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Can't buy AT&T iPhone without an account?

I

iTinker

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2012
6
0
From what I'm seeing Apple will not sell me an AT&T iPhone without being an AT&T customer. Is that correct?

In the past I've been able to just buy the T-Mobile model and put my AT&T (or AT&T MVNO) SIM in it but this year I want to get the actual AT&T model because it has the extra LTE band 30. It seems like this isn't something they allow though.

It seems kind of strange that I am wiling to pay full price for the phone but they won't sell it to me unless I either provide a current AT&T account or sign up for a new one. My issue is I just switched to Cricket last week and am using the Cricket SIM in my locked AT&T iPhone 6 right now with no problem, but if I had known I needed an AT&T account to buy the AT&T iPhone 6S I would have just waited a week before porting my number away from AT&T... seems kind of ridiculous that if I kept my AT&T account I could have bought the phone and then immediately canceled the AT&T account but since I did that a week ago I now can't buy the AT&T phone.
 
AT&T wants your phone service more than it wants to sell you a phone.

Why not just buy from the Apple Store? LTE band 30 is exclusive to the AT&T network and it's not even up in running in most places yet, so if you're on Cricket now I have no idea why you'd need that extra band.
 
Apparently the only thing you can buy from the Apple Store right now is the T-Mobile phone unless you have service with one of the other providers. Cricket is AT&T so it will use LTE band 30.
 
It's so obvious people take phones back and forth between T-Mobile and AT&T. I don't know why Apple had to cause this difficulty/confusion regarding band 30.
 
iTinker said:
From what I'm seeing Apple will not sell me an AT&T iPhone without being an AT&T customer. Is that correct?

In the past I've been able to just buy the T-Mobile model and put my AT&T (or AT&T MVNO) SIM in it but this year I want to get the actual AT&T model because it has the extra LTE band 30. It seems like this isn't something they allow though.

It seems kind of strange that I am wiling to pay full price for the phone but they won't sell it to me unless I either provide a current AT&T account or sign up for a new one. My issue is I just switched to Cricket last week and am using the Cricket SIM in my locked AT&T iPhone 6 right now with no problem, but if I had known I needed an AT&T account to buy the AT&T iPhone 6S I would have just waited a week before porting my number away from AT&T... seems kind of ridiculous that if I kept my AT&T account I could have bought the phone and then immediately canceled the AT&T account but since I did that a week ago I now can't buy the AT&T phone.
Click to expand...
buy it under a friends account who has AT&T.
 
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