I just had a very retarded conversation with ATT. My old iPhone which was bought in December of 2007, is fully paid for and out of contract. I upgraded to the 3gs of course, and as a result I now how the 2g sitting around. I want to hand it down to my mom. She is on my plan as another line of service. Her line contract is up in Feb 2010. She is not ending her contract, but yet, she cannot change to an iPhone without data. (she doesnt want to pay $20/month, and I dont blame her, she would rarely use it)
So get this. She cannot use the phone. When she activate through iTunes, it forces the dataplan. When I called to remove the dataplan, they cannot do it. Now the argument I got was because she is still under contract for her moto phone she has. BUT… she is not canceling or changing anything about her service. Just the handset. The example of a situation without an iPhone involved, that happens all the time, and causes no issues is this:
If you smash you current phone, which is under contract, you have 3 choices.
1) buy a new phone from ATT and extend your contract that extra time they require, usually 2 years.
2) buy a used att (or unlocked) phone on ebay, and swap your sim card.
3) use a prior phone you have if you have one.
All that makes perfect sense, and many people every day do that. For options 2 and 3 they suffer no charges from ATT or contract extention(and couldnt), and frankly ATT doesnt even know generally. BUT, if you try it with the iPhone, you can’t. If you try to activate it, you HAVE to get the dataplan, AND it even tells you that you are getting put into a new 2 year contract (though I verified that was not actually true).
So where does this leave us?
Jailbreak. I have to jailbreak a 2.5 year old, fully paid for phone, so that my mom can use it as a cell phone, and use the fun stuff over wifi. She will buy apps from apple, and will not put any data load on the ATT cellular network, but yet, she is prevented from using the phone via legitimate means. She, like millions of customers would NEVER upgrade to an iPhone with dataplan because of cost, but would like to upgrade to an iPhone using data over WiFi only that they can get for free or cheap from friend or family.
So, I am forced to break rules and use an illegitimate method in order to use something I own. It’s not a rental when you sign that contract, its a lease to own. When the contract is fulfilled, you own it.
Apple and ATT apparently have read Brave New World and assumed it was a business manual. Consumption = Happiness
