If you're one of those people of a mind to buy an iPhone and then sell it on for a tidy profit (made all the easier now that we know you needn't sign up and activate the handset while in-store), heed these simple warnings from a student with a similar plan. Turns out that there are some pretty draconian rules around taking your iPhone back to the store and even what you do with it post-activation.
Would-be eBayers should note that, according to the AT&T salesperson spoken to, if you cancel your contract you have to return the iPhone itself. It wasn't made clear what period you'd have to keep the contract in order to avoid this. So the advice is to resist temptation and don't bother activating the handset!
Check out the rest of the rules after the cut
1. We all now know that activation of the iPhone is done through iTunes, so buying the iPhone will be as simple as walking into an Apple or at&t store, giving them you money, and walking out. However, if your credit isn't up to snuff you'll need to make a $100 deposit in order to activate your phone. You can do this either at the store on through the iTunes activation.
2. You can't use your iPhone, at all, until you activate it with at&t. As one of the sales associates put it "It's just a $600 paper weight if you don't activate it." So if you plan on playing around with it before you sell it on eBay, you can't unless you activate it and sign a contract.
3. If you activate the iPhone, you can use it for three days before you can return it without being charged a restocking fee, cancellation fee, activation fee, and monthly service charges.
4. If you activate the iPhone, you can use it for 14 days before you can return it without being charged the cancellation fee, the restocking fee.
5. If you activate the iPhone, you can use it for 30 days before you can return it without having to pay the cancellation fee of $175.
6. If you activate the iPhone, keep it for more than 30 days and decide you want to cancel your service and return the phone you have to pay for everything above.
Now here's the kicker...
7. If you activate your iPhone, and decide to cancel your at&t service YOU HAVE TO RETURN THE iPHONE! It wasn't clear how long you have to keep your service in order to keep then phone when canceling.
[via Just So You Know]
I heard (while listening to my AT&T rep deny any knowledge of the iPhone) two AT&T reps talking amongst themselves. They were talking about returns, and one guy laughed and said, “Aren’t they going to love us when we send them to the Apple store for returns. ‘Sorry we can’t do anything here- you have to go there.’” Is this true?
“7. If you activate your iPhone, and decide to cancel your at&t service YOU HAVE TO RETURN THE iPHONE! It wasn’t clear how long you have to keep your service in order to keep then phone when canceling.”
This is pure FUD. I’d like to see where this info came from. I haven’t seen or heard of this anywhere. No cell phone company can force you to return their product.
I had to return Cinular’s Free phone when I cancelled the service, I had the service for 9 months.
BUt you’re buying a product from Apple and linking it with ATT. If you cancel ATT, then you should at least own a 600 dollar paperweight. Why do you have to return it to Apple??
because they dont want you hacking it somehow and using it as t mobile or rogers wireless
i stood in line for my dad for two hours today (well i guess yesterday) and when we got home, despite his excitement, we couldnt activate it because you need xp or mac os x 10.5.03 and our ancient imac only has 10, and all of our other computers run linux accept for my sisters, which only ran windows 2000, not to mention that the mac only had itunes like 2.5 and you needed 7
well sam, i hate to say it man, but that was a really stupid move on your part… how else did you think u were going to activate the phone when you walked out of the store? and dont say the www cause we both know that Apple isn’t smart enough to think of that.
i heard that iphone has bad volume this is also way you should not get the iphone and try to go for other phones like the iphone