Posted on 01/07/2016 9:00:49 PM PST by Swordmaker
Something I noticed this past week, is that I had encrypted my phone (Z4), but the sd card is still unencrypted :/
Lol.. I still have my old PacBell beeper (Teal Blue) ;^D
Bingo!
Again, there was no charge beyond that $399 and my regular service fee of $60 a month last time. They wanted to do what you said this time.
My phone was $399 period.
Then count your lucky stars and lightning doesn't strike twice. The retail price of the 16GB iPhone 6 was $649, the 64GB was $749, and the 128G was $849. Add $100 for each for the Plus version. You got a bargain. . . but that is not a normal pricing and if you are talking the truth, and I am not saying I believe you, it was damned unusual for AT&T to give away that much to keep you.
Frankly I am in awe if you did get anything out of that broken company on first try.
I was responsible for over $250,000 in billing going their way and they would not bend over backwards to do a damn thing when I needed it. That's why that $250,000 in billing is now going elsewhere. Idiocy, industrial strength idiocy. . . especially when I was told things like "I am the only supervisor you are going to be allowed to talk to!" by a first level supervisor when my 95 year old mother's phone service was cut off for two weeks when they attempted to switch her from DSL to Uverse. Other comments I got from AT&T customer service during 26 hours of being on the phone trying to get my mother's phone service turned back on were "Well, there's no one here who wants to work, right now." and "Why doesn't she just get a cell phone like any sane person would and use that?" and "We're the phone company, we can switch off anyone's phone service we feel like!"
Nine times AT&T service made guaranteed appointments to send a service person to repair the problem and EIGHT TIMES NO ONE SHOWED UP! Then they had the gall to demand that my mother, who had had the same phone number for 75 years with them, and has a credit rating only slightly less than God's, and who had never missed paying a bill with them or anyone, would have to pass a CREDIT CHECK before they would authorize the RESTORATION OF HER PHONE SERVICE that their ERROR turned off!
Meanwhile, my mother, whose access to emergency service was completely cut off, her burglar alarm and ability to call 911 shut down, for TWO WEEKS, who loved to surf the internet at age 95 was without the ability to reach anyone. I spoke to AT&T's elder ombudsman who said he would have it cleared up in 8 hours. Nothing happened. Then I found out AT&T laid him off and ELIMINATED HIS POSITION just hours after I talked to him! ARRRRGGGGHHHH! That 26 hours on the phone is not counting the hours going repeatedly going through their phone trees to get connected to the correct person, or being disconnected while being transferred to another person, or being disconnected because it was now closing time.
On the ninth service call, the technician found that someone from Uverse who had come out to check the connection speed had just disconnected my Mom's phone line at the switch box at the end of the block by disconnecting the two wires to her house. . . and neglected to reconnect them when he finished his test. He said there was no need to have disconnected the wires, the test didn't require it. The log showed that the test was run exactly at the time my mom's service was interrupted, so he knew that was what had happened. It was an easy fix that would have taken at most an hour if they had bothered to check the repair/service logs. As I said, a broken company.
I won't even go into the idiocy of their business office practices that followed that incident at my office and how many times they LOST the same order I made for special upgrade services. . . or that the technicians they finally sent out to install said upgrade did not know how to interface the new digital equipment with their old POTS (plain old telephone system) because they had laid off all of their older technicians and engineers who knew how the old POTS system worked! I wound up doing half of the work and they had to talk to an old time technician back in Alabama to figure out what to do. . . on one of their flagship business products!
As soon as out contract obligation on that product expired. I went with another phone company entirely.
I know the number of hours I spent trying to get my mom's phone back on because I kept a log and I sent AT&T a bill for my time. They paid it as part of a settlement to keep me from suing.
At work we have AT&T for a ton of money. In one of my homes I gave an unlimited internet line and unlimited international phone for $35 a month through Time War er.
At work we had regular AT&T lines and DSL. I wanted to save money so I got rid of two lines and put one line and Internet on a uverse account
They F’d it up. Transferred internet over involving a number we never heard of and for some reason ended the business number we had for 35 years.
After days of turmoil we got the number back and the Internet was placed on our account line.
We get now by AT&T collection calls about a bill every other month we never had the number for. So every 8 weeks I have to make sure they fix this and don’t send this to the credit companies to ruin the businesses credit.
All that happened by just dropping two lines and taking the DSL to their digital.
OK. . . . that would explain the pricing you got. You got connected to their minuscule "Fairy Godmother Department" that is usually closed or on vacation, but when it is, will do the right thing and do it quickly to make up for everything the "Department of Dirty Tricks" and the "Departments of SNAFU and FUBAR as Usual," all three of which are open 24/7, have already done to you.
