Several months back I switched our family plan from Sprint to AT&T. My wife needed a new smart phone, and since I wanted iPhone 2.0 w/ SDK we decided to change rather than pay full price for a new phone.
I detailed the transition a few months back: Gordon's Tech: A deal with the Devil: We move from Sprint to AT&T and towards an iPhone.
It wasn't, in retrospect, a good business move. Our phone bill has gone up by about $40 a month because AT&T charges much more to call Canada (mother!) than our (legacy) Sprint Canada calling plan. Our phone usage is also awkwardly between AT&T call plans, so we end up with unwanted extra minutes.
Oh, and don't get me started about AT&T's vile rebate strategy.
Ah well, more adventures in phone pricing. And people think only physicians prefer to avoid transparency ...
Now, we do benefit from a 15% discount available through my employer, but iPhones don't qualify for these discounts. So I was figuring we'd lose the discount.
Except ... there's a small loophole. We may not lose it completely.
AT&T's current billing system associates the discount with the primary number on a family plan. So if the primary number isn't an iPhone, the discount should be retained.
Emily is staying with her BlackBerry Pearl for the moment. So today the very friendly staff at my local AT&T shop swapped her number to the primary position, and made mine secondary. They had to manually tweak the rollover minutes so we didn't lose those, though so far they're pointless.
In theory, all I need to do now is pickup an iPhone 2.0 sometime after June 9th and activate it via iTunes. The discount should continue ...
I'll update this post with what really happens. Satan usually comes out ahead in these games ...
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