AT&T won't sell me an iPhone at any price

After months of cajoling, I finally convinced my wife to buy an iPhone. She went to the local AT&T store today, and was actually turned down. She is, apparently, "upgrade ineligible." She asked if there was any price at which should could buy it, and they said no.

(NOTE: This story has been updated with new information. It turns out that the AT&T store management was confused about AT&T policy, and gave us false information about upgrading. Details at the end of the post.)

Our whole family is on AT&T, and my wife and I both use BlackBerry devices. We pay AT&T well over $4,000 per year for wireless service alone.

I've been trying to get my wife to get rid of her BlackBerry and buy an iPhone 3G so I could use her phone to review App Store software and test various services for my ongoig reporting on the cell phone universe.

Because we're the wrong kind of customer (based on a complicated set of criteria that includes how long we've had our plans and how much we pay), the local AT&T store in Santa Barbara, Calif., flat out rejected us for an iPhone.

My wife asked if there was *any* price she could pay, and the sales person checked with the manager, came back and said no. He told us that we would be turned down at other AT&T stores and at the Apple stores as well.

I had read about Apple's "upgrade ineligible" customer rules on various iPhone enthusiast blogs back in June. But this was reported as being ineligible for the upgrade price, not the phone itself. According to these blog reports, "upgrade ineligible" customers simply get a different price: $399 and $499 for 8GB and 16GB phones instead of $199 and $299. We were willing to pay this. But they said no.

What we found out today is that "upgrade ineligible" means "blacklisted at any price."

The store sales person informed us that we would be eligible for an upgrade in five months (the end of my wife's existing two-year contract), and that we might qualify for an early upgrade on October 7. But -- get this! -- they're not sure whether they'll let us buy an iPhone at that point or require that we upgrade to another brand

I'm inclined to believe that the Santa Barbara AT&T staff is simply misinformed. I've been calling the store, other stores and the national AT&T customer service numbers for the past hour, and nobody is answering the phone.

Stay tuned for updates, which I'll post on this blog entry as I find out more.

In the meantime, has this happened to anyone else out there?

UPDATE #1: I still haven't been able to get anyone at AT&T to answer the phone, but I did discover an "check upgrade eligibility link" for current AT&T customers. By clicking on the link, however, I was taken to a long list of phones I am eligible to upgrade to -- the iPhone isn't on the list.

UPDATE #2: According to a wirefly.com post, here are the elegibility requirements for existing AT&T customers to qualify for upgrading to an iPhone at the discounted prices of $199 and $299. (I still haven't found anything about not being able to buy the phone at all.)

UPDATE #3: I finally got through to AT&T's national customer service number, then waited on hold for about 20 minutes while they tried to get through to the local store. It turns out that store management in Santa Barbara was confused about the policy, and that my wife is in fact eligible to purchase iPhones at the normal prices, plus a $200 penalty for being an existing, loyal AT&T customer.

Final thoughts:

This whole episode has eroded my confidence in AT&T and Apple. Here's what they got wrong:

• AT&T store management failed to learn basic details about their own upgrade policy, and told a customer (and probably many others) that she was ineligible for an iPhone upgrade at any price; that other stores would tell her the same thing; and that it was uncertain whether she would be eligible to upgrade to an iPhone even when the account became eligible for upgrades in general.

• It's foolish to nickle-and-dime a $4,000-per-year customer, especially when that customer is trying to upgrade to a much more expensive data plan.

• It took me two hours to get anyone from AT&T on the phone.

• When I did call, they made me give my phone number three times.

• Because my wife's BlackBerry is malfunctioning, she's eligible to upgrade to absolutely any phone immediately -- except the iPhone. Why the iPhone exceptionalism? Why doesn't Apple make sure their product isn't taken off the table when an AT&T customer wants to make a conversion?

• Apple and/or AT&T act like everyone is a rabid fanboy. But many people, like my wife, are current Windows and BlackBerry users who are merely toying with the idea of becoming Apple customers. When these fence-sitters finally muster up the interest to go give an Apple product a try, and are met with resistance, incompetence and something that feels like Apple snobbery, much more is being lost than a single iPhone purchase. My wife needs a new laptop, too, and might have loved the iPhone and made a total, lifelong conversion to iPhone, and Macs, too. Now she's got a broken phone and needs to upgrade and will probably just get another BlackBerry because she harbors ill will toward Apple. We're also now thinking about switching carriers. We'll have to file this one in the "FAIL" category.