Hurry up and wait

So, you’ve decided to get an iPhone. Fantastic! If you’re like most iPhone users, you’ll be very happy with your purchase. You’ll be checking email from anywhere, sending picture messages, and confirming random facts on Wikipedia in a matter of minutes. It’s a brilliant device, and all will be well and good…until you receive your first AT&T bill, and your iPhone Honeymoon will come to an abrupt end.

The iPhone is the best mobile device around, but it comes at a price. I’m not referring to the cost of the handset, which shouldn’t even be an important initial purchase consideration (more on that later) but the fact that the monthly bill is so steep.

The “retail” monthly price on the lowest-cost individual iPhone plan is $70 per month, which is a 450 minute plan ($40) with data access ($30) and no messaging options. The lowest-cost option for two iPhones on a family plan is $120/month: 550 minutes, data, and no messaging. And none of these totals include taxes and fees, which could add an additional 10-15% to your final bill. These amounts could be at a significantly higher cost than your current cell phone plan and may come as quite a shock.

How can the iPhone fit in your budget? There are some discounts available, and strategy is definitely a key. Here are three easy ways that you can save money on an iPhone.

Purchase a refurbished iPhone from AT&T’s online store.

Earlier, I mentioned that initial handset cost isn’t as important as the ongoing monthly cost of the iPhone. However, using this step can immediately save you $50 off the cost of the iPhone, and you still get the same warranty and benefits as you would receive with a new iPhone purchase.

Here is a link to view the AT&T online store inventory of refurbished iPhones (look for Apple iPhone 3G (Refurb). As of this writing, the current refurbished iPhone pricing model is $50 off the MSRP, which makes the regular 8GB iPhone 3G a steal at only $49. AT&T’s inventory changes often and you may find various varieties of the iPhone 3GS in this area as well. (If you don’t see the phone you’re looking for in the refurb section, it’s not available, but check again in a few days.)

This is where the initial cost consideration is important: you are going to be using this exact phone for two years or more. If the extra storage, speedier processor and video capture capabilities of the iPhone 3GS are important to you, by all means, invest the extra $100 to upgrade to the better model. It’s been Apple’s practice to release new iPhones in June, so you may want to keep that in mind if you are considering the iPhone in any of the spring months.

Does it matter where you purchase your iPhone? My recommendation is to check AT&T’s refurb store first, and if the phone you want isn’t available as a refurb, buy it straight from the Apple Store, either at the physical store or online. Too many headaches can result from purchasing an iPhone anywhere else.

Research discounts available from your employer, union, or trade group.

AT&T offers significant group discounts to various corporations, unions, and trade groups across the country. Monthly service discounts can range from 10-25% or more for monthly service. AT&T calls these discounts “FAN Discounts” – FAN stands for Foundation Account Number. More details about the FAN discount and how to find out if you’re eligible can be found at HowardForums.

How much can you save with a FAN discount? As an example, my current FAN discount is at 22%. I have a 700 minute family plan across four lines of iPhone service. My FAN discount applies to my main voice line as well as all our iPhone data plans. By having the FAN discount on my account, I save $41.80 every month on my bill, or $501.60 every year. Another example: a 22% discount on the lowest tier of individual service would amount to $15.40, or $184.80 every year. That’s an extraordinary savings that can more than pay for the iPhone itself.

If you find that you need to submit paperwork to AT&T to verify your FAN discount eligibility, be sure to keep on them to get that discount added to your account. The process may take 90 days or more if you are not persistent; every additional month AT&T takes to “process your paperwork” is money out of your pocket. Find the right number to call and keep calling to check. If the discount is not applied within 30 days, gather proof of employment/membership paperwork and visit an AT&T Wireless company stor. Ask to speak to a manager to have the discount applied.

Join family members on a FamilyTalk plan, and choose the right plan for you.

If you have other family or friends on AT&T, whether they use iPhones or not, consider joining them on a FamilyTalk plan. The savings by sharing one account can be amazing, especially when combined with a FAN discount. You’ll save $20 or more by moving two iPhone lines from an individual to a family plan. Each month, each family member can login and pay their portion of the bill with a credit card or checking account. (Of course, this scenario will work for some better than others.) Analyze the amount of minutes you use in a typical month beforehand so there are no overage surprises later.

