) do this for 6 months. Make sure all the credit card payments with at&t go through each month. After 6 months go to at&t store and tell them you want to switch to iPhone 3G, they will enter your info in and you will pass the credit check since you have been a paying customer for 6 months.
@LatherRinseRepeat: Problem is the only 3G network in the US compatible with iPhone 3G is AT&T (edge will work on t-mobile) and you can not do Pre Paid on AT&T with 3G iPhone only 1st gen iPhone can.
@battra92: The parent paper enjoys my Shakycam more? That or they’re CHEEP.
Actually, a deposit CAN be waived. I work at AT&T and I added on my 6th line to my account couple weeks ago. They wanted a $500 deposit because of how many lines I already have, so store rep called c&a and they approved me for another line, and no deposit. So yes, it CAN be done, but probably not in her situation.
I’d wait several months to improve my credit. I got my first credit card in January, a Capitol One card with 20%+ APR and didn’t use it a lot, maybe twice month at most for small purchases. I just got a Citi one with a much better APR that I would have gotten rejected for 6 months ago. Waiting some time to improve your credit does help.
I’d love an iPhone and might get one when my current AT&T contract is up in August. I’ve heard nothing but good things about them from other people who own them.
If I were Dana, I’d wait until Christmas to get one and see if my credit improves enough to where a more reasonable deposit is requested.
Just wait – the 3G Iphone will be unlocked and all the T-mobile carriers will have them anyways for the same price. Heck a bunch of them post on another free advertising site that they will unlock an iphone for you in the store and put you on a T-mo plan.
Don’t forget to flip the bird to the Death Star. Seriously a deposit higher than the cost of the damn phone?
@macinjosh: Well, I was referencing this ~_^
@ellastar:
Sprint has recently tightened their credit requirements.
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It doesn’t matter if the OP wanted some Free phone, she would still pay a deposit.
Most $750′s are because of a past balance with AT&T that was written off. If that’s the case, contact the finance department @ AT&T and works something out. If that is not the case, perhaps pay the deposit, and come next year, you will get it back on your bill, and live cell phone free for 8-10 months.
A lot of the advice hears misses a vital point: AT&T would still ask for a $750 deposit on the freebie model as well. My credit ain’t so great at the moment and Alltel wanted a $1000 deposit from me when I wanted to change to them from Verizon (of which I had been a paid customer in good standing for years). I told them as much, but they don’t care, so I got a new upgrade from Verizon instead.
Bottomline is that they want a massive deposit from your sub-par credit because they can basically tax you for a profit (sure in theory you will get it back some day, but they are at least earning interest on your money), not because your bad credit means you are likely to stick them for $750 as opposed to a more reasonable deposit of say $200.
epilogue: the jokes on Alltel at this point as it looks like I might get their favorite thingie offer afterall now that Verizon has bought them up.
@statnut: Ditto
Verizon wanted 1,000 for me to start an account. So I know how it feels.
Dana,
I need a new gf…just send me a pic and I’ll put you on a family plan =)
Dana, keep your current Verizon service, and buy an iTouch. It’s the same thing as the iPhone, minus the dial tone from ATT. You don’t need $750 deposit to make that call. It’s a rip off. I’ve been using Apple products for over 8 years. Their products are refine, reliable, sophisticated, and about 10 years ahead of the pack. That’s why everyone is trying so hard to catch up with them using words like ” The Instinct iPhone killer” and the “Palm Pre iPhone killer”. (You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all people all the time!).
Please get an iTouch for $200 and enjoy the best PDA/COMMUNICATION/ENTERTAINMENT device ever created. Don’t listen to those fools.