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Consumerist Says AT&T Site Won't Sell iPhone In NYC, Citing Network
cowp writes "A Consumerist tipster couldn't get AT&T's website to sell him an iPhone when he shopped using an NYC ZIP code, but could when he tried other cities' ZIPs. Consumerist asked an AT&T CSR and seems to have gotten confirmation that this is carrier policy: 'Yes, this is correct the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone. You don't have enough towers to handle the phone.' Considering Apple's gadget is currently the most popular handset in the US, its exclusive carrier's inability/unwillingness to support the device in the country's largest market is pretty huge news. If this proves true, I'd expect curtains for AT&T's exclusivity deal when it comes up for renewal." If you're in NYC, can you confirm or deny this outlandish-sounding claim?
Updated 20091227 1:03 GMT by timothy: Headline, now corrected, inaccurately named Apple rather than AT&T. Mea culpa.
There's been a lot of coverage indicating problems with iPhones in New York, including one Gizmodo piece saying a 30% dropped call rate is apparently normal.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I live in NYC under a 114xx zip code and had no problems buying one in person at an ATT store. I bought it the weekend after Thanksgiving so it was about a month ago. Maybe they changed it since then.
Everybody outside of the tech world knows what an iPhone is.
Not everybody outside of the tech world knows what the E55, Hero, or GW620 are.
True, but promisingly I've been seeing a lot of my non-tech friends carrying around new Android devices lately.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
As with any company hiring from the general public and paying very low wages to its CSRs, the information you get from a particular CSR is not necessarily reliable. I have no specific information as to whether or not this claim about the iPhone in NYC is true, but one CSR's answer isn't worth a damn.
Must be April 1, as there are more places to buy the iPhone in NY than in just about any other place. Here in Rockland County (across the Hudson from Westchester), I'm close to the Apple retail stores in West Nyack, White Plains, Greenwich and Stamford, not to mention the 3 in Manhattan (including Apple's largest retail store). Every one chock full of iPhones. Oh, and I bought both my and my wife's iPhones on the internet without a hitch.
News outlets used to believe that outrageous claims required outrageous proof. Now, "some guy said" or the typical bad info of an outsourced customer service agent is considered golden.
Interestingly, here in rural Alaska we get at least 20% dropped iPhone calls. After a particularly annoying one (I was within 200 yards of the tower, line of sight, over water) I complained to the local AT&T rep and the FCC.
About 2 weeks later, I got this nice call from an AT&T droid who says he was asked by the FCC to look into this. After a few pleasantries, he suggested 1) Making sure the battery was charged (OK), 2) Turning off 3G (already done, don't have 3G here in the boonies) and getting closer to the tower. I explained that if I got any closer to the tower on the last dropped call, I'd have to marry it.
His final suggestion was to take it up with Apple, maybe I needed a new handset.
I suppose it's something of a start but AT&T isn't going to solve very much of the problem this way.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The title says Apple wont sell it (which is wrong they most certainly will) the ARTICLE has the real culprit, AT&T, which is really who wont sell it. My coworker couldnt get a iPhone for her girlfriend at all from AT&T in the NYC area, but had no problems with Apple selling it to her.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Go back to the FCC and resubmit your complaint. Obviously AT&T simply read you the script to meet the barest of "compliance" requirements...by sending you to some script reader in a call center. They won't do jack shit until the FCC requires them to. Or, you're able to find someone within the local ranks at ATT that are willing to listen to you, not just some corporate weenie.
Actually you may have been too close. I am far from a wireless engineer but I do know that depending on the antennas used the base of a tower can be a dead zone. I've seen this in the wireless ISP world a few times and its frustrating.
Note that for the purpose of market share calculations, smartphones and 'feature phones' are counted as different things. A 'feature phone' is basically something that would have been called a smartphone a couple of years ago (phones are often relaunched with small tweaks for the new classification when newer models are introduced). When people talk about the iPhone having a certain percentage of the smartphone market, they aren't splitting the market into 'things that are just simple phones' and 'complicated phones.' The smartphone designation only covers the top end of what most people would think of as a smartphone.
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Don't know. While the ad campaign might not be doing it, user experience definitely is. I know of no one (including myself and my wife) who have gotten Droids and dislike them. The phone is great. I no longer care whether I get an iPhone (which I previously wanted). The Droid is a great phone.
While this is true, having my shop right next to a coffee and sandwich shop I get to see folks from just about every age and demographic and I'd say Nokia is is the most popular, but of course that is a range of phones and not a single brand. In fact the only demographic I've seen that seems to favor the iPhone over the Nokia here is the 19-21 year old college males, but then again they are also the ones more likely to be sitting there on a Macbook too.
But everybody else, from the teenage girls to the blue haired ladies, the teen guys to the old "Billy Joe Bobs", all seem to be carrying Nokia. So while it seems that while everyone has heard of the iPhone at least in my anecdotal observations it is college males that are the ones picking it up, although the business majors seem to prefer the Crackberry.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You might notice that AT&T commercials never promote the iPhone. They always promote some other smart phone.
I'm sure they'll get into the Android game soon enough.
And I look forward to the 4G iPhone in June.
And Google's new phone.
Boy, 2010 should be an interesting year.
In late January, when every pundit expects an Apple Tablet rollout, what will be rolled out is another Apple phone - perhaps not called an iPhone - which is not tied to the AT&T network.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Do all AT&T Wireless phones drop calls in New York City or just iPhones? What about an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile?
It's like a ghost town compared to a few Asian cities. Light traffic, hardly any people, clear air, you could almost eat off the concrete. :-)
I live in Manila, we have 10,500 people per square kilometer across the metro on average, though some of the slum areas are as high as 40k - and yes, they all have cell phones - we send 140 billion text messages a year, the entire country is bathed in 3.5G, surprisingly you can actually get the juicy speed goodness anywhere at any time too, so the telco drones must be doing something right.