Wednesday, January 26, 2011

AT&T offering would-be deserters Unlimited iPhone Data plans?

Oh, Verizon iPhone; you’re not even on the shelves yet, and you’re already stirring up drama

Just yesterday, Verizon COO Lowell McAdams disclosed that they’d be offering $30 Unlimited Data plans to iPhone users at launch (though, as he later clarified, that offer won’t last forever.) That may very well be enough to convince a chunk of AT&T’s iPhone-toting crowd to jump ship, given that AT&T’s $30 Unlimited Plan was killed off months ago in favor of the new $15/200MB and $25/2GB plans.

It looks like AT&T’s $30 Unlimited Plan might not be totally dead, though.

According to Peter Svensson of the Associated Press, a handful of folks have managed to get the $30 Unlimited Data plan thrown onto their account this week. How, you ask? How else? By calling up and complaining.

Here’s the catch: In all the cases so far, the people who were offered the Unlimited Plan were those who already had the Unlimited Plan back before the switch. Perhaps they dropped to the cheaper plan in hopes they could stay under 200 megs; perhaps they needed to add tethering to their plan (which required the customer to switch to a non-Unlimited Plan) — either way, they had the option prior to the plan’s demise.

AT&T won’t say whether having had the Unlimited Plan before is a pre-requisite. In fact, they won’t say much on the matter at all. But hey — if a $30 Unlimited Plan would be enough to keep you on board, give’m a call. Worth a shot, right?