Touched ... In The Wallet
Y’know, I’ve always been a great supporter of Apple. The first computer I ever bought was a Macintosh 512ke (yes … I’m that old) and I’ve bought a bunch of Macs and iPods over the years. Needless to say, the iPhone just blew me away when it came out, and although I waited until version 2 came out, I was all ready to plop down my hard-earned money and snag one this weekend. In the process, I was reminded of an old saying: If you lay down with pigs, you start to smell like them.
As I’m sure almost everyone on the planet knows, Apple entered into an exclusivity agreement with AT&T where the iPhone is concerned. This means that you can’t actually have an iPhone if you don’t do business with AT&T. Not surprisingly, AT&T is using this exclusivity to absolutely shaft iPhone enthusiasts … and their own customers.
Take me for example. I switched to AT&T less than a year ago just to be ready to get an iPhone. I also have my land line, my DSL, and my satellite TV on my AT&T bill. To put it mildly, I give them a lot of money each month. Granted their coverage is pretty good, but I’d expect to get a bit of smooch back for turning all of my communication needs over to them.
Alas, AT&T isn’t very smoochy. In fact, they outright punish you for being a customer. I discovered this when I popped into the local AT&T store this weekend. After signing in and having my name horribly mispronounced by some pimply-faced boomerang kid who’s no doubt still living at home, I got down to brass tacks. What would it cost me to take an iPhone home and bask in its coolness?
A lot. A whole lot. First of all, my reward for already being an AT&T customer is that I can’t get the iPhone for $299 because I haven’t been a customer long enough. But they’d happily let me have one for $499. Still hopeful (although I could feel my blood pressure rising), I asked about the data plan. That would obliged me to shell out an additional $30 per month, along with the mysterious $18 “upgrade fee” that I’d have to pay (at this point, I was assured that the “upgrade fee” was only a one-time charge). HOWEVER …. it turns out that the plan I have now is considered to be a “special promotional plan” … so I’d have to add another $10 a month to the extra $30 a month. And that doesn’t even include text messages!!! Those cost extra too. So … whipping out my calculator, I came up with the following numbers to illustrate what the phone that Apple advertises as being “Twice as fast. Half the price” actually would cost me. It looked like this:
Naturally, if the wife wants one, that’s another $1477 (plus tax)!!!!!
Now I ask you, gentle reader …. does that sound like “Half the price”?? What it sounds like to me, to quote the immortal words of George Carlin, is AT&T’s way of saying: “Come over here, bend over, and let us stick this big **** up your ***”. I think they’re banking on P.T. Barnum’s old adage that no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the general public. And they’re probably right. In an age when monthly payments are more important than overall price -- where deficits are considered normal (especially amongst the government types) -- I have no doubt that lots of people in similar situations will pony up the dough.
But not this cowboy. I picked up an iPod Touch (i.e. the iPhone without the phone) for $299. True, it doesn't do everything that an iPhone does, but since $299 divided by 24 months comes out to whopping $12.45 a month, I think it’s a substantial enough savings to put up with the inconvenience of having two devices with me.
And while it's pretty clear that AT&T are blood-sucking scumbags who take every opportunity to stick it to their customers (what a surprise ... a blood-sucking giant corporation ... whoda thunkit?), there's another guilty party here: Apple. For an allegedly customer-friendly, old-hippie, non-corporate corporation, they hung their customers out to dry by agreeing to an exclusivity agreement with AT&T. You'd think - having dealt with the evil giant that is Microsoft for so many years - that someone at Apple would grasp the danger of giving monopoly control of a product to one company.
Unfortunately, Apple and AT&T will fleece enough suckers to call the strategy a success. Hopefully, somewhere down the road, market forces (i.e. competition between carriers) will bring down the price of both the phone and service to where it's not totally overpriced. Until then, I'll probably wish I had an iPhone from time to time when I touch my iPod Touch, but at least a certain special area of my anatomy won't be bleeding because of the consumer-screwing alliance between Apple and AT&T.
