iPhone Users Angry Over AT&T Upgrade Policy 789
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.'"
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.
Here's what I do. (Score:1, Interesting)
And that is why I continue to wait.... (Score:2, Interesting)
For some people, the IPhone as currently configured is just huge. They travel, or they do work that doesn't involve a computer....
Me, I am in front of a computer all day. Sure there are time when having access to email when out and about would be nice, but seriously, it isn't something that is killing me.
So I use a three or four year old phone. It can do messaging, and I can play a game or two, and use some Star Trek ring tones.
I will buy a Smart phone. But only when that 1) doesn't lock me into a single provider, and 2) all this kind of crap has settled out, and 3) when such a phone isn't locked into one vertical change of command (Apple).
I don't want to spend huge dollars on a phone only to have to spend huge dollars to get the next iteration. I will wait until the delta between iterations isn't so vast.
So one of these years I think smart phones will let me run applications I get from third parties. They will interface with my computers as well as with the Internet. And I will be able to reasonably make a phone call. And that phone will not break the bank.
The Pre is looking better (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess AT&T has figured this in. The only reason to give a discount to upgraders would be to lock them in for another 2 years. I guess they figured that enough people will pay full price or stick it out until the end of their contract that they don't need to provide an incentive - not now anyway. They might be right... im not even sure what i will do myself yet (have not looked into what ATT cancellation fees will be, how long Sprint will try to lock me in, etc).
Re:usury. (Score:4, Interesting)
A common practice is a common practice.
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.
Re:Not Crybabies.... Fanboys. (Score:2, Interesting)
A possible compromise (Score:3, Interesting)
So the issue is that a new model has been released and only people who are eligible for a new phone can get it at a discount? Apple never should have caved on the iphone price change retroactivity, now they can't improve anything without the existing users demanding free upgrades for life.
Yup. All you get by caving in to pressure is more pressure. I'd expound, but I'd fail at Godwin. ;)
I know the iPhone crowd is somewhat enriched in whiny emos and self-entitled types (before anyone flames, I said *enriched*, not that it describes all of them), but still - what other community would react with such moral outrage that they have to actually live up to their contract? Under what scenario did they think they would be eligible for a *subsidized* upgrade for no reason?
The winning strategy for Apple/AT&T is to charge them $20 to switch phones, put their contract back to two years, and charge them the new subscriber price plus the pro-rated portion of the discount on their remaining contract. So if they've been under contract for a year out of the two, give them half the discount, add $20 to switch the service, and put them back at a year. The consumer gets a fair deal and AT&T and Apple make money.
Re:BooHoo (Score:2, Interesting)
Same here. In fact, I "pre-screwed" myself by consciously buying the G1 without a contract, paying $380 for the privilege to remain out of a contract.
Here's how to avoid the ETF. (Score:1, Interesting)
COST THEM MONEY, and they will drop you. Here's how to do it.
1) Call customer support, EVERY DAY. Each call costs them at least $25, because they outsource it.
2) Have free roaming? Start roaming. Costs them big bux.
Do this, and trust me, they will glad to be rid of you.
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.
Re:BooHoo (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you signup for service with a 'temporary' carrier first, get just their free low-end phone, or preferably get an arrangement without a contract, or you rely on the fact you can cancel a new contract before 30 days without penalty if you return the phone.....
Then you transfer the number from ATT to the temp carrier, while cancelling your ATT contract. Then a few weeks later, after that's a done deal, you go buy the new ATT contract and request to get the number transferred back to ATT
You cancel service with the temp carrier before the 30 day "trial" limit.
Re:BooHoo (Score:2, Interesting)
Based on the normal timeframe of the wireless industry: the porting process for a wireless-to-wireless transfer should be completed within 2 and a half hours from the time the porting request is made of the old carrier by the new carrier.
See here [fcc.gov].
If a carrier imposes an unreasonable (ridiculously long) timeframe such as 30, 60, or 90 days, they may incur the wrath of the FCC, e.g. regulatory action may result.
