Reader Rom is angry with AT&T because they won’t sell him an iPhone 3G for the price listed in their press release. AT&T says the promotional pricing ($199 for an 8GB, $299 for a 16GB) is only available to, among others, existing iPhone customers. Rom is an existing iPhone customer.
The relevant press release reads, in part:
iPhone 3G will be available for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. These prices require two-year contracts and are available to the following customers:
* iPhone customers who purchased before July 11
* Customers activating a new line with AT&T
* Current AT&T customers who are eligible, at the time of purchase, for an upgrade discount
Rom writes that he purchased an iPhone earlier in the year, and that he also purchased a BlackBerry from AT&T. After speaking with someone in the president’s office, he says that the point of contention is that AT&T is interpreting “iPhone customers who purchased before July 11″ as “iPhone customers who purchased before July 11 and haven’t bought another device from AT&T since.” Although Rom concedes that the purchase of the BlackBerry eliminated his upgrade eligibility, he still is an iPhone customer, and should be entitled to the promotional price.
(Photo: jetsetpress)
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Hey OP, I think I may have a solution for you. A “trick” to becoming upgrade eligible that I’ve found is upping your minutes on your current plan. In December, I got 3 new phones for the family (out of 5 possible), thus blowing their upgrade eligibility. About a month later, I upped the minutes on our plan. After I did that, the upgrade eligibility had been reset on all the phones. Give it a shot, it may work.
att told me no to my promotion pricing they told your not eligiable for the special price until your upgrade date. as they told me that only for new or exisiting customer which is complete bs on att end. they f*ck up on every order i place either warr. care or new service trust att is so big and they have lots of misinformed representatives.
Anyone with half a brain could assume this would be AT&T’s position before it happened. Why should AT&T give someone the SUBSIDIZED price for an iPhone when that person has already used their upgrade eligibility to purchase a SUBSIDIZED phone before the iPhone 3G was released? It would be like giving him the Blackberry for $50 (or free, or whatever stupid price was paid) and having no contract to show for it to recooperate the costs. This person is (most likely) blatantly trying to scam the system solely based on semantic wording of a press release.
The reasons original iPhone customers were given the subsidized price, were two-fold. First, they needed to stay in the good graces of the early adopters. Two, the original iPhone, contrary to the 3G, was UNSUBSIDIZED. Every single person who bought the original iPhone paid RETAIL price. Therefore, most people, even if they were already AT&T customers previous to buying the new iPhone, would at this point be upgrade eligible. Granted, there is some gray area in the policy, but not enough for someone to honestly believe that they could purchase a BlackBerry at the subsidized price, then turn right back around and purchase an iPhone at the subsidized price as well. For example, no one would assume that they could walk into an AT&T store and buy a new Tilt for $199, then walk in a month later and purchase a Treo 750 for the same $199. It’s absurd.
Shame on you Consumerist, this post should be tagged as Bad Consumer, not as a mark against AT&T. One strike against you as a consumer advocate.
Sorry folks, but as much as you wanna blame Rom, ATT is wrong here. Nowhere in that press release do they designate “iPhone customers” as people “currently paying for a plan on an iPhone”. Not that it matters, since nowhere in this article does it state that Rom is not paying for an iPhone plan. Reread what he got from the office of the president, he’s being denied because of his Blackberry purchase, not because of the state of his iPhone plan (if that were the issue, he’d have been told).
Rom’s in the right, ATT is trying to weasel out of what they announced to the public. Sorry if their press release was wrong, but that’s why you hire someone to be a press agent.
Yeah, this isn’t the OPs fault. I can see how you guys might think so, but ATT says that if you are an iphone customer, you can buy it at the discounted price.
Why you would want a 3G phone when coverage is spotty and you already have an iphone I dunno, but ATT is at fault here for not honoring their press release. They should have worded it better really.
I hate AT&T! This is just another reason to dislike them.
I switched to Cingular from AT&T due to poor reception, poor service, and dropped calls. Cingular was great; I had none of those problems. Ever since they have been purchased by AT&T, the problems have resumed.
I’m not sure how they could crap up Cingular, but I’m heading for the hills and waiting for Android phones on another carrier.