[CROSS POST]
It's 11:23pm PST and after reading this thread I decided to call AT&T just to see what they could do.
Background: I have 10 phone lines (YES, 10!) with AT&T, been with them since before Cingular. My account is broken up into two separate family plans. I'm on a FAN account. Even though I'm not a "corporate" user, they always forward me to their business account services - probably because of the number of lines I have. My bill is about $450/mo. (For you nosey people - it's me, my fiance, my mother, his two parents, his two brothers, and three close cousins. Makes it VERY inexpensive per person when split between a trusting family that you can count on to pay the bill on time).
Within 2 minutes of speaking with the rep, she offered to waive any upgrade fees as long as I upgrade at least two lines. I said: "I'm thinking of pre-ordering the iPhone tonight and am wondering if there are any fees I should know about first." She told me: "There's a $36 fee for each line you upgrade." I told her, "Wow, that's expensive... I have 10 lines, I wanted to upgrade a few of them, but that is a lot of money just in upgrade fees." She said, "I can waive those upgrade fees for you if you upgrade at least 2." I said DONE DEAL!
I proceeded to ask her about the diff (playing dumb) between full upgrade and early upgrade pricing. She told me about the $250 upcharge for early upgrading. I gave her a schpiel about having only 4 lines eligible for upgrade, but some of the lines that I wanted to upgrade not being fully eligible. I told her that $250 upgrade fee is a little excessive, especially considering that if I pay the ETF and open a new line, it would be cheaper. She said that especially with bigger accounts like mine, Apple audits them and they could get in trouble with agreements with Apple if they see that a credit is given to subsidize the cost of the phone (essentially, if they could play it off like it was a "free texting for 6 months" credit, it'd be okay... but they can't justify a $250 credit x 4 lines without it looking fishy)... I asked her if she could just check anyway, because it'd be a big help if I could get my lines upgraded without paying such fees or going through such a hassle.
She put me on hold to talk to her supervisor. She came back and unfortunately told me that her supervisor told her that it's very likely that since my account is so large with so many iPhones already, it's very likely to be one of the audited accounts, and thus, they cannot issue any additional credit.
I still walked away with upgrade fees waived for any lines that I upgrade, plus (as I mentioned in the previous thread) the $60 account credit for unlimited texting for 6 months, I took what I could and thanked her.
Sorry it's such a long story, just wanted to share with you all.
