All of these have been great points. I did reach out to another ATT store in Manhattan (I am in NYC so the initial store that forced me to purchase AppleCare is in Queens) and spoke with both a Sales rep there and the Store manager and evidently "complaints" are coming through that regular brick and mortar stores in the outer boroughs and outside of major cities are executing unsavory practices in selling the iphone 4 due to the high demand and limited volume. He refunded the funds for the AppleCare purchase. He told me he was not at liberty to discuss anything further because he was employed by ATT and could not badmouth the company. He further suggested that moving forward iphones are sold alone and not in bundles in and outside of ATT stores. My only concern in regards to this whole post is that I think we as consumers do need to start holding these manufacturers to some degree of responsibility. I understand regulation of business is as anti-American as hating apple pie and hotdogs but if apple is going to authorize third party retailers then some sort of regulation from apple to those retailers needs to be in place. Maybe for iphone 5 apple should be the only to sell the phone for the first 6 months??? or something to that degree. Perhaps apple can send "secret shoppers" into brick and mortar stores to see how this is being handled. Supply will always outweigh demand in order to yield profits, but at what point is the experience for the consumer sacrificed???? Again, I only post this because ultimately none of this was free. I also was interested in seeing if anyone out there had also been through a similar experience. On a good note, the phone is great!!! even coming from a 3GS it's definitely been a step-up.