Income statement != iPhone profit margin (Score:3, Interesting)
If you honestly think that you can take an income statement from the whole of AT&T and extrapolate the iPhone profit margins you are out of your mind. For all we know they are losing money hand-over-fist in one area and are compensating with obscene markups on iPhones.
Instead, let's go with what we know. We know the unsubsidized price of the phone is $200 more than the new contract price. So we can safely assume that $8.33 a month of your bill is going towards paying off your "loan".
I really wish that the market was just fundamentally changed. No other industry can get away with this shit. Would you be willing to "buy" a new Prius for $15,000 so long as you were forced to gas up and Toyota dealerships at $10.00/gallon for the life of the car? Hell no. Yet that's what were doing with phones. And people seem to love it.
Re:The Pre is looking better (Score:2, Interesting)
(the other reason is because it works with iTunes).
For now... There's no telling what Apple will do (intentionally or not) to break that functionality in the future.
Re:iPhone Users? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Crybabies.... Fanboys. (Score:1, Interesting)
"I'd be upset too, if I didn't know that apple released new products yearly with their masterplan of planned obsolescence."
I love this bit of stupidity.
Apple doesn't release new phones regularly: "Wah. iPhones aren't competitive with models X, Y, and Z."
Apple releases new phones regularly: "Wah. Planned obsolescence. Apple == teh General Motors of cell phones. Wharrgarbl."
As an iPhone user, I've gotten enough free upgrades from Apple, just in terms of firmware alone, to justify giving them another couple hundred bucks. A compass, faster CPU, better camera, and you'll throw in the 3.0 software for free? Well, OK, Steve, you talked me into it.
Besides, it took three whole days last week for AAPL to go up enough to pay for my new phone. Somebody call the waaambulance, and alert the violin section.
Re:BooHoo (Score:3, Interesting)
In retrospect, telling my friends and family my new number was probably a better choice than handing everybody else my SSN, but hey, them's the breaks.
Re:BooHoo (Score:2, Interesting)
Really,
Even easier then my HTC Dream, Nokia 6500 Classic and Nokia N71. I didn't think it was possible but apparently unlocking the Iphone is even easier then buying an unlocked phone to begin with. Sorry but your theory falls apart when phones are sold outright and unlocked (if this isn't done in your country it isn't my fault). Besides this HTC and Nokia aren't actively fighting unlockers with each update (no matter how futile this is). If you bought a locked Nokia bought from a Telco you just have to ask for it to be unlocked and they are by law obligated to do it (you are still bound to the contract you signed under contract law however) with Nokia its a simple code to unlock, you cant do this with an Iphone due to the design of the device (no supported unlock path, telco's are justified in not supplying hacks to unlock phones).
Re:BooHoo (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought my phone 7 years ago this month. Paid $180, did have to replace the keypad at some point with one from a different phone of the same model I bought off Ebay for $3. The thing still works great, but sadly, Qwest is going out of the cell business completely on Oct. 31. I was proud to have the oldest phone of anyone I know, but I got there without really thinking. I've never been all that excited about cell phones and once I made I plunge, I stopped thinking about it altogether. Maybe that is another kind of short attention span.
Anyway, I've been testing out a drug dealer phone from boost mobile. Doesn't do anything fancy but the speakerphone sounds great, way better than my wife's iphone in both input and output. The phone is only $60, and for $50/month (no contract period) I get unlimited talk and text. If something really cool comes out, like an iPhone Nano or an iPhone shaped to fit one's palm(*), I can go for it without any contractual issues.
(*) Thin looks cool, but the iPhone's dimensions are not ergonomic as a phone. I have plenty of Apple hardware and love their notebooks for the sleek melding of form and function. With the iPhone however, function and design are poorly integrated by the fact that non-phone priorities overwhelmed the primary purpose of the device.
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.
Re:BooHoo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Crybabies.... Fanboys. (Score:2, Interesting)
Google for 'Android Cupcake' and then consider buying yourself a new phone.
Tough shit. (Score:2, Interesting)