Another benefit of joining others on a family plan is that you can share the $30 “unlimited messaging” option across all your lines. Even though the unlimited messaging option is usually not eligible for the FAN discount, it’s still a great value if you might use more than 200 text/multimedia messages a month.

Also, be sure to consider AT&T’s “perks” for its subscribers when choosing your rate plan, whether or not you are on a family plan. All AT&T plans have the “Rollover” feature, where unused minutes are banked for future months, which could affect the amount of minutes you may need if your usage is not consistent from month to month. Of note: you can always adjust your plan with AT&T without contract extensions, but if you downgrade your plan, you may lose a significant chunk of saved rollover minutes.

AT&T’s “A-List” calling circle feature, available on all but the lowest-cost voice plans, may also reduce the minutes you need in a month if you call the same out-of-network numbers often. Individuals can make and receive calls from up to 5 numbers outside of the AT&T network, and family plans can share up to 10 total numbers across all lines.

Even though the iPhone is definitely an expensive proposition, these tips will help you to save money over the life of your contract. If this post has been helpful to you, and you’re interested in signing up for new AT&T service, drop me a line and I can help you to save an additional $25 with AT&T’s referral program!

Mitch Uncategorized

On my way back to work today after a fine lunch with my wife at the McDonald’s at East Towne Mall, I stopped at the Giant on East Reservoir Street. For me, stopping at this Giant every so often is a necessary evil: it’s most certainly the most poorly-run Giant location in Lancaster County, but it’s convenient enough that it’s worth the gamble that I might not get stuck behind six people in line.

Today, the goal was to get a nice steak for dinner, and some milk, which I found, and went to checkout. I rarely carry cash, so I unleashed my PayPal Mastercard to pay by swiping at their little terminal next to the check-signing pad. The clerk (who was in training) then asked for my ID.

Full stop. This is a huge Big Red Flag that companies are not allowed to do when accepting major credit cards, as long as the credit card has a readable signature on the back (mine does, just got it a couple weeks ago). This is due to the terms laid out in their merchant agreements.

Good blog articles about it here and here (the second article happened in East York!).

I thought, “here we go.” I politely refused to show my ID and said that it was against their merchant agreement to ask for it. The manager came over and reiterated “store policy,” that they need to see ID for credit card purchases. I take this stuff seriously; there’s no reason why some random cashier at Giant needs to know my driver’s license number, birthday, and other personal info to accept a $6 charge, or any size charge for that matter.

Since the steak looked really good, I paid cash, left, and called Giant corporate on the way out of the store to report the incident. They are supposedly “getting back to me.” We’ll see. With enough complaints, Mastercard or Visa could revoke the ability of Giant to accept their cards for a period of time…although I doubt that they would do such a thing, since Giant is a larger grocery chain and not a mom-and-pop restaurant.

Mitch Uncategorized

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must begin to consider his tech nerd options. Sure, USB hard drives are convenient, somewhat reliable, and portable, but in a household with two laptops, a wireless connection, and no desktop computer, the vision and dream of a home server starts to take hold. Imagine…near-unlimited storage options, no need to plug in external drives for backup. Properly done, it’s a dream come true.

Secret, stealthy, and secure. It’s as if a ninja would be taking care of all our files.

Earlier this month, I decided that now is the time for our home server. Let’s step back and take a look into my vision for the Ninja server.

1. Ninja should back up our two laptops over our wireless-G LAN at home.
2. Ninja should store all our music and photos, eliminating the need to keep those files on our space-starved MacBook hard drives.
3. Ninja should be accessible through VNC from other home computers and our iPhones.
4. Ninja should have 1TB or more of hard drive space.
5. Ninja needs to be USB 2.0 capable.
6. Ninja should be cheap and not have high initial costs; i.e., what can be offset by selling some of our external hard drives.

Given that we are a Mac household, it would be much easier to run a Mac as our home server. Which model fits the bill? I wasn’t looking to spend more than $100 on the computer itself; as a quaint file server, any of the Macs produced in the last five years would be overkill, both in processing power and on my wallet.

