No iPhone 3G for me!

Okay, this gets a little complicated. More complicated than it should, really.

Apple's iPhone 3G

(Credit: Apple)

I am an AT&T customer. My current two-year contract is up on July 30-- just 19 days from now.

Normally, AT&T allows customers to upgrade early by paying a moderate fee.

As CNET's Dawn Kawamoto put it in this blog post, "eligibility for an upgrade discount, the carrier said, is generally determined by amount of time remaining on a current contract and the payment history." One version of the upgrade rules is visible on Best Buy's website.

The worst-case situation, one might suppose, is that one would owe AT&T the early termination fee for the existing contract. In my case, that would be just $60. Apparently the early upgrade fee is usually lower than that.

But none of this mattered at the Apple Store this morning. Apple was not given any kind of visibility into the details of AT&T's iPhone upgrade discount eligibility standards; all it gets is a "yes or no" kind of response from the AT&T servers. When the Apple Store tried to put through my order, it got a "no."

There were no AT&T people in the Apple store this morning, but there was an Apple employee in the store who had been trained as a liaison to AT&T. She had a special phone number and some identification codes so she didn't need to go through the usual delays to talk with an AT&T representative.

Unfortunately, AT&T couldn't make this happen. They said I needed to go to an AT&T store.

Alas, when I reached the AT&T store near my house at 10:30am, they were already out of iPhones.

So unless I can find an AT&T store with phones remaining AND that is able to work out the details of the early upgrade issue, I'm out of luck for a few weeks.

Which is no big deal for me personally, except that I was looking forward to doing a quick, deep review of the iPhone here. Sorry about that, folks.

[Motyoj]

While I use Apple computers, I am in no hurry to get an iPhone. No 3G in my area anyway and the monthly fee from AT&T is outrageous. To top it off, they don't sell 'em anymore on their website. Compounded by problems such as you describe, it looks like they've (Apple) dropped the ball on this one. One day it would be nice to have a capable hardware device that one could load their own flavor of an OS on the thing. If that happened, I'd definitely go Linux. That would be too consumer friendly though...and we certainly can't tolerate that type of marketing in this world at this time.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Well, don't underestimate the complexity-- and value-- of commercially-developed and validated software in a cellphone. Although there are open hardware platforms like OpenMoko, there really isn't ever going to be a complete do-it-yourself solution. The FCC (like other national regulatory agencies) imposes strict limits on the capabilities of mobile phones, and so do the carriers whose networks you need to make calls.

For example, if you could modify and recompile all the code on your cellphone, relatively minor bugs could seriously impair the cellphone network. You could potentially monitor other people's calls or impersonate them on the network.

So don't expect that kind of freedom, and don't expect any open platform to match the iPhone user experience. That takes more central control and development effort than the open-source community is able to provide.

[al3xtsf]

Same thing happened to me. I walked in, I guess I should have dug even deeper then scanning the iphone 3g site on apple.com and attnt.com but I was unprepared for the $100.00 early upgrade fee that was tagged onto my total at the very end of my transaction. The associate told me to call attnt on 611 since I am an existing customer. Attnt said I was going to have pay $100.00 as an early upgrade fee.. even though my contract renews Aug. 21 2008.. just longer then a month away. Incredible. I stood in line for about 3 hours. After one hour I was finally handed a flyer letting me know just how much more I really was going to be paying a month (rates) - which really isn't mentioned much by apple or attnt.

I'm a student, and work hard for the low pay I get, and honestly I rather wait until August then throw away my hard earned $100.00 for 'permission' from this ridiculous cell phone corporation to purchase a new phone which would only guarantee me as a customer for another 2 years.. I guess I should have done more research on the pricing of the phone and less on the actual functionality. But either way, I definitely feel lead on.. by the advertisements from apple and attnt. I really felt like attnt was 'banking' on my waiting for 3 hours in line, the hype, and the fact that I'm at point-of-purchase to force me into throwing away that $100.00 on them, for doing absolutely nothing but make this whole experience that much worse . I hope no one pays this fee, or exposes this as the scam it feels like it is. Thanks for your article, I found it very informative.

[afhill]

wow, they never even mentioned the possibility of an early upgrade fee to me, I was just told it would cost $399 so I walked out.

[afhill]

The early upgrade options were completely not thought through. I signed up for A&T last October expressly to purchase an iPhone at a later date. Now I'm effectively being punished for having transferred to their service early.

http://www.afhill.com/blog/2008/07/12/what-no-commitment-pricing-option-iphone/

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

It seems to me that everyone ought to understand that a contract is a contract. Cellphone discounts are subsidized by money the carrier makes over the full term of the contract.

They certainly can't afford to let people out of their contracts early just to get them signed up for another two years. If this logic could justify the full discount one year early, why not 18 months early, or 23 months early?

The early-upgrade fee is designed to cover exactly this situation, protecting the carrier's profitability while allowing customers to get the latest phones a little earlier. In my case, I figured the $60 early-termination fee was reasonable; Apple just didn't give me the chance to pay it. I gather there are a lot of people who believe it's reasonable to pay $200 extra for the iPhone 3G in order to bypass the issue of any current contract. That just wasn't for me.

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[bdahern]

Not sure what the problem is - my 2 year contract with ATT was not up until 10/23/08 and I had no problem upgrading to a 3G iPhone at the ATT store and I did not have to pay an early upgrade fee.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Very interesting... maybe your store just got the message. Lucky you. :-)

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