All is not sweetness and light in the wake of the
Apple WWDC kickoff announcements, especially concerning the evolution of the iPhone. Reader
Hugh Pickens writes:
"AT&T will offer the new iPhone 3G S when it debuts later this month at a cost of $199 and $299 for the 16GB and 32GB models, but only to new customers and those who qualify for the discounted price. AT&T subscribers with an iPhone 3G who are not eligible for an upgrade — those not near the end of their two-year contracts — will have to pay $200 more — $399 for the 16GB model and $499 for the 32GB model. 'This is ridiculous and slap in the face to long-time loyal iPhone customers like me who switched from T-Mobile and the only reason was the iPhone,' writes one unhappy iPhone customer. 'We have to mount a vigorous campaign to change this policy. Call your local AT&T and ask for the manager and complain. Send e-mails and post in forums everywhere.' The issue is spurring heavy debate on support discussion forums, with some customers supporting AT&T. 'The option you have is to honor the contract you freely committed yourself to,' says one forum member. 'If you want to upgrade early then you will have to pay full price with no subsidy discount. You can't blame anyone but yourself for your predicament.'"
BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Informative)
I have to agree. I'm not a cell phone guru by any measure, but only offering the discount rate every two years seems to be a fairly standard term in my experience.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember nearly a decade ago when our then only phone company sold it's top end cellular to staff at a 30% discount with a 2 year interest free payment plan. They thought it was really a great deal, ontil 18 months later when a new phone matching or exceeding all features of that model started selling for less than the monthly installments.
As for myself, I have never bought a cellphone costing more than 2X the absolute cheapest phone on the local market. But, that's just because I am not rich.
Here is a more general rule of thumb: If your phone is crushed by a car 15 minutes after your last backup and those backups are safe, you should only be upset over the inconvenience of being out of touch for a few hours and having to restore on the new phone. If the loss of the phone instrument itself is a cause for concern, you payed too much.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Jamaica. Our telecoms regulations are somewhat different and our phone companies are a lot different. (especially the dominant cellular provider).
The most popular phone plan (Something like 93% of the market) is "prepaid". Meaning. You can buy a phone and spend less than U$10 per year on call credit if all you do is receive calls. (They require at least one top-up every quarter)
With that kind of structure, the phone companies take a gamble every time they subsidize the cost of an instrument. For this reason, mid range phones are sold at near cost and High end phones are sold at a profit.
Note the prices [digiceljamaica.com]. The Exchange rate is roughly JM $90 to US $1. So that Bottom of the line Nokia 1200 is selling for under $13 with no contract or obligation. A true disposable phone. While the BlackBerry Storm is $777.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could boycott the particularly onerous terms of your contract by paying your ETF and not giving AT&T your money any longer. You and I both know it doesn't cost them even remotely close to 95$ a month for your service - their profit margins are obscene. It's absolutely their right to request you pay that amount each month, and if you were suckered into a contract, that's a blow to you. Learn by your mistake by terminating the contract in the legal manner (and if that means waiting until they change the terms of the contract, so be it) and don't fucking enter another one like it again. Until you tell them you're not interesting in paying obscene costs or entering into their service with any contract (even forgoing your precious ball and chain for a while), they'll keep bending you over and blasting your asshole repeatedly. If you want to just lay there and take it, that's your prerogative, but kindly have the decency to shut the fuck up about how you're not receiving a perceived fair bargain from the entity you willfully signed your custom away to.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
All well and good to posture, but those having an iPhone under the only contract terms available have sunk costs and can't do a thing to recover them.
The phone is locked to ATT.
ATT subsidized the iPhone heavily and wants to recover their costs. Its understandable.
Yes, ATT should allow you to pay off your ETF (which by the way should ONLY include what they owe Apple for the phone) and let you start a new contract with a new phone.
What could be more fair?
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Education goes a long way...
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Funny)
[citation needed]
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Right here:
|
|
|
|
V
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Funny)
Right here:
|
|
|
|
V
The "Reply to This" button?
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder how you spend $100 billion in one year. Where can you go and say "I have $100 billion to spend"? Delay upgrading your corporate phones one 6-month cycle, that's what an odd billion? That will feed me for 500,000 years. Fire all the sites' maintenance guys who work on the southwest middle lawn. Get the other guys at each site to cover for him. In return, 500,000 years of the warm fuzzy feeling commoners get knowing that while they starve their taxes are making their adored queen comfortable and happy.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Informative)
According to AT&T's announcement [att.com] from 2008, their current early termination fee is 175 dollars minus 5 dollars per month that the contract was completed. For half-way through a 2-year contract, that's 115 dollars.
