AT&T is saying thank-you to iPhone owners with the offer of 1,000 free rollover minutes. Just text "yes" to 11113020 by March 31 to accept them.
AT&T
is also showing its subscribers a little love
this Valentine's Day. According to a number of sources, the no-longer-exclusive
provider of the Apple iPhone is giving away 1,000 free rollover minutes to its
iPhone users for a limited time.
"You're a
valued AT&T customer. We'd like to add 1,000 bonus rollover minutes [to
your account]," says the text received by a number of users. It goes on to
explain that the minutes are of no cost and put the user under no obligation.
"It's our way
of saying thank you," the text continues, adding that the customer must respond-by
texting back "yes"-by March 31.
According to
additional sources, iPhone owners don't need to wait to receive the text, but
can proactively text "yes" to 11113020. Once they do, "processing time," says a
response text, is four weeks.
This burst of
generosity-which follows
last week's offer of a 25 percent off coupon
toward an accessory of choice at an AT&T retail store or its online shop-may
be about this lovey-dovey season, or more likely that rival Verizon Wireless
now also offers an Apple iPhone 4.
Verizon's
network has repeatedly bested AT&T's in customer satisfaction surveys over
the years, and Verizon customers have been found to want an Apple iPhone-just
as AT&T subscribers, in surveys, have expressed interest in switching to an
iPhone on the Verizon network.
A Feb. 3
customer care survey by
J.D. Power and Associates found T-Mobile to rank
highest for the second consecutive time, followed by Verizon, while AT&T
and Sprint tied in third place. According to the survey, one of the primary
reasons for the carriers' performance disparity was the quality of the
responses that customers received when they reached out with questions. Those
who had their issue dealt with by a service representative were far more
pleased than those who dealt with an automated response system.
However, the
more widespread complaint against AT&T has of course been the quality of
its network, as it has struggled to support the insatiable data needs of its
millions of iPhone users. Among the Twitter users Tweeting about AT&T's 1,000
minutes offer, user armchairdj Tweeted a characteristic complaint: "if I could
actually make calls on my at&t iPhone, the 1000 free rollover minutes at&t
is offering might be enticing."
As AT&T
waits to see the full damage of the Verizon iPhone to its bottom line, however,
it has a few things going for it. For example,
Consumer Reports has called the Verizon iPhone
"middle-aged," making the point that it still has a 3.5-inch
display, while a slew of lovely 4-inch-display smartphones are now coming to
market. The publication also called it "transitional," suggesting that in a few
months, when Apple introduces the next generation of the iPhone, anyone who
buys a Verizon iPhone now will soon find themselves stuck with "old" hardware.
There's also
the reality of the Verizon iPhone's CDMA-based (Code Division Multiple
Access-based) technology-as the GSM-based AT&T has been busy pointing out-which
not only works in fewer countries than the AT&T version but can't let users
access the Internet and chat on a call at the same time.
In his review
of the Verizon iPhone 4, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg also
found the phone to deliver slower data speeds
than its AT&T sibling-though, like The New York Times' David Pogue, he also
found that the Verizon phone dropped far fewer calls, if at all.
Regardless of
AT&T's overall performance, if you're a subscriber whose contract isn't
near completion, go ahead and accept, and enjoy, those 1,000 free minutes. Or,
if you're a subscriber and the AT&T service where you live is actually
tolerable, as Mossberg suggested in his review, despite Verizon's win, "You may
want to stick with AT&T."
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