My local Cingular store called this afternoon to say that they finally had some Treo 650s in stock, would I like them to hold one for me? Sure, I’ll stop by on the way home from work… So I arrive around 4:45pm. The in-store price is $450, a $50 discount from the web store price, and the $50 rebate still applies. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Then they tell me the data plan prices.
$19.99 for 5MB, $39.99 for Unlimited.
WTF?!
I happen to be pretty good at multiplying two-digit numbers, so it took about a nanosecond to figure out that a $15 monthly premium for unlimited data spread over a two year contract is a whopping $360. They fed me some B.S. about how any phone with a “true web browser” requires a PDA plan. I politely asked for the MEdia Works plan, then escorted my VISA check card out the door.
Probably for the best, after all the other recent toys I really don’t need the expense…
That sucks that they’re charging twice as much for the “PDA” plan than for MEdia Works. I mean, it’s just bits to them. Why jack up the price to rip off the customers? Don’t they know that their customers are networked and smarter than they are? Moves like that will hurt then more than help. Get on the Cluetrain, Cingular!
Check out the ongoing saga at eWeek:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1771603,00.asp and http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1773135,00.asp. Columnist Evan Shuman documented his difficulty trying to provision a Treo 650, and his readers chimed in.