The two sides of AT&T

At first glance, the story we read this morning on Seeking Alpha seemed like a simple, easy read on a writer’s experience with activating his son’s iPhone. After reading two paragraphs, we were thinking “nothing to see here; move on.” But we kept going, and we’re glad we did. Buried within the author’s hellacious activation story is a realization about AT&T that few people know: you might be on the “blue” side, or you might be on the “orange” side. You’d better hope you’re orange, because if you’re blue, it’s going to cost you. By March 2008, AT&T is going to require all customers to be “Orange.” We suppose that means that they’d be upgraded to the best possible AT&T network. Good. That’s great. We’re glad AT&T is trying to get its business together. However, they’re not just going to move you to the “orange” side — they’re going to charge you for it. This author was told on the customer service line that both he and his wife would have to purchase new phones, since theirs weren’t compatible with the orange side. Excuse us? Purchase new phones? You’re going to charge your customers so you can be better organized? Someone please explain how this makes sense. Thankfully, the author found a competent franchisee retailer who was able to change his SIM card, rather than force him to buy a new phone. His wife had to get a new one, though, and all in all the switch cost them an hour and a half of their time, $130, and an additional two years on America’s worst network. We’re sorry, but that doesn’t fly in our book. We appreciate the initiative to get everyone on the best possible network, but charging them to do so is wrong. You, AT&T, created the mess, and you, AT&T, should pay to clean it up. It’s akin to us throwing a party and then forcing all of our guests to stay and clean up for an hour and a half — and then pay us for the privilege to party. We wonder if you could use this change to get out of your AT&T contract. Of course, AT&T wouldn’t just let you walk, but if you put up enough of a fight, we bet they’d cave. [Seeking Alpha]]]>