My iphone and AT&T experience

[truckracer]

I am going to start off by saying this is sort of one of those "i didn't get my way and now i am going to rant threads".

I have had an iphone 3G from At&t for 21 months (under contract). My iphone suddenly went dark. No amount of rebooting or charging/car charger cord will
make it wake up. It was acting up by showing the apple logo on the screen during calls just before it went down.

At&t says its dead and i need a new one...OK....so how much will it cost me to go ahead and upgrade to a 3Gs?.......$400.00 out of pocket!!!! ...no way.

if i wait two month..its 199.00 and a new two year contract...OK.

Being since i only have two months left why don't they let me go ahead and upgrade to a new phone...hey - i even offered to take a refurbished 3G 8 GB!....can't do that either without some good chunk of money out of my pocket..

I know the rules of the contract...that's fine but i have been a customer of at&t for years. I used to work for them for several years as a tech in their equipment rooms of the old dial up and isdn sites.

they should have been more willing to be flexible and allow me to upgrade.
because now guess what....when my contract is up i am moving on. was two months worth 107.00 x 24 months? guess it was.

I own a small sucessful business. My customers are under contract. i have one thats been under contract for 17 years, most others are 12 years average being renewed every year.

I didn't keep all those same people under contract by being a hard ball making them sweat during tough times or during times when unforseen events take place. I was flexible and let them make some changes to their bottom line and allow us to continue to do business together.. I guess at&t does not model their business in that fashion.

They seem more interested in signing on new customers giving them the breaks and making the old reliable customer like myself who stays true and blue and pays their bill on time every month be the ones to have to pay dear for a small piece of equipment made in some third world country by slave children.

Thank you AT&T for showing me the loyalty i have shown you.
Hell, i have persuaded all of my buddies to go to at&t so we can have unlimited mobile to mobile and most of them bought I phone 16 and 32 gb models ($$$$$).
hey another slap on the back for me i guess.

I know a contract is a contract is a contract.. I am not questioning that.
I know at&t did not make the phone ...apple did. they don't have that much money in those phones . they are marked up a ton. I used to work for them i know.

 

[onslow]

You might try going to the Apple store and asking if you can retro purchase Applecare, then you would be covered. I've seen them do that with iPods.

 

[JAG72]

That is very strange as I thought you were able to upgrade any iPhone after just a year into the contract. I know many people that have upgraded shortly after a year of service is up. I would look on the AT&T website and verify what it says about your upgrade timeframe.

 

[truckracer]

the one thing that gets me is i am going to have to pay for two months of iphone service that i can't use and they know that. they are willing to sit back and collect two more months of unlimited data that i can't even access. Like stated above...in two months i can get an iphone 3gs (i think 16gb) for 199.00.

it would be like having a satellite service (pizza pan services) under contract for two years and the receiver poops out , you have two months left and can't watch tv. they should have something in place for that. Nobody ever mentioned an "apple care plan" to me when i bought the iphone. they got a new one out of the box and installed a 3g sim card, put on a screen protector and smiled as i went out the door.. they did give me a free car charger.

i have read that for at&t, the iphone has been both a blessing and a burdon. sometimes even though my phone was showing "3G" and had all bars of signal i could not get web access. the progress bar would just stop after it began and i would get a message that said something like "server not responding" on all websites i would try to visit.

even doing a reboot didn't help. most of the time except for a few instances the network was painfully slow. when i would try to stream pandora radio, even on "low quality" it would cut out and have to buffer up quite a bit. it did not do this when i was on a wifi router.

 

[onslow]

Apple backs up their products better than ATT or any other place. The Apple Care on the iPhone is $69 and covers the phone for two years. I know several people that have had phones break and were upgraded to the newest model. Of course it doesn't cover "abuse" like dropping or throwing it.

 

[truckracer]

i quit the iphone. got a new blackberry bold coming from ebay. a lot cheaper than iphone.
does 3g/wifi. even threw in a smooth talker cradle that charges the blackberry and has a connector on the cradle for an external GSM magnetic antenna for better reception.