Carrier AT&T: "Your account is in a market not supported for upgrades"

[lordofthereef]

This is the dreaded error that people who tried to preorder using AT&T Next were getting. It is also the order that they continue to get, ordering through Apple.com, if they happen to be in the New York or Wyoming markets. Why then, was I getting it in the Boston, MA market?

I must have spent a cumulative 4-5 hours on the phone with AT&T and Apple, but we finally found an answer (which I was just yesterday also able to find on AT&T's official forums). It boils down to the account having been opened in a different market from where the phone is currently used. And it is only happening in some specific cases, not all. Effectively it is a bug within AT&T's authentication system and Apple has no control over it. If you are getting this bug, your only option is to order through AT&T or from an AT&T core store, at least until the bug is ironed out.

I had a high level rep eventually call me from AT&T and explain this. Bummer. Wasted so much time in lines, calling, looking up in store availability, when it was never meant to be.

I am posting this here since I finally found an answer, not as a form of complaint. It is what it is, and I figured someone with my issue might come across this thread. Perhaps I save you a minute, and hour, or more. Anyway, doesn't seem like one of my lines will be getting a 6+ any time soon.

 

[BrettDS]

I ran into an issue on pre-order day and I'm not sure if it was this same issue or not, but I was upgrading my wife's phone as well as my own. Our phone numbers are upstate (Albany) NY numbers, but we've lived in Florida for the past 6 years. I was using the Apple store app to upgrade and I wanted to use the NEXT program. The order for my line went through without a problem, but on my wife's line I got an error message saying "Phones that are primarily used in New York cannot upgrade with the NEXT program" or something along those lines. She does have a NY state number (as I do), but neither of us primarily use our phones in NY. Our phones have been in the state of NY maybe 2 or 3 times over the past 6 years.

I wound up upgrading my daughter's phone line (which is also an upstate NY number on the same account) for my wife and that one also went though without an issue. When the phones arrived I activated it on my daughter's line, then she and my wife swapped SIMs.

 

[lordofthereef]

We have found a resolution... I found it on the following forums.

http://forums.att.com/t5/General-Ac...arket-not-supported-for-upgrades/td-p/4086980
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6554206?tstart=0

We opened our accounts in Iowa. Even though we had local (617 Boston phone numbers) , and our billing and shipping addresses were also in the Boston market, our account remained in the Great Plains (GPL) market. This had to be changed to Boston (BOS) and the only way it could be done was opening a new account and transferring all of the lines.

Pretty disappointed in how long it took for AT&T to get this sorted and the fact that I basically had to tell them what to do. The rep on the phone had me go into a core store, where they actually happened to know what the heck was going on right when I explained to them; they mentioned this was something they could have done over the phone had they transferred me to the right department. If only I had gone to this store to begin with... sheesh.

Thank you manager Eric as well as Darrel at the Woburn, MA AT&T for being accommodating. I had been "kicked to the curb" at different core stores so I came armed with plenty of information to "fight" with, but ended up not having to. You guys were awesome.

Anyway, I got onto chat with AT&T tonight and explained my frustration. I must have spent easily a dozen hours by now just trying to figure out what's going on. They gave me a $200 credit, without having to specifically ask really for anything, which was nice. Realistically they didn't have to do anything, and although I am still stuck without an iPhone despite waiting in line and trying to buy even directly from Apple, I suppose the resolution was better than nothing.