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AT&T Raises Smartphone Upgrade Pricing From $15 to $20 to Match Verizon's New Fee

Hi valued customer, it's been such a nice time over the last two years. Please don't go to the other guys, we'd love to keep your business!

Now bend over...

I'm looking forward to the day that everyone uses VoIP phone numbers that are independent of phone contracts. The only thing that ties people to these companies is an arbitrary set of digits that's used to call people on.
 
sir1963nz said:
In New Zealand, that would be stopped pretty damn quickly by the Telecoms ombudsman and by our consumer rights organisations.

Our government forced our telcos to compete country wide so that we have REAL competition.
And our broadband is being paid for by our government, ANY ISP can "lease" capability so that anyone in NZ has access to multiple ISPs offering ADSL/VDSL/Fibre.

I have VDSL running at 70/30 ( and I regularly get 6MB/s downloads, yes that MegaBytes), no data cap, no traffic shaping, no port blocking, no ******** for all of about US$64/month.
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And don't forget they filmed the Lord of the Rings trilogy there. There's that too.
 
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dmylrea said:
You mean like paying a fee for the privilege to spend my money at Costco or Sams Club? It's amazing what people do, yet complain about paying a few dollars here and there...
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With Costco they are not increasing that fee every year or adding on other fees. It would be like paying costco a membership fee then if I wanted to renew having to pay a fee to renew. Then if I wanted to buy pharmacy items having to pay a fee on that (continue with the fees they could charge if they were like at&t). At least for the stuff I buy from costco the $55 is easily saved and then some compared to if I bought it from the grocery store.

I had been with at&t constantly since the iPhone 3G release. They charged an activation fee (less of an issue with it) then randomly decided to start charging and upgrade fee. I don't understand it as they didn't have to do a thing. I bought my phone direct from apple and never talked to at&t or apple. And now they are upping that fee to $45 for contract customers (which you can't get anymore). Its them charging you for service + smartphone fee + half dozen other fees + a fee if you want to change your phone (every 1-2 years) even more for people who are on their next plan.

So trying to compare how at&t does business with costco is not valid.
 
stiligFox said:
Not sure how or why this is even needed to charge a fee for upgrading a phone - is there anything besides a little bit of labor used? Nothing physical gets used up... It's just a employee changing what phone is tied to an account, right?
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Not even. You can get an iPhone through Apple and AT&T will still charge you. Since I'm on Apple's upgrade program and plan to upgrade every year, that's an extra $20 AT&T will get from me every year. That is, they would have... I'm switching to T-Mobile when iPhone 7 comes out.
 
"On Monday, Verizon started charging $20 for activating smartphones purchased through an installment plan or at full retail price, $5 less than AT&T was charging at the time."

It should read "... $5 more than AT&T was charging at the time."
 
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T-mobile charges the same exact fee, they just call it a SIM card fee. It applies whether you bring your own phone or get one from them. so same fee with much crappier service, they're all just as bad.

I'm surprised so many on this board are complaining about $20, if you own an apple product you are waaaay overpaying for old tech already. I'm sure a lot of you have purchased a $700 phone with 16gb of flash storage in it :rolleyes:
 
seatton said:
I hate both AT&T and VZ. They both suck. I do not know if TMo is great enough to switch... oh well..
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For people who need AT&T and VZW level coverage, I'd say they have no choice except for the duopoly.

However, for people that can get along just fine on T-Mobile or even Sprint, it's beneficial to everyone for them to switch. The big guys won't change until there are mass defections to the smaller 2 carriers.
 
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150 billion dollars in revenue last year. Disgusting. I'm so sick of these service providers ****ing us. "Rising costs", R&D, network upgrades... PLEASE. You still brought in $150B in revenue.
 
iPlaid said:
T-Mobile does now! I can show you the receipt for $20 each activation for our new iPhone SEs... and that was signing up for their $120/month Unlimited LTE plan!
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Was that upon signing up as a new customer or as an existing customer doing an upgrade? I've been with them for a while now and only paid a sim kit fee ($10 back then) for each new line. I've never been charged an "upgrade fee" for when we've gotten new phones.

