I cat't buy iPhone because I have an account with ATT!!!!!

Question

Hello!!!! I want to get 2 iPhones for me and my GF and I contacted ATT and they said I have to pay full price becuase I am not eligible for the discounted price since I only have the plan since may!!! They sent me an email and they said that because of the agreement with Apple they are not allowed to sell the iPhone at the discounted price if you are not eligible for an upgrade or a new customer. I think is not fair because I will still pay the $30 data plan and the ATT is geting the money back from that over the term of the contract and plus I have a big minutes plan . What you guys think of that . Apple should make the iPhone available to all the ATT customers since they will pay the plan anyway and nobody is losing anything . I really don't get this and I hope that by holiday season they will take care of that since they will need the push that since the sale of iPhone is going to give them a nice profit over the holiday season considering the economic situation! Thank you !!!

Answer 1

I had a subsidized phone with an AT&T contract as well. They generally will allow the "main" number in a family plan to upgrade to a subsidized phone in less than the 2 years...often about 1 1/2 years or less. I was able to get a subsidized iPhone in September (I may have been eligible earlier but didn't check into it prior to that). My husband can't upgrade until December and that will be 4 or 5 months before the current 2 year contract expires on his phone.
I had lengthy conversation with AT&T both at the store and in a follow up conversation on the phone about why someone could walk in off the street (non AT&T customer) and get the subsidized price but my husband could not. I was also informed about the fact that they already subsidized our previous phones and that's why he was not eligible for the reduced price.
I guess I can understand why if they let you do it all the time you would be looking for the latest and greatest upgrades and probably selling your subsidized phones at a profit when you got a new one.
I will add that when I called customer service at AT&T to see if they had any way to let my husband upgrade earlier (at the suggestion of my in store salesman) I was also told that their agreement with Apple prohibited them from doing that any earlier. He would have given my husband an earlier than normal upgrade on any other phone, but explained they had absolutely no flexibility on the iPhone per their agreement with Apple.
Obviously I have no way of knowing if that is true since I haven't seen their agreements. I assume if I walked into an Apple store to buy the phone, they would look at our AT&T account and tell us the same thing.
My husband has been "playing" with my phone quite a bit while we're out and about and I know he likes it. But yesterday I asked him if he still wants to get one in December when he's eligible and he said he's not sure. If he'd been eligible when I bought mine he would already have bought it!