Aaron Huslage

Well well well. It seems that AT&T hasn’t learned anything from the sham that was iPhone 1.0 activation for corporate users. Instead of allowing anyone to switch to the new iPhone 3G, they have decided to impose the über ridiculous 2 year upgrade cycle on everyone. At least they’re equally distributing the pain.

I inquired of friends at the company about how to switch my current Blackberry Curve to the new iPhone. They informed me that since the line I am using was opened just over a month ago, I am not eligible for an upgrade at this time. I’m on a corporate plan with 20 or so lines all sharing the same pool of minutes and every device has unlimited text and data, so we aren’t a tiny customer for them — not huge either, but good solid monthly revenue.

Not only am I ineligible for an upgrade, but they insist that they cannot simply add the iPhone 3G to our existing pool of minutes. Every iPhone must use the iPhone plans. Period. If a small company has an account like ours, that apparently means nothing to AT&T. My friend then suggested that I either open a new line or purchase the iPhone at the noncommitted price of $699 (!). Ridiculous. Again.

Of course the guy blamed Apple for all of this nonsense. Published reports say that AT&T and Apple no longer have a revenue sharing deal and that AT&T just buys the devices outright from Apple. Therefore Apple no longer has a say in the plans or deals that AT&T makes with its customers. Not to mention, Apple has completely ceded the customer’s initial experience with their device.

So in summary, our company gives AT&T a decent amount of recurring revenue and are, in most ways, their ideal customer that delivers very high ARPU month over month…for years. They aren’t willing or able to provide us with a device that we want because of politics and flawed marketing. If I were to open a new line under their new iPhone plans, they would actually be making LESS money from us than if they just added it to the pool. Go figure.

AT&T continues to not value its existing customers in any way. They force us to use devices for two years, regardless of whether the device was purchased on contract or not (mine was brought in and not purchased from AT&T). They are willing to lose money in the name of strange policies and contractual “obligations”. When will they learn that the customer just wants what they want and they should give it to them so that they can preserve their market and improve their reputation?