For those (including Steve Jobs) who say iphone 4 and AT&T are both great, here’s my story of buying the iPhone 4.
Explanation: as part of my job I do product “tear down” analysis reports. So I’m ordering this product to cancel the contract, keep the product then disassemble it.
I ordered the 16 GB thru Apple for $254.41, which includes signing up for the AT&T contract.
The contract STATES you can cancel (the contract) within three days of initial activation,then you don’t pay the $36 Activation Feefee, and you can do this with the option to keep the iPhone 4 but you must then pay an additional $325 contract cancellation fee.
(The phone retail without the contact is $599 plus about $60 in tax.) So per the AT&T contact buying the phone with the contract and canceling within 3 days, I’m saving roughly ($660 – $579.41) = $80.59 towards ending up with the phone without a contract.
Apparently too many people also figured that out. Here’s what happened next:
1) I used the iPhone 4 to call AT&T Customer Service, from our front yard in the middle of Sunnyvale. We live a mile away from Apple. I tried the front yard, after the POS phone could even place the call from any location inside our home.
Phones on any cell network have great Tx / Rx signal when calling within our home, from Verizon to T-Mobile to Sprint, etc. But with the Apple iPhone 4 on the AT&T network, you cannot even make a single call from within our home.
The stupid iPhone on AT&T network even kept dropping the call when I’m on the front lawn!
YES, I was being careful NOT to touch the stupid iPhone antenna “bad spot” when making these calls.
The thing doesn’t even have good enough signal in the middle of Silicon Valley where there are basically cell towers every few blocks. The AT&T customer service kept saying “You’re breaking up.” I said, “yeah, because I’m using an iPhone with antenna problem on your crappy network.”
So I had to use my T-mobile Blackberry to call AT&T to cancel the iPhone 4 contract.
2) AT&T customer service makes me wait THIRTY minutes to speak with someone.
Then they tell me the contract was a LIE and now they changed the terms, and I CANNOT cancel and pay a fee and keep the phone. OMG, what friggen liars. They reneged on the original contract terms.
They say now if I want to keep the product and cancel the contract I must: wait until day 31, pay the full 1st month’s bill, pay the $36 activation fee, and pay the $325 fee.
The only other option was for me to call Apple and return the product and pay no extra fees, which I did.
This is why people hate AT&T’s network and their customer service, and this is more proof the iPhone 4 has horrible cell signal Tx and Rx.