I began perusing the Lancaster Craigslist computer parts board, which has experienced a welcome spike in traffic in the last 6-12 months. After some time and consideration, I decided that I was looking for any model of the Power Mac G4. Most G4 towers are relatively speedy computers, even to this day, and while their power consumption isn’t optimal, the G4 offers amazing expandability options, and with a minor hack, can run the latest Mac OS.

I found a cryptic listing where a fellow was trying to unload his G4 tower and a flatscreen monitor for $300. I have no use for the monitor, since my vision is that Ninja will sit happily in a corner, maybe with the cable modem on top, stealthily serving our files. I bargained down to $75 for just the tower, and picked up the computer that night. While his listing showed a Yikes/Digital Audio-era G4, what I actually bought was an anomaly: a 733mhz “Quicksilver 2002” G4 model. This omission on his part was welcome; the newer computer, the better, and I think I got a very good deal for only $75.

One of the limitations of installing Mac OS 10.5 is that the installer will refuse to run if it senses that the computer is slower than a 867mhz G4. I wanted some of the extra functionality that 10.5 offers, so I attempted a workaround (described here) to install it on Ninja. The workaround involves entering code in Open Firmware to trick the system into believing it’s faster than it really is. I did have an issue with this: my G4 did not want to boot into Open Firmware using the traditional Cmd-Opt-O-F key combo on boot. I’m certain that this problem was due to my Logitech keyboard, whose keymap drivers probably don’t load until later in the boot process. I did some digging and found that holding the programmer’s key during boot (the tiny pinhole button below the power button on the front of the Mac) would allow me to boot straight into Open Firmware.

The main hardware issue with these G4 towers is that their hard drive bus is IDE, and won’t accept drives larger than 128GB or so. Since I want to serve large media files, I purchased a Sonnet Tempo SATA PCI card, which was a bit pricey, but comes with a guarantee of plug-n-play Mac compatibility. With it, I purchased a 1TB Western Digital Green SATA hard drive as the main drive for the server. (The stock hard drive with the computer is 80GB, which I’ll keep as the boot volume, and possibly a Time Machine backup for my wife’s laptop.) I also acquired a IOGear USB 2.0 PCI card to connect our external hard drives, since this era of G4 only has USB 1.1. Both the SATA and USB cards plugged and played last night without driver installs or other issues, which was an excellent experience.

Some toys I’ve installed on Ninja so far: iStat Server, which allows me to monitor Ninja’s stats from my iPhone, and a VNC client to login to Ninja for minor maintenance tasks.

What’s left to do? Quite a bit, actually. I need to bring Ninja to its final destination near our cable modem and router, set it up as a shared volume accessible at login on our laptops, map the Pictures and Music folders to Ninja, finalize the Time Machine setup so that backups occur seamlessly over the network, and install Mozy Unlimited to give Ninja an external offsite backup.

Having a Ninja take care of our files…that will be a welcome addition to the family.

Mitch Uncategorized

I appreciate great customer service. Bad customer service means no return visit, and price is usually not a factor in this decision.

Take the Wal-Mart Supercenter in East Lancaster, for example. Cheapest food in town. But many a Lancastrian associates that Wal-Mart with bad customer service, and for good reason. Everyone has their own horror story. Most of the time, if Hayley and I absolutely must shop at Wal-Mart, we choose the more civil location on Fruitville Pike. This is a shame, because the Supercenter location was just renovated and is now one of the nicer Wal-Marts I’ve seen, but the experience there is just as awful as ever.

Now, with car dealers, choices are fewer. I own a Nissan Altima, and within a 10-mile radius of our house, there is only one Nissan dealer that could service my car: Lancaster Nissan, which, surprise, doesn’t have a great customer service reputation in the community, either. Choice is limited. Unlike the more popular car brands, Lancaster Nissan is the only choice here. My brother, who works at a nearby dealer and does a fantastic job of keeping my car in tip-top shape, can only do so much. His shop does not have the right tools to diagnose and fix my Nissan. If the Altima needs more intricate service, there really is no choice other than Lancaster Nissan; driving 30-45 minutes to York or Harrisburg isn’t really an option.

I’ve experienced my own problems with the Lancaster Nissan service department before, “but never quite like this.”