From what I can see it looks like AT&T is charging $20 for new lines as well as $20 for each upgrade that existing customers make.
 
Its best not to tell them, just use the sim from your active device and put in your new device.
I had to add an iPad to my family plan and had a 40 dollar fee from att. Jerks......
 
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lkalliance said:
I'm confused. If I buy a sim-free phone, paid in full, and walk into the AT&T store and they activate it...I'm still charged the fee? What if I buy the sim-free phone and walk into the Apple Store to activate it?
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Why would you walk into the AT&T store at all? Take your old SIM card, pop it into the new phone, and don't say jack **** to the scumbag thieves.
 
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Totally proves that carriers don't raise prices because a need to generate revenue rises, but because they can get away with it
 
bigjnyc said:
T-mobile charges the same exact fee, they just call it a SIM card fee. It applies whether you bring your own phone or get one from them. so same fee with much crappier service, they're all just as bad.
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My experience does not coincide. Is this a regional thing? because we normally get financially hosed on all fronts in the crookedest city in the shadiest state. I activated 4 phones in the last ~2 months or so, including an SE I bought from Apple. Two phones needed new SIM cards. 3 of these were activated in the local store, one was over the phone. No fees were incurred. Not to mention, service is great where I live and travel (no extra charge for use where I go in Europe, plus Taiwan) and they hand out sweet routers, gratis. All ya gotta do is ask.

bigjnyc said:
I'm surprised so many on this board are complaining about $20, if you own an apple product you are waaaay overpaying for old tech already. I'm sure a lot of you have purchased a $700 phone with 16gb of flash storage in it :rolleyes:
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Word.
 
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Glideslope said:
Screw all US Carriers. Where is "Apple Cellular?" :apple:
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LOL, just no! If Apple was a carrier, you would most likely be paying $100 for 1 GB of LTE data and $20 more for an additional 1 GB and they would still charge for minutes and individual texts.
 
th.jpeg "Fear will keep your wallet in line. Fear of this battle plan." - grand moff tarkin

"Don't underestimate the force into your wallet." -Darth vader.
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Jeremy1026 said:
I thought the point of not allowing monopolies was to force competition to keep prices down. Not to make each company raise prices at the same time.
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They are all working together to rape your wallet. Don't be surprised.

UPDATE: I love the sound of consumers' agony. :D It's like watching sound of music again.
 
So how does this work for people who are always swapping sims between phones? Does it just log each phone in the system once and charge you once per phone or for each time you swap? I hope they are investigated for this because they are literally doing no work.

I'd rather just give my business to T-Mobile, even if their coverage isn't as good, because I want to support their business model. The more people who switch, the more money they can invest in coverage. Hopefully they stay true and don't let it go to their head if they ever make it into 2nd or 1st place. But it's human nature to be greedy, especially among corporate leaders in America, so I won't count on it.
 
T Coma said:
And don't forget they filmed the Lord of the Rings trilogy there. There's that too.
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Yeah, not happy about that. The hollywood studios scammed our government out of a LOT of money.
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Retired Cat said:
For people who need AT&T and VZW level coverage, I'd say they have no choice except for the duopoly.

However, for people that can get along just fine on T-Mobile or even Sprint, it's beneficial to everyone for them to switch. The big guys won't change until there are mass defections to the smaller 2 carriers.
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Well I am coming to the USA later this year or a holiday. We are actually coming via the UK, but while we are there we will be buying a SIM for the iPad for us to use while where are in the USA. 15GB for 1 month GBP20, no roaming fees.

The US is just a rip off.

And when we are back home will will loan the SIM to other people at work etc who are travelling as it is the cheapest way to go. Top it up from NZ, and go to a heap of countries with no roaming fees and a decent amount of data for the month.
 
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