AT&T: 1 iPhone every 18 months

[Brendon Bauer]

I recently talked to AT&T customer support regarding my upgrade eligibility and the iPhone. One thing of interest was that she told me there is a new policy that you can only buy an iPhone every 18 months now... I thought she meant at the subsidized price, so when I clarified that with her she said that it doesn't matter what price... they won't sell you an iPhone if it hasn't been 18 months since you purchased one. She said it was to prevent buying/selling iPhones online for profit. I mentioned that I could just get one at Best Buy or Apple (or wherever else they're sold) but she said "we track them and know if you add a new iPhone to your account" and that they can somehow prevent you from doing this. I highly doubt that last part, but who knows.... That would suck! What do you think? The last AT&T customer support person I talked to (about 3 days before this one) didn't mention that...

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

That's pretty stupid if it is true. I don't know if she had any clue what she was talking about. It will be interesting to watch this develop.

 

[TheSpaz]

I recently talked to AT&T customer support regarding my upgrade eligibility and the iPhone. One thing of interest was that she told me there is a new policy that you can only buy an iPhone every 18 months now... I thought she meant at the subsidized price, so when I clarified that with her she said that it doesn't matter what price... they won't sell you an iPhone if it hasn't been 18 months since you purchased one. She said it was to prevent buying/selling iPhones online for profit. I mentioned that I could just get one at Best Buy or Apple (or wherever else they're sold) but she said "we track them and know if you add a new iPhone to your account" and that they can somehow prevent you from doing this. I highly doubt that last part, but who knows.... That would suck! What do you think? The last AT&T customer support person I talked to (about 3 days before this one) didn't mention that...

That's messed up! Sales wouldn't do so well if people HAD to wait 18 months between iPhones... What if you dropped your iPhone and smashed it... 18 month wait? What if your iPhone was stolen and you couldn't get it back?... 18 month wait? That's lame if it's true.

 

[kas23]

I mentioned that I could just get one at Best Buy or Apple (or wherever else they're sold) but she said "we track them and know if you add a new iPhone to your account" and that they can somehow prevent you from doing this.

What are they going to do, send someone to your house to take it away from you?

This is dumb. You should be able to buy as many phones as you like. The kind of attitude AT&T is showing here is that we really don't own our phones (hence, we can't unlock them), but we are just renting them for 2 years to use on their network and we can't rent 2 or more iPhones at once.

 

[britboyj]

It's true, as AT&T tracks the purchases and won't let the cashier/specialist/whatever even proceed to the checkout point if your account shows more than one SUBSIDIZED iPhone in the past 18 months.

You get one at $199 (or $299) and another at the $399/$499 price within 18 months, after that, they WILL sell you one at Apple or AT&T, just at the ridiculous $599 and $699 price. iPhones purchased at the $599 and $699 don't have a per-account limit, just like AT&T won't stop you activating one you bought on eBay.

 

[Brendon Bauer]

It's true, as AT&T tracks the purchases and won't let the cashier/specialist/whatever even proceed to the checkout point if your account shows more than one SUBSIDIZED iPhone in the past 18 months.

You get one at $199 (or $299) and another at the $399/$499 price within 18 months, after that, they WILL sell you one at Apple or AT&T, just at the ridiculous $599 and $699 price. iPhones purchased at the $599 and $699 don't have a per-account limit, just like AT&T won't stop you activating one you bought on eBay.

That would make more sense, but she made it sound like you couldn't get an iPhone no matter what you paid. She must not know what she's talking about, because that seems silly. One subsidized iPhone in 18 months is the current policy isn't it? If so, then this isn't big news.

 

[muledogus]

Not true. My friend just got 2 iPhones within 2 weeks of eachother.

Edit: Both subsidized too.

 

[Brendon Bauer]

Not true. My friend just got 2 iPhones within 2 weeks of eachother.

So you can buy multiple subsidized iPhones on the same line within weeks/months? If so, how? I've never heard of this... everything I've heard contradicts this. If so, this might be why they are imposing a new 18 month rule between iPhone purchases (if that new rule is even true).

 

[aristobrat]

Not true. My friend just got 2 iPhones within 2 weeks of eachother.

Edit: Both subsidized too.

The policy is per line of service. If your friend has two lines with AT&T and each line is eligible for the subsidized price, then he can get two iPhones for the subsidized price.

If he leaves those two iPhones in his car and they get stolen, he'll be allowed to buy two more iPhones at the discounted price (which is the subsidized price plus $200).

If something happens to those iPhones, he will have to pay the full price ($599 and $699) if he wants to replace them.

It used to be that you could buy as many iPhones at the discounted price as you wanted to. Now you're only allowed one discounted price per line of service, per 18 months.

You get one at $199 (or $299) and another at the $399/$499 price within 18 months, after that, they WILL sell you one at Apple or AT&T, just at the ridiculous $599 and $699 price. iPhones purchased at the $599 and $699 don't have a per-account limit, just like AT&T won't stop you activating one you bought on eBay.

This is correct. The only thing I'd add is this is per line of service.