Dave Richards's dashboard

AT&T confirmed upgrade eligibility for discount upgrade to a iPhone 3GS and now they are denying it.

Here is the letter I emailed to Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility ... no reply

Mr. de la Vega,

I am not receiving a reasonable resolution for a phone upgrade situation which I need your assistance on.

I am small business owner currently on an AT&T family plan paying $250+/mo.

I checked online back in June about eligibility for a discount handset upgrade to iphone 3gs.
I checked for each of our 4 AT&T phone lines and the system reported that all lines were eligible for the maximum discount for upgrade to iphone 3gs.
To be certain of this, I called AT&T to confirm this information.
On the phone, the AT&T customer service rep went through each phone # on our account and confirmed that indeed we were eligible to this discount.

So, back in June, I went ahead and successfully upgraded two of our handsets to the iphone 3gs with full discount.

I went to an Apple store earlier this week to purchase an iphone 3gs upgrade for a 3rd phone on our plan and the Apple upgrade system told us we wouldn’t be eligible until May 2010.
So, on the spot I called (while Apple sales rep waited) AT&T to sort this out.

I was told by AT&T customer service that the two handsets which I did not upgrade in June were only eligible to be upgraded to iphone 3gs in May 2010.
The rep said they looked up my account and their system showed that when I checked in June for eligibility that the phone line I was now trying to update was not eligible for a discount back then nor was it now.
I explained to the rep how I checked both online AND double-checked with a call to AT&T back in June and was told that all 4 phones were eligible for the upgrade discount.
Obviously, I did not record this phone conversation, but I assumed that AT&T was accurately providing me account information.

The rep (and their supervisor) told me that there was nothing they could do to honor the discount I was told I was eligible for back in June.

I am very troubled by what appears to be either a system error or a change in business policy at AT&T to not honor commitments to upgrade discount eligibility.
If it is the latter, then if I’d known that you would be changing your policy, then I might have upgraded my 3rd handset earlier, but how was I to know?

I would like AT&T to honor their previous commitment to provide me with discount eligibility for our 2 lines not yet upgraded to iphone 3gs.

I would appreciate if you would look into this matter.

My AT&T main account phone # is 206.372.xxxx

Thanks
Dave