I'm just still POed at ATT because when the 3gs came out and all my friends qualified for the early upgrade and they told me I didn't and couldn't figure out why, Turns out you have to have a bill of $100 or more and I had extras on mine too and my bill came to $97 because I get a discount through my job so in stead of paying the $199 everyone else payed it cost me $399 because of a lousy $3 a month, I got it anyway because I sold the 3G for a good price to cover the difference. I've also had other issues with ATT but that's another story.
Having worked for AT&T in the past, I'll tell you the reason they give people breaks like that is simple: why would they waste 200 bucks on a customer that isn't paying more than the bare minimum? The absolute bare minimum plan for an iPhone is 70 bucks (450 minute plan, 30 dollar unlimited data). That's not even with text messaging. If you get unlimited text messaging, it goes up to 90 bucks, but with taxes these days it pretty much will hit $100. So why is that unfair? That's a pretty basic plan for today's cell phone user: unlimited data/text and only 450 minutes? Like I said, texting is optional, so if someone just gets by with what the have to have to get the phone, AT&T shouldn't reward them more than they already have by knocking off 300 bucks from the initial cost of the phone.
That all being said, it makes perfect sense for them to offer incentive to people that have more expensive plans, because it entices them into another 2 years of guaranteed income that's not the bare minimum. Heck, a lot of stores actually discount the phones more if you get certain features, or rebates are only applicable with certain phones if you get a certain feature. And a lot of stores have a policy of keeping said features on a plan for at least 6 months, otherwise the customer will get charged for that discount. If you think that's not fair, you've never worked in an environment where your success as an AT&T store is mainly based not on the volume of phones you cell, but your RPO, which is basically the average feature worth per activation. A lot of stores got closed if they didn't have over $25 per activation's worth of features on average. Which essentially means they had to sell a data plan with every smart phone...even though most stores aren't allowed to get the iphone with it's guaranteed $30 feature sell.
You may think this is all a bit besides the point, but it speaks on how AT&T is thinking as a business. Obviously customer satisfaction is a huge thing, but in the end, they are still a business, and they have to do what is good for the company. And having people get an iPhone on a plan just to cancel the service, pay the cancellation fee plus what they paid for the phone up front, and still get the iPhone for cheaper than they could have if they paid full price is just not good business. More people than you think were doing that just to get an iPhone on a different carrier.
As for the upgrade, how far off were you from getting one without the early upgrade? And why weren't you satisfied with your 3G? It didn't sound like getting a 3GS was a complete necessity for you. You say the 3 dollar difference isn't enough to warrant not getting on discounted, but like I said a bit ago, they are basing it on how much their return would be. And since you get discounts through work, you aren't paying as other people, so even though your plan may have been over 100 bucks without your discounts, you still aren't paying that much money. They have to draw the line somewhere, and drawing it at 100 bucks for an iPhone plan is really not all that high.
After some more reading regarding this, a lot of users are predicting this is a sign that the iPhone might be spanning out beyond ATT's borders. Does anybody think that's the case?
Well, from everything I've seen it's fairly possible that the iPhone could go to other carriers for a number of reasons, but not because of this raise in termination fee.
1) AT&T's network can't handle the strain as well as it should be able to.
2) Apple loves money, and they'd be a complete fool to see that there's money to be had by going to other carriers.
3) Apple knows that a lot of people unlock phones to work on other carriers, and I'm sure that in the search on how to unlock these phones people also jailbreak them, which Apple just cannot stand. So by letting other carriers have the phones work on their networks by default, unlocking would be pretty much unnecessary, and Apple could focus more on keeping people from jailbreaking instead.
But the contract that was signed between AT&T and Apple isn't up until 2012. So unless AT&T and Apple come to a settlement or understanding for breaking the contract (which I highly doubt AT&T will let go without a fight), it won't matter for a couple years.
