1 Question - 3 Answers

Very frustrating I tell you!

It's tax time!! We filed and got our money already!! Yay!!! We've paid a ton of bills already and our one big splurge this year, is going to be a pair of iPhones!! YAY!! We've both wanted one for,... well,... since they came out??? But of course we'd already bought our phones, and couldn't do it for the upgrade price until recently.

Well, I am eligible for upgrade, which we can't figure out since when we paid for our new phones last time, we got them together, so technically if I'm eligible, so should hubby. But no, he's not eligible until March 3rd.

Surely we can get this taken care of right?? I can plead with the reps that I really want to get my husband this phone for Valentine's Day. So, I call AT&T directly.

I get this woman,.... I can only assume that it was a woman,.... she had a bit of an accent,.... as soon as she spoke, my eyes rolled to the back of my head. OHHHH NOOoooooo. *SIGH* Grin and bear it and put on my best polite voice and hope to God that she's with the program to do what I'm asking.

"Hello, I'm wanting to get an iPhone for my husband for Valentine's Day, only he isn't eligible for an upgrade until March 3rd, less than a month away,... I was hoping that you could help me out, by doing an early upgrade for us?"

She said a LOT of stuff that I couldn't understand. But the jist was that no, she couldn't do this,... that sure she could put him in for an early upgrade, but he's still going to have to pay full price.

Umm.... then what's the point??? To her the point is, that do early upgrade, you can then buy a new phone. Well, if you're paying full price in the first place, what's the point of doing early upgrade at all?? Any Joe Blow can walk in off the street w/ the money and buy any phone he wants right?? This was just not making sense and as much as I tried to explain it to her,... the less I was able to even understand her. I decided she was talking with a mouth full of bricks,.... but now I'm thinking it might have been more like rocks. Defiantly rocks. I gave up and hung up,... I didn't say thank you, I didn't say good bye, I just hung up. Rude I know, but I had had enough,... and I sure wasn't going to say thank you for her help,... because she didn't help!!! ARGH!!!!

All the while, I'm trying to call the local AT&T store,... nice new fancy store that opened up right near our new fancy mall. But I kept getting the message that all the reps were busy at the moment. I just kept redialing,....

During this time, I'm popping into the "Online Chat" that the AT&T website provides,.... surely this person can understand what I want and I won't have to hear some horrid accent that I can't understand right????

It really went along quite well. I could understand her, she could understand me. Good deal!!! However,.... she too said that we'd have to pay full price for a phone, even though we're like 26 days from his actual upgrade date!! This makes NO sense at all. We've been with them for umm.... gosh,.... too many years now!!! This is just ridiculous!!! I did thank her for her time, considering she gave a lot of detail and explanation.

I still wasn't happy. See, once upon a time, I dropped my poor old clam shell type cell phone into a toilet. Yeah, was great fun. Short story is that the phone was pretty well dead,... wouldn't hold calls etc,... I called AT&T and got an early upgrade, I could go into any store and purchase any phone for the upgrade price. Piece of cake. So, they're telling me that in order for him to get early upgrade, he'll have to flush his phone???? *sigh*

I finally got through to the local store,.... I explained and the gal put me on hold to verify if they could help or not.

She returned,... promptly I might add, and said "So long as you're within 30 days of upgrade, we can assist you"

To be clear, I asked her "and we can purchase him an iPhone 3Gs for the upgrade price of $199.00 correct???"

"For the 16gb yes, that's the price"

TA DA!!! I knew I could make this happen, I just sure didn't expect the long major ordeal. Such a pain in the rear.