So if you are thinking of paying the extra money and upgrading your phone, first pay the 115 bucks and cancel your account. Then apply for a new account with the no-contract discount. Instead of paying 399 for the phone, you'll only pay 314, or a savings of 85 dollars.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet any sales of product based business model will generally have a higher margin than continuous providing a servic
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Interesting)
They could have a 10000% profit margin in their text messaging and cellular plans business.
While having massive losses or only modest profit in other businesses. It just depends on how much of their business is cellular.
A lot of the business ATT has in phone companies it acquired is not cellular. Think plain old telephone service.
Long distance, and other carrier services...
Recall that in the areas where they are ILEC, they have build-out requirements imposed on them.... highly massive infrastructure costs to deploy certain telco services to all residences..
And "tarrifed" services, which are price-regulated, so they can't charge person A and person B in the same community different prices for their basic phone line (just because it's 100x as expensive to reach person B due to geography, doesn't mean they can charge person B $200/month instead of the normal $15/month, in order to recover costs).
Yes, it can be expensive to deploy hundreds of antennas in a county to provide wireless connectivity. I won't say mobile services are dirt cheap.
But compared to the costs of providing land line service to millions of homes, it could be just plain tiny......
And i'm sure ATT has other businesses.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Interesting)
You know Apple releases a new phone every year, and you know AT&T makes you sign a 2-year contract. Either pay the higher price for the upgrade or live through the horror of not having the latest shiny product until your contract runs out.
Absolutely. Besides, early adopters always get the shaft. That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.
... I screwed myself and I did it willingly because I didn't want to wait.
Me, I bought a G1 a few months ago, and the G2 is coming out this month, I understand. I'll have to wait to see if I do, in fact, end up feeling screwed. If so
Bunch of crybabies.
Parent
Not Crybabies.... Fanboys. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, its a bunch of rabid apple fanboys who want to piss away more money to apple, but can't stand the idea of paying AT&T a little extra cash for the contract they willingly accepted.
I'd be upset too, if I didn't know that apple released new products yearly with their masterplan of planned obsolescence.
Parent
Re:Not Crybabies.... Fanboys. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bunch of crybabies. No, its a bunch of rabid apple fanboys who want to piss away more money to apple, but can't stand the idea of paying AT&T a little extra cash for the contract they willingly accepted. I'd be upset too, if I didn't know that apple released new products yearly with their masterplan of planned obsolescence.
No argument from me.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's not being screwed. You and I willingly bought G1 phones, and have used them. Nobody forced us to buy them, nor enter into the contract. So when the G2 hits, if I really want it that bad, I'll pay the price. If not, I can wait out the 2 years and get the discount(*).
(*)I have 5 lines on the family plan, so in the end, I can pretty much upgrade any time I like. My kids love getting the hand-me-down cool phones, and my wife isn't into technology. :-)
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's not being screwed.
Yes, I agree. That was precisely my point. I meant screwed as in "aw, damn, this new model is like, way cooler than my old piece of junk". I didn't mean to imply that the vendor or cell phone company were in any way to blame for my impatience.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Funny)
Similarly, I'm never upgrading from my 4 year old laptop, ever. If I spend the money then 2 months later people will be floating past my window on flying scooters with 8-socket quad core xeons on their wrists. I'm terrified of the day I realize I'm counting memory in gigs the same way I count in megs (64 128 256 512 1024 range).
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:5, Insightful)
This is genius.
1) Apple culture heavily weighted towards having latest shiny object
2) AT&T contract requires 2 year ownership or pay $200 penalty
3) Apple maintains 1 year design cycle
4) Profit!!
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the case with every mobile provider, at least here in the United States. You sign a contract, get a subsidized phone, and in a few years, provided that the phone qualifies, a customer can apply for a discounted upgrade. It's worked nicely for T-Mobile, Sprint and VZW customers since it's conception.
HTFU.
Parent
Re:usury. (Score:4, Interesting)
A common practice is a common practice.
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Informative)
On a side note, all you clowns complaining about $499 for an upgrade price, for some reason my account didn't even qualify for that upgrade -- they wanted $699 from me, claiming I wasn't eligible for upgrade pricing until Dec 2009. $322 and change later and I've got a shiny new iPhone 3G S. It's not impossible. One of my co-workers got AT&T to provide him the $299 upgrade pricing just by calling, complaining, and threatening to cancel and pay the ETF. They sent him over to 'customer retention', who asked why he was cancelling and when he told them they offered him the upgrade at the $299 price...