With the billing problem, It sounds like the little old lady who is the sole employee in the "Fairy Godmother Department" went back to her knitting or had another one of her Alzheimer attacks before she finished cleaning up the mess that the "SNAFU" department had made in your billing, though.
My elder daughter is not a person you want to cross. At age 23 she already was hell on wheels competent (she had advanced to become the #3 person in a company of over 500 people), when-- this was some 17 years ago-- got into an argument with AT&T. After having her phone number for four years, AT&T had arbitrarily decided to sell her very desirable home phone number (hers ended in 1000) to a commercial company and give her a new phone number without any notice. They did not even bother tell her what her new number was! Her family, friends, work just suddenly got connected to a new pizza parlor every time they tried to call her, leaving all of them except work with having no way to get a hold of her except through mail, email, or at work.
After going around and around with AT&T, my daughter learned what had happened. AT&T sent her a written apology from the PRESIDENT of AT&T which included an agreement to not bill her for her home phone for a year as part of the apology. They also agreed to send letters of explanation from AT&T to a list of her friends and businesses she would provide.
Six months later, when her first bill under the new number finally arrived. She discovered to her horror that someone had interpreted the president that they only were only deferring BILLING her for those twelve months. . . and she had a bill for a full 12 MONTH'S SERVICE and it was all DUE AND PAYABLE RIGHT NOW! In addition, they were billing her for a business DSL line she did not have, which in fact, was not at her address, or even in our state!
Did I tell you my daughter is not one to be in an argument with? They tried to argue that she did not have any such agreement, that she did indeed own and use the DSL line on an out-of-state phone number her name was not even attached to associated with a large corporation, they hung up on her, they said she had to pay the bill before she could put in into dispute (with the business DSL line it came to several thousand dollars), they tried everything in their arsenal to get her to go away. She also kept track of her time. . . and sent an itemized bill to the president of AT&T for over $800 for her time she had spent on the phone trying to straighten out THEIR mess, along with a copy of the president's apology letter and a copy of the bill they had sent her; AT&T paid the bill she sent.
They were not where I got the $399 IPhone 6, that was the retention department of 611.
I am going to fire the AT&T account all together and pay $25-35 a month for the business home phone and Internet both through Time Warner.
That saves $60 a month.
I will then fire Time Warner cable and buy Direct TV.
That move saves $90 a month the first year and $60 the second.
They were not where I got the $399 IPhone 6, that was the retention department of 611.
I am going to fire the AT&T account all together and pay $25-35 a month for the business home phone and Internet both through Time Warner.
That saves $60 a month.
I will then fire Time Warner cable and buy Direct TV.
That move saves $90 a month the first year and $60 the second.
LOL! Better look again, AT&T bought DirecTV.
I switched my office to Comcast Business phones, saving 60% over what AT&T had been charging. They even installed glass into our building to do it. That enabled us to also upgrade our Internet connection way beyond the DSL 6Mb per second limit that AT&T was able to offer to over 35Gb per second (could go a lot higher but don't need it, nor can we justify the higher cost). The internet price is included at the lower phone cost instead of tacked on top of the phone bill as it was with AT&T.
This is yet another example of FUD that actually stoops to what is starting to look a lot like intentional manipulation.
User-hangable batter is a dying feature, not because of a lack of demand, but because of several other factors - profit margins, lawyers (3rd-party batteries are notoriously dangerous), and planned obsolescence all play in to the mix.
As far as an SD/MicroSD/etc. memory expansion - I’ve not kept tabs on the Android offerings, though I know that has been a common feature - one that I really do wish we could get in iPhones. I cannot help but wonder if that is going to be a dying feature as well, if for no other reason than to drive hardware sales (no more easy storage space, so must buy larger capacity phone...).
The Next plan (or Verizon’s version) is a financing plan that is actually funded by 3rd party lender. If you pay out the full financed contract - you have essentially paid the full retail price for the device over that time.
But also with this plan - you have an early “termination” date where you can just turn the phone back in and upgrade, often (as Swordmaker posted) at the same cost. At that rate, it is much like leasing.
If you figure the higher cost associated with plans using the “free” or otherwise subsidized plans/phones over the locked-in contract months - it really works out to be not much different in the long-run. At least with the Next plan - I’m not really under a contract - I can end my service at any time (though I will have to continue to pay the finance contract on the phone/device).
Two words:
UNION SHOP
But Direct TV is a great product and price. It undermines the TV on AT&T.
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