

Angry iPhone owners blast AT&T - dschobel
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Knowledge+Center&articleId=9134218&taxonomyId=1

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haseman
Sadly, the extra 200$ is a fair price. They recoup that money over the course
of your contract... Perhaps they could prorate the discount for the amount of
time you're through your term?

Further, the only reason they were able to offer the discounted price when
shifting from 2g to 3g was the additional 10$ a month they made off the new
data plan. For the 3gs, they'll actually lose money on upgrading customers
because their bandwidth costs go up.

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mlinsey
Either that, or append an additional two years to the end of your current
commitment? (Why are most cell phone contracts two years long anyway?)

Of course, with a new iPhone every year, continuing to follow such a policy
could leave some die-hard fans with commitments lasting decades...

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mattmaroon
I'm guessing most contracts are two years long because that's the most
Americans will generally sign. People expect they'll want a new phone in that
time (at the longest) and maybe want to switch carriers.

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Tichy
This is where lack of basic maths skills really bites the average person. I
wonder if the practice of mobile phone companies selling "cheap" phones could
be considered fraud, given that many people are apparently unable to
understand it.

The optimum outcome of this would be for phone companies to give up the
practice, as it only enrages customers in the long run.

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mattmaroon
Wrong, and wronger. People fully understand they're getting the phone with
strings attached. It isn't that they're too stupid to do the math, it's that
humans are predisposed to value now over later, because there might not be a
later. It's a symptom of our evolutionary history, and the phone companies
know it.

The optimal outcome for them is to use that to get people locked into their
service for two years, and give them a device for $0 that a company without a
contract would have to ask $200 for. They're not stupid, at some point
somebody surely said "hey, what if we sold these phones for a higher price
unlocked" but then everybody laughed and that guy felt like an idiot.

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Tichy
"People fully understand they're getting the phone with strings attached."

I honestly doubt that. I have often heard people say "hey, that phone only
costs 10€ with O2, but 100€ with T-Mobile" and stuff like that. It never
occurs to them to compare the rates they would get without a phone with the
rates they get with the phone.

Probably there are lots of psychological studies about that (similar to the
x.99cent prices in supermarkets). But that is why maths is important (among
other things) - because it can protect you against the failures of your brain.

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quellhorst
I will be angry if these people do get the subsidized price. Being logical, I
skipped the 3g hoping for more features around the time my contract expires on
my 2G that I paid $600 for. Just because Apple releases a new phone every
year, doesn't mean you should get it every year for cheap.

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lsb
If you're all so damn mad, push for public mobile broadband and you could use
Skype on your iPod Touch.

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absconditus
Does the iPod Touch have a microphone?

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dmix
Nope.

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robg
Answered my own question, the iPhone headset works with the Touch and Skype -
at least by this guy's account:

[http://truthseekernz.blogspot.com/2009/05/ipod-touch-and-
sky...](http://truthseekernz.blogspot.com/2009/05/ipod-touch-and-skype.html)

This is actually an interesting option. We switched our cells to paygo and use
Skype with a number. We're saving over $1000 this way over the next year
alone. Now we have a way to get rid of the paygo too!

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zacharypinter
I've heard a lot of back and forth about subsidized pricing and how this is
standard procedure for phone companies.

The problem here is that Apple is a company that drives its customers to
constantly buy the latest gadget. Cell phone subsidies make the early adopters
feel like they're getting shafted, as they are not eligible for the advertised
price.

The real solution here is to only subsidize the "average consumer" version of
the device, or to avoid subsidy programs that are significantly longer than
the time span between different versions of the device. A 2 year subsidy makes
no sense if Apple is producing a new phone in less than a year.

~~~
hellweaver666
That's the solution right there - only offer subsidised prices based around 12
month contracts, then the fanboys get to upgrade every year around the time
the new phones come out but they have to pay a bit more for the phone.

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cjbos
I think Apple has more to answer to here. Why can't they enable the voice
controls and video capture on the old hardware with the update?

Hardly think AT&T is to blame that you can't use features your phone is
capable of using in the OS 3.0 update, and therefore should get a subsidized
upgrade.

