My iPhone Buying Nightmare
Macs suck.
I’ve been saying that for decades now. Plain and simple. Macs suck. I hate everything Apple stands for and always have. Think Different. Yeah right. Liberal propaganda. I have despised macs so much, I even refused to buy an iPod, (and got one “given” to me) just because I didn’t want to buy anything from the company that provides “user friendly” aka dumbed down computers to schools and ad agencies because people are lazy and don’t want to really learn how to use a real computer. I sometimes think that our culture is doomed to be like the planet in Star Trek the Next Generation that didn’t even know how to use their “guardian” computer system because it was so “user-friendly.” “user friendly”= “computers for people who probably shouldn’t even be using one.”
All that being said out in the open, I decided to give Mac/Apple a chance today, I finally decided to go buy an iPhone. I have been dissatisfied with my current phone/cell plan for a while, and I really want some of the Internet features that I don’t have on mine. Rather than go Blackberry, I decided to go with the iPhone. It was a HUGE decision from a mac-hater such as myself. Huge. But I swallowed my PC pride and went into the AT&T store in Ankeny, intenet on buying my first apple product.
The service associate was nice, even pulled down some accessories but wasn’t too pushy. I feigned lack of knowledge on a few things and asked him to explain activation and other small things… all of which are readily available on iphone.com. After he disappeared into the back, he came with a new 8GB iPhone, in all of its glory.
He continued to punch a few keys, asked for my name, address, social security #, etc. He then scanned the iPhone and the holster thing I picked out, then informed me there would be an additional $150 deposit.
“Hold on there, what?”
Seems as though in addition to the phone, and the activation fee, there is a credit check and my check was flagged to require a $150 deposit. I had specifically allocated enough funds both monetarily and in my pride/decision making process to allow the purchase of an iPhone at $400 and some accessories at $40-60. I did NOT know about any such $150 deposit required to begin a plan with AT&T. The sales associate, sensing his commission sliding away, tried to help things out. “All carriers require a deposit when you start them,” he said. “Not all,” I told him. “Mine didn’t.” He then explained that the $150 would be returned in the form of a check in 12 months once the first year is up. Well, isn’t that great, let’s do the math.
$150 at 5% interest = $157.50 that they would have in the bank at the end of the “deposit period” thereby making $7.50 on just me, if they held it in a 5% savings or checking account with interest. Multiply that by the number of people signing up for AT&T… and you have a nice little racket going there.
I stood there in shock, pondering what to do. I was prepared to spend close to $500. but close to $700? I just couldn’t do it. I put my card away and started to walk out, muttering how ridiculous that policy was rather loudly so other customers could hear. As I was almost out the door, one of the managers asked what was going on, was told, and tried to yell after me “but wait, we can…” but I wouldn’t hear anything of it. They deliberately hid their little $150 deposit fee, and I wasn’t going to have anything to do with a company like that.
I left the store with even more disdain for Apple and AT&T as I did before. Was it Apple’s fault? partially .. AT&T’s fault..definitely.
To have someone with $600 ready to purchase and then pull a fast one like that … AT&T should be ashamed.
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Comments
I am confident there wasn’t anything the manager could have done, since as you say, its an AT&T corporate policy. I fully acknowledge the fact that it is AT&T’s policy, not Apple’s…. however in choosing to make the iPhone ONLY work with AT&T, Apple has in effect agreed with the incurred policies of AT&T.
If the iPhone worked with my current carrier (out of the box) then I would not have had to pay the activation, or the $150 deposit. Period. So in the end, it really >is< Apple’s policy that is at fault.
Corporations who turn away business because of policies have no idea how the real world works any longer. Not everybody is “out to get them.”
Sorry about your iPhone problem. That is an AT&T (Cingular) thing. Yes, it would be nice to have that in the ad somewhere, but it doesn’t seem all that common (at least I haven’t seen anything online about this before). And you can bet that the Apple Store employees are taking note of how many failed sales there are because of this. The thing about Apple is that they will actually listen, and adapt.
Remember the outrage when it was discovered that Apple was not going to allow third-party development for the iPhone? Well, they just announced *today* that the iPhone SDK has been released to allow third-party applications, so maybe they’ll change the AT&T-only restriction, too in the future. It sort of makes sense to start out with one carrier, make sure things work, get the real-world bugs sorted, then add other carriers later.
As far as this comment goes: “user friendly”= “computers for people who probably shouldn’t even be using one.” - I doubt we’d have the advances in computing/music/podcasting/movies/special effects/not to mention making the Internet more accessible, if we were still limited to command-line interfaces. Who would’ve been interested? The interface frees up resources to work in other directions, and lets those who have a thirst for digging deeper into the inner workings do so if they choose.
I didn’t mean the interface at all, just the entire Apple marketing program has been directed at kids and computer novices… which is why they proliferated in the schools so much over the years.
You can’t reach a machine’s “full potential” if it is entirely “user friendly” ie: locked out. Apple failed to remember this from its computer division with the iPhone, and only now announced the SDK for the iPhone.
My problem with macs and apples is you open the cardboard box it came in, plug in one cable to the back, another into the keyboard, and you are running. They made it incredibly difficult to upgrade their computers over the years, and continue to do so… the mac mini included.
The PC market, on the other hand, while more “complicated” has benefited by allowing other companies the ability to make parts. Say what you will about Microsoft, but the PC “brand” of computers has given birth to tens of thousands of “companies” making everything from keyboards to fans, to LEDs, to ribbon cables, etc. Entire companies and industries have been developed because the PC was “open” instead of closed like Apples. Apple has kept almost everything proprietary in the past in terms of hardware, and still makes it difficult to upgrade things piecemeal.
The “keep it all under us” mantra that Apple operates under is opposite from their projected public “marketing” image, it irritates me. They are not the “good guys” of the computer world as they would like to be remembered as.
Now if Dell is ever allowed to produce a Dell Macintosh, I would be forced to eat my words. 
The mini was never intended to be upgraded beyond installing more RAM, and never claimed to be. The MacPro, however - http://www.apple.com/macpro/expansion.html - is pretty expandable (as in, awesomely expandable!!! I want one!). And Macs use a lot of the same exact hardware as the PCs you mention - it’s getting the drivers that can be a pain sometimes (and with open source, that’s getting a lot easier). I’ve never had a problem with updating hardware, adding RAM if we need it, replacing drives if we need more space, change out a video card maybe. However, it just isn’t necessary to update the hardware on a Mac nearly as often as people do on windows machines.
“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
Apple Marketing Executive
I can see it all clearly - I own a dozen PC’s, a Linux box, a Mac Mini, and a MacBook Pro - I’ve crashed them all.
They’re just tools - albeit tools which people attach emotions to - in arguing the merits of the tool, it’s never about the tool itself - hence, knowing that you cannot force logic through their emotions, it’s best to just not partake of such discussions in the future.
yeah I know, but I needed a vent post. 
I realize there is nothing mroe mundane than the PC vs Mac argument, but this “incident” pushed me over the edge.
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Sounds like you are making your decision based on bad corporate policy and not giving the human side of the corporation, a manager eager to please (rare) the chance to rectify your situation. And you blaming Apple is just your distaste for Apple. Where they do have bad corporate policy, this isn’t one of them.