Filed under: iPhone
GoPhones are no go for iPhone upgrades
It sounded good. Buy an inexpensive GoPhone and transfer service to an iPhone, add the $20/month data plan and save roughly a thousand dollars over the two-year contract period. Things that sound good are often too good to be true. This was. Today, AT&T officially announced that GoPhones are no-go as far as iPhone upgrades are concerned. GoPhone customers cannot transfer their service, instead, they must activate their iPhone as a new account with a new phone number.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roger Tobiasz said 12:14PM on 6-27-2007
Somebody who is screwed by ATT because their is no actual ATT tower in their town or within 45 miles and will be kicked off his contract if he gets an iPhone... The ATT GoPhone Pick Your Plan has a provision to allow unlimited roaming, assuming they approve the roaming partner (in my case it would have worked). Oh well. Looks like I'll trade my WM5 phone for an equally garbage WM6 phone.
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Billy K said 12:37PM on 6-27-2007
Whaaa? This FAQ page makes it sound like you can upgrade to an iPhone and get a discount. I need to figure this out, as I've purposely put off upgrading my lousy LG for this very reason.
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Ethan said 1:02PM on 6-27-2007
They just lost one more customer, i was going to sell my ipod and buy the iphone if it was going to work on "GoPhone", I have the $500 to drop on the phone, like I would on a new ipod. but I do not have enough for $60 a month, I don't use my phone that much! Well i'll just stick with my 60gb ipod (At least my ipod can hold ALL my songs, unlike the iphone.)
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ChillyWilly said 1:07PM on 6-27-2007
I didn't think they would let this opportunity to sign up a 2 yr contract go to a Go Phone user.
As for why a Go Phone user would want an iPhone... (besides avoiding the the 2 yr commitment), it's being able to use the iPod part of the phone, data access and for those of us that carry a second phone when we are in areas that our main phone (for me, that would be Sprint) doesn't work.
I'd hate to have to sign up for a 2yr from AT&T just to have an iPhone, especially when I'm already with Sprint and under contract with them and don't care to leave them (price and a great plan isn't something I want to part with)
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Rob said 1:12PM on 6-27-2007
I would have. I travel in the USA a lot, but do not have a residence there. So I use pick-your-plan GoPhone. Would have been nice.
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Adam Turetzky said 1:16PM on 6-27-2007
"1. What kind of person has $600 for an iPhone and uses prepaid cellular anyway aside from mobsters and drug dealers?"
People with bad credit scores.
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asaturpentine said 1:21PM on 6-27-2007
I have had GoPhone service for about three years now. Last year I bought a new phone and was not allowed to transfer my number to the new handset because Cingular/AT&T subsidizes the price of GoPhones by requiring each handset to leave the store with its own unique number.
The store rep was very helpful, though, in relaying to me a simple work-around: buy the new handset, activate its SIM with a new phone number, and then leave the store. Get in your car and swap out the SIM cards; voila: you've just ported your own number to the new GoPhone handset. I had no problem doing this.
The trick with the iPhone, we've just found out, is that the SIM is embedded in the phone and cannot be removed; thus, swapping SIM cards from pre-existing GoPhones (or other service providers, of course) is not possible, so transferring an existing GoPhone number to a new iPhone is also not possible.
The AT&T FAQ is a little vague on this, and probably intentionally so since they want everyone to sign up for thost 2-year contracts; however, the FAQ does not specifically spell out that the iPhone won't be offered with GoPhone service, merely that existing GoPhone customers will have to sign up for a new account, which is exactly consistent with their current policies and my own experience. My suspicion (and hope) is that AT&T will trot out a GoPhone plan for iPhone once the initial wave of 2-year contracts are signed this weekend, but they'll keep it on the down-low.
We'll know a lot more a week from now, for sure.
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djfred said 1:47PM on 6-27-2007
They must be loosening up the credit approval criteria then because I guarantee that there are going to be some people who will purchase an iPhone that wouldn't normally qualify for a monthly service plan and I can't for the life of me seeing Apple or ATT being happy about the mass of open box returns that would ensue.
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icerabbit said 2:28PM on 6-27-2007
"What kind of person has $600 for an iPhone and uses prepaid cellular anyway aside from mobsters and drug dealers?
Posted at 12:04PM on Jun 27th 2007 by Eli Hodapp"
Careful with your stereotypes.
They're are non-criminal users of prepaid phones. People who make a limited number of cellphone calls per month benefit from prepaid plans. Do most of your talking via a land line & internet? Why would you need a $60/mo phone bill? Pay for a year long prepaid card. No monthly bills & fees for minutes & stuff you don't use. Done.
So, they too might like to have a handy dandy iPhone to use it for all its other features. Of course they would probably mainly use the WiFi part for the internet stuff.
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icerabbit said 2:29PM on 6-27-2007
Correction (joined two sentences): There are ...
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Rob said 2:42PM on 6-27-2007
#8 "SIM is embedded in the phone" - Is this known for sure? I have seen some things that could be interpreted that way, but nothing that clearly states it.
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Lars said 4:39PM on 6-27-2007
I think it's ment as "tied to" as in "sim locked". The iPhone won't reach Europe for a couple of months but all this talk of lock in, can't do this, won't allow such is starting to sound less and less appealing.
The European cell phone market is different from the United States. Am very doubtful whether a similar approach would fly with European customers.
Here there's talk of an exclusive deal with Vodafone (which is a crap provider imho) and there's no way I'd switch (from T-Mobile) for a phone.
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Peter Payne said 11:05PM on 6-27-2007
Rats. I live in Japan, and come to the U.S. every few months. I would have LOVED to give them my mother for a prepaid iPhone. Lame, lame, lame...
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Jason Pratt said 5:57AM on 6-30-2007
Hang on a minute. I use Lifelock service which puts fraud alerts on your credit report (to prevent ID theft etc.) and therefore my iPhone activation didn't work, so AT&T offered me a prepaid plan, which I took! Now I am out of the 2-year contract and on the rollover-happy, high-per-minute prepaid plan love. I bet if you bitch and scream you too can get onto the prepaid plan.
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Edgar Melgarejo said 3:25PM on 7-10-2007
Well guys I didn't want to be stuck with yet another 2 year contract (existent Cingular/AT&T customer) or convert my single line to family plan. So when I ACTIVATED MY iPHONE I filled out all the Info and on the Social Security part the trick is to input 999-99-9999 and VOILA.... !! The system automatically trows you to GO PHONE PREPAID FOR THE iPHONE !! YES it is possible I sign up for the list expensive $29.99 for 200 ANYTIME Minutes plus $19.99 UNLIMITED DATA plus $4.99 for 200 TXT MESSAGES for a MONTHLY TOTAL of $54.97 plus TAX MY TOTAL IS $56.75 !! You have to enter a checking account or credit card (debit card is also OK) they will withdraw that exact amount every month until YOU CANCEL. No 2 year contracts or anything !! I hope this helps guys. Edgar M.
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jlm382 said 7:18PM on 7-21-2007
Hey Guys,
I mentioned on a few other blogs that I was able to activate my iphone under Go Phone after 12.5 hours of aggravation. I discovered something very similar:
1) dont fund over phone
2) dont try porting your number in
I posted a long blog entry at http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=126 and if anybody needs help, just let me know!
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