According to a report filed by the Associated Press, AT&T is quietly allowing iPhone customers that switched to the DataPlus/Pro plans last year the option to switch back to the former unlimited iPhone data plan as a retention offer.
The offer is ostensibly to prevent AT&T customers from defecting to the Verizon iPhone, which is expected to sell up to 12 million units this year and possibly more with the limited-time unlimited data offering, which the carrier is using as a trump card against AT&T.
The option to switch back to the former unlimited iPhone data plan has been available to select customers since last June when the DataPlus/Pro plans were first rolled out along with tethering, but was never publicly disclosed until now.
According to AT&T, in order for customers to be able to switch to the former unlimited iPhone data plan, they must have had the plan on the account before switching back from the DataPlus/Pro plans as new customers that signed up for the iPhone since June 7th are not able to move to the old unlimited iPhone data plan because the plan code was never placed on the account.
AT&T’s statement on the issue is as follows from Mark Siegel:
“We handle customers and their situations individually, and we’re not going to discuss specifics,”
The above also does not take into account that a loophole was discovered last October, where new iPhone customers with DataPlus/Data Pro plans that wanted the old unlimited iPhone data plan could take a feature phone, swap devices on the account, add the $30 unlimited feature phone data option, then swap back to the iPhone with successful results.
This is because the old unlimited iPhone data plan has to remain in the system for accounts that decided to keep unlimited iPhone data instead of switching to DataPlus/Pro plans and due to the fact that AT&T featurephones still have the option to add unlimited data access.
