$36 upgrade fee
A $36 Upgrade Fee. For what??? This is of course on top of the normal price for a subsidized iPhone plus the extra for upgrading early (which might be a little less with this 'program') How carriers are allowed to charge for these extra fees is criminal.
I work for at&t... This coming Friday will be my last day in a retail store because I'm SO sick of idiots like you. A $36 upgrade fee is charged because of the following reasons:
- Some customers literally come in every week to change their plan. That takes time for sales reps, who could be selling more products or services. Customers change rate plans in the middle of billing cycles, receive a pro-rated bill, get pissed off and don't listen to the explanation, and revert back to the original rate plan (hastily ignoring the fact that going back will result in pro-rating.) Then, a new bill comes, and the cycle repeats.
- At my store, at least 20 SIM cards are given out daily. They are not free to at&t, but they are free to customers with an active account. Some customers literally come in every week to get a new SIM card. They lose them, chew on them during class (not kidding), let their kids play with the phone (which means the SIM gets lost), people lose their phones, people buy used iPhone 4's which requires a smaller SIM than a ****** feature phone, etc.
- People try to rent phones. They get a Galaxy S4 because it's been shoved in their face that they need one... We say "how long have you had your iPhone? You'll hate it." (The opposite holds true, but not as strongly. 90%+ iPhone users hate Android once they've tried it, less than half of Android users hate iPhone once they've tried it.) We tell customers of the restocking fee of $35 and the 14 day trial period, there is a bright T-Mobile pink restocking fee sticker on the box, and the back of the receipt, again, shows this. They throw a tantrum like a three year old and refuse to pay it.
There are many, many reasons upgrade fees are charged, but mostly it comes back to the stupid stunts that customers try to pull every day.
And, to contrast the many reasons upgrade fees are charged, there is only ONE reason a customer should ever visit a carrier's retail location. To try out a phone before it is purchased. Everything, EVERY SINGLE THING customers come into my store for could be done online, over the phone, or at Best Buy, Walmart, or Amazon for far cheaper. But, people are needy, ignorant, and lazy.
So just pay your upgrade fee and shut the hell up, you ignorant wretch.
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Because their networks SMOKES all others. ALL DATA POINTS, including sales and retention, demonstrate that fact.
People love to hate them. Unfortunately most of people hate AT&T because they expect AT&T to invest 100's of Billions of $$ pushing out and upgrading their networks and then they expect AT&T to provide a virtually free network.
Ignorance is abundant in this thread
Wonder how many jokers on this forum complain about the unbelievably overpriced MBPr Line? Wait until the new MAC PRO comes out. Think anyone will care how incredibly gouged they are when they buy one? But no, when AT&T prices to compete and delivers the best network, hands down, they just love to hate.
Get a job folks... If you want the best network, pay for it. If you want Sprint or Verizon, quit your complaining and MOVE. We know they are hurting and could use your business!
Who are you? Ralph De La Vega? Randall Stevenson? Clearly you must be top brass at at&t to have something positive to say about their network... It's so refreshing to have someone else who thinks post something with some thought behind it. Thank you, new friend... May you never drop a call or experience slow data connections.
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Thank you sweet Baby Jesus for nixing the T-Mobile purchase which is hopefully dead forever. I firmly believe AT&T would have ass-****** everyone in sight had that happened. Instead they will actually have to compete as more and more people wise-up and switch to other alternatives.
I pay T-Mobile about $100/mo (taxes incl) with my customer loyalty discounts for 4 lines. Unlimited voice, unlimited text, 500MB data (technically unlimited but throttled after 500). No contract.
I bought my own iPhone 4S and the three other 3GS for the others. Each 3GS (16gb) was about $80-$100 when I bought them used - got them "factory" unlocked for about $3 each via eBay. My 4S was about $800 (64 gb) new and unlocked. Will buy used 4S phones for the others once the new phones come out and prices drop further.
Since I work out of my home office or am often in wi-fi when I play poker (yes, that's my life), this works fine for me. I never come close to exceeding about 200 MB.
And when I travel overseas, I buy a pre-paid SIM card for my iPhone and just forward my USA mobile to my Vonage office phone and forward that to my int'l number. Works perfectly!
I'd much rather burn my money that give it to AT&T.
You bought your family members FOUR YEAR OLD TECHNOLOGY? How sweet of you... Oh, wait! You kept the best phone of the lot for yourself? You deserve a medal! Brilliant - you're comparing at&t to T-Mobile while using two and four year old technology on a network that doesn't work five miles from any Martin Luther King Blvd or Main Street in the country. You, sir, should write a book on how to do everything and retire from your current minimum wage job.
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Nope, not really true. The 3G/LTE devices may be true but when I had my iPhone4 I got throttled after 2gb. I also got a nastygram. I was NOT tethering. Garman maps, for some reason, kept trying to download the maps over and over again, not sure why. When I woke up the next day it had used over 2GB of data. It happened twice, about 8 months apart. I then deleted the app and never went back.
Throttling for at&t happens after 3GB for non-LTE phones, and 5GB for LTE phones. Do your homework and stop lying to make your situation sound worse than it was.
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Here is the gotcha... Go to AT&T's gophone.com and select your 'Absolute cheapest' plan. Step through AT&T's signup procedure. When you get to the part about selecting a phone, you can't select an iPhone. The 'Absolute cheapest' plan is only available on select phones. Apparently AT&T concluded that iPhone service is more costly to provide than is service to these other phones. Using the analogy from another poster, "AT&T will sell you gas for your car at $3 /gallon if you have an inexpensive car but will charge you $6 / gallon if you have a more expensive car." You are after all buying the 'car' upfront. Why the different price for the gas depending on the car model?
What the heck! I just checked gophone.com and now no iPhones are available even if you select the phone first.
Then get off your ass, drive to an Apple store/at&t store and buy an iPhone. Or a pawn shop. Or Craigslist. Or a friend. Or...