As I’m sure almost everyone on the planet knows, Apple entered into an exclusivity agreement with AT&T where the iPhone is concerned. This means that you can’t actually have an iPhone if you don’t do business with AT&T. Not surprisingly, AT&T is using this exclusivity to absolutely shaft iPhone enthusiasts … and their own customers.
Take me for example. I switched to AT&T less than a year ago just to be ready to get an iPhone. I also have my land line, my DSL, and my satellite TV on my AT&T bill. To put it mildly, I give them a lot of money each month. Granted their coverage is pretty good, but I’d expect to get a bit of smooch back for turning all of my communication needs over to them.
Alas, AT&T isn’t very smoochy. In fact, they outright punish you for being a customer. I discovered this when I popped into the local AT&T store this weekend. After signing in and having my name horribly mispronounced by some pimply-faced boomerang kid who’s no doubt still living at home, I got down to brass tacks. What would it cost me to take an iPhone home and bask in its coolness?
A lot. A whole lot. First of all, my reward for already being an AT&T customer is that I can’t get the iPhone for $299 because I haven’t been a customer long enough. But they’d happily let me have one for $499. Still hopeful (although I could feel my blood pressure rising), I asked about the data plan. That would obliged me to shell out an additional $30 per month, along with the mysterious $18 “upgrade fee” that I’d have to pay (at this point, I was assured that the “upgrade fee” was only a one-time charge). HOWEVER …. it turns out that the plan I have now is considered to be a “special promotional plan” … so I’d have to add another $10 a month to the extra $30 a month. And that doesn’t even include text messages!!! Those cost extra too. So … whipping out my calculator, I came up with the following numbers to illustrate what the phone that Apple advertises as being “Twice as fast. Half the price” actually would cost me. It looked like this:
Item Cost X24 Months Total
iPhone $499 n/a $499
Data Plan $30 $720 $720
Plan Upgrade $10 $240 $240
Upgrade Charge $18 n/a $18
$1477
Naturally, if the wife wants one, that’s another $1477 (plus tax)!!!!!
Now I ask you, gentle reader …. does that sound like “Half the price”?? What it sounds like to me, to quote the immortal words of George Carlin, is AT&T’s way of saying: “Come over here, bend over, and let us stick this big **** up your ***”. I think they’re banking on P.T. Barnum’s old adage that no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the general public. And they’re probably right. In an age when monthly payments are more important than overall price -- where deficits are considered normal (especially amongst the government types) -- I have no doubt that lots of people in similar situations will pony up the dough.
But not this cowboy. I picked up an iPod Touch (i.e. the iPhone without the phone) for $299. True, it doesn't do everything that an iPhone does, but since $299 divided by 24 months comes out to whopping $12.45 a month, I think it’s a substantial enough savings to put up with the inconvenience of having two devices with me.
And while it's pretty clear that AT&T are blood-sucking scumbags who take every opportunity to stick it to their customers (what a surprise ... a blood-sucking giant corporation ... whoda thunkit?), there's another guilty party here: Apple. For an allegedly customer-friendly, old-hippie, non-corporate corporation, they hung their customers out to dry by agreeing to an exclusivity agreement with AT&T. You'd think - having dealt with the evil giant that is Microsoft for so many years - that someone at Apple would grasp the danger of giving monopoly control of a product to one company.
Unfortunately, Apple and AT&T will fleece enough suckers to call the strategy a success. Hopefully, somewhere down the road, market forces (i.e. competition between carriers) will bring down the price of both the phone and service to where it's not totally overpriced. Until then, I'll probably wish I had an iPhone from time to time when I touch my iPod Touch, but at least a certain special area of my anatomy won't be bleeding because of the consumer-screwing alliance between Apple and AT&T.
posted by DrJDG @ 20:52
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home