Posted July 11th, 2008 at 7:00PMAfter work at about 5pm, I swung by the largest mall in the area, Crossgates in Albany, to see if anyone at the Apple or AT&T stores could tell me about potential discounts through my employer. I figured by now all the iPhones would be sold and the crowds would be gone. Maybe I could get to play around with a display model (even an original model). But nope. There was still a decent sized line outside the Apple store just to get in.
And employees handing out water.
At the time of my last post, I had a pang of remorse calling the people lining up morons. Not so much now. Consider the saying “love Macs, hate the people” officially coined.
I got the chance to talk to an employee, who told me phones or iPods weren’t typically discounted via PPA programs. I knew this wasn’t true in my case. So I headed to the AT&T store, which was also pretty busy. But they were helpful and it looks like I’m able to save 14% off of any phone plan (except family plans) and 40% off of any phone.
The big caveat being that the 40% is off of the retail price of the phone, not the popularly advertised “price w/ 2-year contract.” In the 8GB iPhone’s case, that means 40% off $599… Whenever they decide to allow people to buy one without a contract.
But the discount on the plan would be helpful. As the AT&T guy optimistically put it, “NYS tacks on 20%, so this brings the actual cost closer to what we’re advertising.”
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