So this evening I went to my local AT&T store to upgrade my 3g to the 3gs. The salesman was good, didn't feed me any ********, just got out the new phone and started my transaction. Things were going quite smoothly until it came to the final step, Paying for the phone. He says, "ok, your total is 208.95".
me: "No problem *digging into my wallet*, here's 210 cash"
*awkward pause*
salesman: "Um, I should have told you before we started this transaction, but we can't sell you the iphone with cash"
me: "You're joking right?, money is money, whats the difference?"
salesman: "Its ATT's policy that you must pay with a card, I beleive it is so they can trace the sale if need be"
me: "oh, fair enough, how about we put 10$ on my card and I'll pay the rest in cash (I had stopped at the ATM on the way, I hate using my card)"
salesman: "sorry, can't do that either, it must be paid in full with a card"
Now the silly part about all of this, is that I probably could have convinced somebody in that store to simply pay for it with their card and give them cash, so how does that trace the purchase to me? It doesn't..
this is a ridiculous policy and has too many flaws..
The happy ending to the story however, is that I walked down to the apple store (probably where I shoudl have gone in the first place, but I had some att account related questions that I originaly wanted to ask, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone) and the nice old woman at the apple store was kind enough to do my new 3gs purchase in cash. She just had to sell me a gift card for the exact amount first because of the way they enter sales, but no big deal..
Anyhow, I love this thing, its so much snappier than my 3g, I've been playing with it for several hours now and it seems like the battery is healthier too.. it had something like 83% when I first opened it around 6pm and its now almost 10 and i'm at 56% with above average usage..
here's my first video test walking around my apartment.. this was sent directly from the phone to youtube, I wonder if the quality is better when e-mailing to my comptuer first..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROQLLBjTQSQ
me: "No problem *digging into my wallet*, here's 210 cash"
*awkward pause*
salesman: "Um, I should have told you before we started this transaction, but we can't sell you the iphone with cash"
me: "You're joking right?, money is money, whats the difference?"
salesman: "Its ATT's policy that you must pay with a card, I beleive it is so they can trace the sale if need be"
me: "oh, fair enough, how about we put 10$ on my card and I'll pay the rest in cash (I had stopped at the ATM on the way, I hate using my card)"
salesman: "sorry, can't do that either, it must be paid in full with a card"
Now the silly part about all of this, is that I probably could have convinced somebody in that store to simply pay for it with their card and give them cash, so how does that trace the purchase to me? It doesn't..
this is a ridiculous policy and has too many flaws..
The happy ending to the story however, is that I walked down to the apple store (probably where I shoudl have gone in the first place, but I had some att account related questions that I originaly wanted to ask, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone) and the nice old woman at the apple store was kind enough to do my new 3gs purchase in cash. She just had to sell me a gift card for the exact amount first because of the way they enter sales, but no big deal..
Anyhow, I love this thing, its so much snappier than my 3g, I've been playing with it for several hours now and it seems like the battery is healthier too.. it had something like 83% when I first opened it around 6pm and its now almost 10 and i'm at 56% with above average usage..
here's my first video test walking around my apartment.. this was sent directly from the phone to youtube, I wonder if the quality is better when e-mailing to my comptuer first..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROQLLBjTQSQ
