my at&t iphone saga continues

[truckracer]

Long story made short: My iphone 3G stopped working.. black screen. never dropped, never wet. i took good care of this phone. i had 7 months left on my 24 month contract. At&t said i would qualify for an iphone 3Gs at the 18 month mark.

ok so i buy a blackberry from ebay to tide me over. i suddenly realized that a replacement used iphone 3G on ebay is almost 400.00 with scratched screens! my god what are these people smoking?

i then realize most of these phones have been jailbroken and unlocked....ok so what! that takes like 5 minutes. wow....they make that much money for 5 minutes work! i am in the wrong business appearantly.

i don't care about jailbroken or unlocked iphones...just a replacement for my 3G.

so at&t quotes me that a replacement 3G would be something like 400.00 or more dollars can't remember exactly now. it was rather expensive imo.

I called at&t and told a CSR that i would be using a blackberry for the time. they said ok but they would have to put me on a blackberry data plan...i could not use an iphone data plan with a blackberry...ok makes sense.

I get online last night and log into my account on the attwireless website.
I check upgrade options....it shows that i qualify for a 3Gs upgrade Monday March 8!...OK.. I am happy

i go to at&t and they pull up my account...UH OH!! "Oh i am sorry Mr. Dumb customer (me)....You don't qualify until may 8!! I say " What?"

He says well "we see here you downgraded your plan when you got the blackberry"...I said well....the CSR told me while she was reviewing my account that i should reduce my minute package to the 450 minute plan since i didn't come close to using the 900 minute plan i had...

She NEVER said a word about this move costing me a long upgrade time!!!

so i walk away frustrated and feeling like nobody informed me properly of all these IF and and But's at&t has on these phone deals. I feel like i need to go to law school to be able to shop for a new phone...totally ridiculous.

i called a CSR 611. I told them the whole spill again or maybe i told like 5 people the same story over and over til i got a manager. The manager said he could "reset" my upgrade date back to Monday March 8 but it would take 72 hours for it to take effect...

Why would a computer network take 72 hours for resetting my information....is their network running sub dial up speeds or what? this seems stupid to me.
I do IT work on the side and this seems ridiculous.

i am at the point now to where instead of feeling happy about getting a new iphone that i feel like i have earned the damn thing by jumping through burning hoops and over saw horses like a steroid pumped athlete trying to win a cheap trophy at the olympics.

they have certainly taken the fun out of it for me with their surprises.
i never realized the iphone was the holy grail of cellphones and people took out second mortgages and donated organs to own one...

 

[thedamaja]

That sucks, I've never heard of pushing the upgrade date by 2 months. I wonder how they figure that out?

If you can stomach that Blackberry for a few months it might be worth waiting for the new iphone which will most likely be announced in June, just like the 3G and 3GS.

 

[mike123abc]

They have a sliding upgrade time depending on your monthly phone bill.

My brother got his iPhone submerged, I think it was like $200 at the apple store to replace it with a reconditioned model. He took that to hold him over until the new iPhone comes out in June.

 

[truckracer]

it just seems like a lot of hassle with at&t. I know they don't even sell an insurance policy on the iphone.. its the only phone they won't sell you an insurance plan. That's just nuts.
another thing is - the phone has only one year manufacter warranty. their contracts are two years normally. You have a whole year carrying around and using, charging and discharging a device that is quite likely to fail or has a good chance at it.

when i bought my iphone 3G, they never mentioned any extended warranty like apple protection plan. if i had got that i would not be writing this today.

it seems our local csr's are not very well trained to make these deals.

back when i got my first cell phone...it was a "car Phone" analog radio type that the transceiver mounted under the seat, a trunk lip mount high gain antenna, it was some type of motorola.

they gave you the phone to sub to the service. i know in those dollar values back then that motorola phone cost way more than an iphone costs now. those bag phones and hard wired car phones cost in the neighborhood of 700-800.00 dollars or so. their contracts were one year also.

it seems a lot of these cheaply made (sweat shop labor in china or wherever) devices are marked up and hyped up considerably.

i am in the mood to honestly get out my old motorola razr v3, ditch the text and data plan, and forget it. i never use the text, i don't use the internet on the blackberry since the blackberry browser sucks and is too small. Not to mention the blackberry only uses EDGE network which is slow most of the time.

I have a small acer laptop and an ipod touch i can do email and free texting from any wifi hotspot.

if at&t would have made it easier i would have went ahead on an iphone but i totally losing interest.

 

[tigerfan33]

Yep. Applecare can be purchased anytime up to one year from the date you got your iPhone.

Apple - Support - AppleCare - iPhone

 

[truckracer]

a regional manager from at&t called me and got me setup with a new iphone 3Gs.
when i went to the store the first time...they said i did not qualify again!!! their computer netowrk must really suck and not update all the stores.

finally got it all worked out...new iphone is much better.