Of course, he started at $499 -- not $699. I figured since my account was already screwed for some reason, I'd leave it be. Plus, if in December they reset my contract entirely for some reason (as the site shows it will), I'll have a free upgrade just in time for the next upgrade next year
Parent
Re:BooHoo (Score:4, Informative)
Full disclosure: my soon-to-be-ex wife works at AT&T and often got calls like this when she did billing support.
The variables involved in whether you get an early upgrade are weighted in how much you cost the company. If you're always calling for support or whining and demanding credits here and there you're likely to be told to pound sand on any early upgrade. The agents have a screen that tells them whether you are a profitable customer worth locking in or not.
Parent
Whoa! ATT sucks balls? (Score:5, Funny)
This is totally out of left field. It's a good thing the US is chock-a-block with better wireless carriers and the iPhone is portable between them.
Re:Whoa! ATT sucks balls? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is totally out of left field. It's a good thing the US is chock-a-block with better wireless carriers and the iPhone is portable between them.
Very funny, and for some reason it makes me want to throw up.
Parent
never should have given the retro price cut (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:never should have given the retro price cut (Score:5, Funny)
iPhone owners have been known to eat their young.
There's an app for that!
Parent
Or.. (Score:4, Insightful)
How every other carrier and every other phone works. Just because they were generous when the 3G came out, does not obligate them to do so again.
Bingo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, given the current state of our economy, I'm surprised more people aren't ashamed to post such nonsense.... Even though we don't yet know exactly what will be in the latest revision of the iPhone, all indications point to a few relatively minor tweaks, like a built in compass and ability to use the faster tier of 3G cellular data network. Oh, and likely a faster graphics processor, which is nice -- but did anyone honestly have issues with it updating too slowly before? This will only matter for some games that want to push the envelope a little further with how much you can do on a phone. FAR from a necessity, especially for those of us who'd rather play "real" games on a home computer or console system anyway!
Heck, I bought one of the very early 1st. gen. iPhones, and I didn't WANT to go to the 3G model. The version using the slower EDGE network was about $10 cheaper per month to keep a contract on, and I thought it had a more "solid" feel to it than the plastic-backed, sloped wedge shape of the current model. But finally, when mine started acting up, outside the warranty period, it just made more sense to buy a new phone.
If you can get past the pointless "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude for a minute, I fail to see why a 3G iPhone owner would be that compelled to rush out and upgrade at all? Those that have that irrational need to "show off" by having one first? Well, let them pay full retail price!
Parent
iPhone Users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like only one user was upset in that forum. The rest all saw the logic and understood what a subsidy is used for.
Re:iPhone Users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I just bought an iPhone in February, and will be amazed if I can get a discount beginning February 2010 or even August 2010, and I understand completely. I could sell my phone right now for $400 easy, so it wouldn't make any sense for AT&T to sell me the better version of my phone for $200.
Stuff like this makes Slashdot look silly too, a massive jump to conclusions over a small minority shouldn't be news.
Parent
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
'We have to mount a vigorous campaign to change this policy.'
A vigorous campaign? Really? I'm sorry, but in this context, the author simply sounds pathetic.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
"vigorous" made me laugh. For once I'd like to see someone launch a lackadaisical campaign. In fact, this is a call to arms - let's launch a lethargic campaign to create a new era of de-energized campaigns!
Parent
I am incredibly upset about this. (Score:5, Funny)
Things I'm also upset about:
No more free lunches.
Gas costing more than $0.05 a gallon.
Having to walk more than three feet from my car to my local superstore.
The fact that I wasn't born in a time where peace was on earth, everything is free, and we're all immortal.
I'm so angry that I'm punching a wall and hoping someone will pay for its repair as we speak.
This is nothing new. (Score:5, Informative)
If you had an Original Motorola RAZR and you wanted a new one, you had to pay full price.
I fail to see the issue here.
Holy Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
1)"tsfroggy"(RTA) agreed to his/her terms in a contract and has to deal with the pricing like everyone else.
2)A past discount is not an obligation for a future discount.
3)"tsfroggy" is a whiner.
4)AT&T is clearly in the right on this, even if the pricing is too high.
I must say, Congrats gentlemen. I'll be interested in seeing how long this lasts in this particular thread.
Customers? (Score:4, Informative)
The shareholders are the customers. Service subscribers (you) are the product. Your only power is to vote with your dollar, by the numbers.
Know your place, know your options.
Oh, and apple product update cycles are pretty predictable.
