howto

I waited in line at the Palo Alto Apple store and was one of the unfortunate folks who was rejected by the AT&T verification check even though I was eligible for an upgrade, owned an original iPhone and am an existing AT&T customer… I was, however, able to fix the situation on the spot. Here’s how:

I had called AT&T a number of times this past week to verify that my account was eligible for the subsidized iPhone price, and every time they said yes, and that I should have no trouble purchasing the new phone at an apple store.

I work at a University and while I do not have an “Enterprise” account, I do have an educational discount applied to my account. (which actually does nothing since the iphone does not qualify for discounts).

Both Apple and AT&T verified that Corporate and Education discounts will not affect your ability to receive the subsidized price, and they will not affect your ability to purchase an iPhone 3g from an Apple store.

Unfortunately the discount caused the Apple Store to reject my purchase and try to send me to an AT&T store. I quickly called “611″ and had the AT&T rep remove the “Educational Discount” from my AT&T account… we tried the purchase again and it worked.

So, to recap: remove any discounts from your AT&T account before trying to buy an iPhone from an Apple store.

I just wanted to pass this along to everybody since there’s probably a lot of pissed off folks out there who are being redirected to an AT&T store after having waited in line at an Apple store, when all they need to do is to remove their business or education discount from their AT&T account. (you can call back tomorrow and add the discount back, or even do it over the internets).