uwe_r
Senior Member
- Background:
To scare people away from buying the unlocked phones, T-Mobile (obviously after consulting with Apple on the issue) has started to sell the phone unlocked for 999 EUR (1,482 USD, not a typo) vs. 399 (592 USD) for the unlocked version. Selling of unlocked phones started on the 21st of November, after the injunction became valid on the 19th of November. Customers having bought the device on November 19 or 20 can demand their phones to be unlocked for free (as they have not been given a choice).
The unlocking process involves T-Mobile staff entering the iPhones IMEI code into a database on purchase. T-Mobile will fax (yes, fax!) the daily list to Apple, Apple will then enter the numbers from the fax into their database. Once this is done (as per T-Mobile within 24 hours), people can activate the iPhone from iTunes without a T-Mobile SIM being required. After that, the full functionality of the iPhone (obviously except for visual voicemail, which is only available with the special T-Mobile tariff) will be available and any GSM SIM should work.
Pardon the lengthy introduction - just to make everybody interested aware of the situation.
- Bad Apple:
Several people have purchased legally unlocked iPhones and while the activation did work, various provider and network independent features do not work (among them such unneeded things as accepting an incoming call or reading SMS).
Several people reporting on the Internet (two of them I know personally) have been hung up on by Apple support (after paying them 1482 USD for a non-working device), a friend of mine was driving almost 380 miles (back and forth) from Switzerland to buy 3 iPhones, 3 Bluetooth headsets and a couple of cables and docks, spending almost 5,100 USD. Apple is so far obviously unwilling to help him. There are several identical reports from people from Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Austria and Germany. I am willing to believe there are some liars and complainers among them, but certainly not all.
Apple deletes or locks support questions dealing with these legally unlocked phones from legal purchasers and customers from Apple Discussion forums - I have witnessed several cases now. I do not know if they simply forgot to brief the forum staff, that legally unlocked phones are available now and that these discussions are legit, or if they have been briefed to delete these discussions (both is possible). Anyhow - giving people paying through the nose no support on the phone and deleting their legit questions from a support forum is bad style.
While I personally have been lucky (my 1,482 USD iPhone does work perfectly) - this behaviour of Apple is intolerable and discriminating. I have always been for Apple (for decades) - but playing the "sore loser" and boycotting paying consumers is plain embarrassing. It makes me doubt future business with this company - a business partner that develops such a behaviour when being confronted with legal rulings might not be serious enough to be considered after all.
Rant off...
Cheers,
Uwe
- it really does not matter in my case at this time. I had money put aside for the 1D MkIII, but decided to wait for the AF problems to be solved - now I decided to skip the 1D altogether and get the 1Ds MkIII in January; that left me with too much income for 2007 to be written off taxes (my income tax is 52%). So, it was either 2 iPhones (me and in-house government) or money out of the window...