I made an appointment for 7am at the dealer so I could get in and out of there before work. Nick, the desk jockey on my “service team,” quoted a price of $150 for the key and the service. I asked him to break that out, and roughly $95 of the fee was for the key alone! So, cheapskate that I am, of course I brought along my own blank transponder key, which I bought on eBay for $15. Right away, I got a pushback from Nick, “I’m not sure if we can cut that or not, we’ll have to check.”

Turns out the key was approved by the mystery key checker dude in the back, and I sat down and waited to get my key cut. I watched my car go in the garage right away. At 7:50am, 50 minutes after I arrived, Nick strolls out from the desk and informs me that they were not able to cut my key because they did not have the “key code” for my car, and wouldn’t be able to get that until 9am, and could I wait around for that. He also informed me that I had some gasket leaking that would be $65 to fix.

Translation: these people spent 45 or more minutes looking over my car, not even attempting to cut my key, to try to upsell me on a bogus service. Later, I called Nick and related that I was disappointed in the quality of their service. I asked him why he couldn’t have informed me that they couldn’t cut my key within the first few minutes I was there, or, better yet, if they knew that they couldn’t get a key code before 9am, why they didn’t call to preemptively gather the code after I made the appointment the previous day. I was completely calm and collected on this call, but Nick seemed to take extreme offense, and actually said:

“If you are not happy with my customer service, then I don’t want to see you or your car in here again.”

I thought that’s a fairly extraordinary thing to say. Later, I spoke with Keith The Service Manager over the phone, who was just as much of a character as Nick. Keith offered no apologies and had the same d-bag attitude as Nick, which wasn’t a surprise, because I imagine that Keith would be doing the customer service training around there. Envisioning their service department sabotaging my car in future appointments, I chose to take my business elsewhere.

I eventually took my car to Wizard Lock & Safe on Prince Street, and had a wonderful experience. I bought one of their keys and they programmed and cut the key I brought, so we have two keys now. (Who knew they would program and cut car keys like that?) The cost was a little less than the dealer and there was no drama, plus, their store is actually really neat and fun to look around. I’ll go back there if I ever need another key made, or find myself needing a safe or lockbox.

Hayley and I will probably be in the market for some sort of car in the next year or so, and this experience has left a bad taste about the Nissan brand in general. Since there’s no great service option for the brand around here, we’ll probably go Toyota or Honda, because I can’t imagine taking my business to Lancaster Nissan ever again.

Mitch Uncategorized customer service, lancaster nissan

There’s a fantastic discussion thread at Macworld.com where folks are writing about the favorite Mac they’ve ever owned. I had a good time writing my Mac history and thought it might make a good first post to the new blog.

First Mac was in 1992, when the folks bought a LC II and 13″ color monitor from an educational teacher discount program. Mom opted for the somewhat expensive Apple //e card and 5.25″ floppy, but we never really used the //e stuff that much. 4MB RAM, 80MB hard drive. Got RAM Doubler and I had at least two rows of extensions installed on that thing. Slow as molasses. I remember getting a SCSI Zip drive for it. Gasp! One Zip disk holds my entire hard drive! Never tried to connect it to the Internet, and it sits in my basement on a shelf.

Next Mac was a Power Mac 6500/250 with 15″ monitor. What a terrible, awful machine. We had nothing but problems with it, although it did have a TV input card, which was neat.

I got a toilet-seat iBook SE 366mhz for college, and in those days of Napster, my hard drive filled quickly. I remember buying an external Iomega CD burner, running over USB 1.0, that had a burn success rate of about 5%. It did not have Firewire. I paid a local idiot-run Mac store to have that upgraded to a 40GB hard drive.
Now, the answer to the question. The best computer Apple has ever made, and my favorite, is the 12-inch PowerBook G4. I would still have that computer if it had any make of Intel processor. It was the perfect computer for me as a Communications student…wireless Internet built-in, DVD reader to watch movies, Firewire for video editing in iMovie. Didn’t weigh me down, and the battery lasted forever. My laptop was better than everyone else’s at school. I think it’s just about the best computer Apple ever made.
Also had a Mac mini, and then a close second for my favorite computer is my white MacBook C2D, which does everything.

Mitch Uncategorized