Me too (Score:5, Funny)
Half subsidy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually what is being offered is a compromise. The full retail value of the 32 GB model is $699 not $499. AT&T is offering those iPhone owners who purchased their 3G upgrade last year, under the terms of a 2 year subsidization contract, the opportunity for a special upgrade at half the subsidization cost. So, for example, when I bought my iPhone 3G last year on day 1, even though I promised to complete an entire two year contract to cover the major discount offered at the time, I will still be able to restart a new two year contract and be rewarded with a $200 discount.
So even though those with no further contract obligations (actually, in many cases you can upgrade at full discount after only 18 months of your 24 month contract) and those new purchasers will get a nice $400 discount, I think I'm getting a pretty honest deal with a half discount halfway through the obligation.
However, many people are clearly confused for various reasons. One cause is likely that many of these iPhone customers were never smartphone customers before. These people had no idea just how much money smartphones cost MSRP. The other part of it is original iPhone (Edge) buyers were not subsidized at all, and when the 3G came around, the offer was presented as though it was a special situation allowing for an early upgrade. Well that is partly factual, if you wanted to upgrade to any other phone you would not have been able to at only one year. I find this aspect to be particularly disgusting on AT&T's part, but it's all part of the contract... At any rate, since there was no subsidization in the original two year contracts for AT&T to cover, it was a no-brainer for them to offer full subsidization to 3G purchasers.
So ultimately, many people are expecting to get exactly the same full subsidization "special" offer they got with the 3G but there has never once been any promise that they would.
So I say: If you're not happy with the pricing, don't buy the new phone. If you feel bad about the whole situation, at least try to fully comprehend what happened and why the 3G's subsidization was not nearly as special as it seemed (AT&T sacrificed zero subsidization from your original contract whereas now they are offering to sacrifice half of the one from the 3G). It's understandable to be dissatisfied with an offer regardless of the terms, but not understandable for people to go all emo over the terms as though they were somehow owed or promised something else when they obviously weren't.
For the record, I intend to pick up a 32gb upgrade for $500 because frankly, I was happy to buy the original 8gb for the full original price. To me it's valuable for the added space alone. Everyone has to make this decision for themselves obviously but at least have the character to realize you are not being ripped off, and you are not somehow owed a better offer just because you really want the phone.
Fandom does not make you special.
Confused Definition (Score:5, Insightful)
'This is ridiculous and slap in the face to long-time loyal iPhone customers like me who switched from T-Mobile and the only reason was the iPhone,' writes one unhappy iPhone customer.
Long-time? Even if you bought an iPhone the day it was released (June 29, 2007), you are not yet at the end of your initial 2-year contract. How "long-time loyal" can you be?
Re:READ THE ARTICLE, FOOL! (Score:5, Informative)
They are absolutely not doing this. I am an existing AT&T customer who has an iphone. I am no longer under a current contract as I have been waiting for the new iPhone. I just double checked before posting and I qualify for an upgrade to the new iPhone if at the discount pricing if I am willing to sign a 2 year agreement with AT&T.
Apple doesn't subsidize these phones the phone carriers do.
Nothing to see here but confused forum posters and bloggers move along please.
Parent
Re:Slap in the face? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
When did we as a society get our collective sense of entitlement?
It started sometime back in the mid-sixties, and it's been all downhill ever since.
Parent
Re:Slap in the face? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why not just add to your term (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you're essentially running up "debt" that way, that the phone company is going to take longer and longer to recoup. When they give you a discount on that phone, they're essentially loaning the money for a set time. Asking for a year's extension on that time costs them. Imagine if a customer did that every year as the new models came out. They extend their contract to 3 years now. Next year they're up to 4 if they switch out. Pretty soon they're racking up owed contract years that they'll either newer get to, or they're going to have to eventually wait out for an extremely long amount of time before they can get a new phone.
I mean honestly, if this guy is whining now about this model - do you honestly think he's going to get this one and then wait THREE years (an eternity on the cell phone market) before picking up the newest model? No, he's going to want the latest and greatest every time. If he wants that then fine, but he needs to cowboy up and pay the full price.
Parent
Re:I refuse to pay for high fashion (Score:5, Funny)
I refuse to pay the idiot premium on high fashion items, and that is exactly what Apple's products are.
Because my MacBook's BSD based kernel goes great with my Dolce and Gabanna sun glasses and my MacBook's user security just absolutely matches DKNY's latest for the 09 season.
Parent
Re:anonymous coward angry over first post (Score:5, Insightful)
This is perfectly normal, they give a $200 discount so people sign a 2 year agreement. A few give reduced discounts before the contract is up but a majority only give discount prices when your out of contract. Anyone who doesn't understand this and feels its a 'slap in the face' should grow up, it's not like they hide this fact at signup.
Parent