AT&T gives in on 3GS pricing

After raising the ire of iPhone 3G users across Twitter and Apple-oriented websites by quietly announcing plans to charge current iPhone 3G users two hundred (and according to some reports, four hundred) dollars higher than sticker price for the newly introduced iPhone 3G S if they attempted to purchase one less than twelve months after purchasing their current iPhone 3G, AT&T partially relented today by announcing that anyone (some users? most users? nearly all of them? randomly selected users?) who bought an iPhone 3G in September 2008 or earlier will now receive the samae $199/$299 pricing for the 3G S as other users.

Interestingly, AT&T chose to make the announcement through Facebook.

This still leaves iPhone 3G users staring at $399/$499 pricing for the 3G S if they bought their 3G in October 2008 or more recently. However, this compromise on AT&T’s part will alleviate a significant portion of the surprise and potential chaos that was likely to played out in Apple Stores and AT&T Stores nationwide on Friday, had all current iPhone 3G users been presented with prices $200 higher than advertised after having stood in line all day for the opportunity to purchase one.

Update: several users who purchased their iPhone 3G within the July-September 2008 timeframe are reporting that AT&T’s website is still giving them the same twelve-month-based upgrade date as before, perhaps due to AT&T’s system not yet having been updated to reflect today’s change in policy.

Update 2: while twelve months is the standard length of time required to be eligible for upgrade pricing, some iPhone 3G users have reported that their upgrade length is inexplicably being quoted as eighteen months instead of twelve (which may explain the voluminous legalese used by AT&T in what should have been a two sentence press release at most). It’s still not entirely clear what puts some users in the eighteen month “penalty box” instead of the standard twelve months, so perhaps we’ll see a fair amount of customer outrage and fistfights at Apple Stores this Friday after all. More details coming, if we can get to the bottom of this.

Update 3: according to this multi-page PDF from AT&T uncovered by one of our followers on Twitter, iPhone 3G users who spend less than $99 on their monthly bill are the ones being placed into the eighteen month penalty box instead of twelve months. Other folks on Twitter are reporting that AT&T has informed them that AT&T’s website and SMS-based upgrade pricing quotes for the iPhone 3G S won’t be updated to reflect the new pricing policies until tomorrow.

Editorial side note: a multi-page PDF to explain what the price of an iPhone might be for you? Makes you wonder just how Apple managed to get into bed with such obvious con-men, and why such a company, along with all of the other U.S. based cellphone carriers, are allowed to carry out such practices unchecked. Good luck on Friday, as at this point we’re officially giving up trying to predict what the powers that be might choose to charge you for an iPhone 3G S.