AT&T – Tec Chief's Blog

So, I realize I’m roughly 6 weeks over due for an update on this whole thing, but been busy so feck it. So apparently roughly around the end of July AT&T finally released the c905a Yippee!, right. Wrong. Yeah they released, I’m happy don’t own one yet though. I admit it, I expected it to be an expensive with all the stuff that Sony added into the phone. Wifi, 8.1 Mpixel, DLNA, geo-tagging, GPS, Video Share, Exchange Server support and so forth.

Well thing is first off, AT&T decided to rip all those out, no wifi, still got the camera & the geo-tagging, but the GPS & Video Share has to use their stuff. No Google Products allowed. I can get past that mainly because as a Sony it’s easily debrand-able and as such I restore it to its original functionality although doing so I might lose 3G functionality, but really who really uses 3G outside of a business setting. So the real bee in my bonnet is the price. I know I expected it to be high, but 179.99 not bad, heck even Amazon has it down at 124.99,cept if I use Amazon, there’s a fair chance I either lose my corporate discount or I lose my plan options or both.

SO that in mind, I can easily sacrifice 50 bucks now considering how much I’d save in the long run. After all, 50 bucks < 13% service discount. I think just about anybody can live with that. But then, they decide to mention that oh this is a rebate price, you really pay 229.99 and get 50 buck back in rebate. And I eventually get it back so maybe, just maybe I can live that, but the annoying part is the $18.00 fee they will tack on because (and I love this) I get a discount. Yes you can read that again, discounts = an $18.00 fee.

It’s not bad enough I got to spend an extra $50, just to get the phone and have the discounts applied and an extra $50 right off the bat because it’s a rebate, but an additional $18 because I have a discount. Boy, that other phone for $399.99 just keeps looking more and more like a better offer every day.

So……….. It’s no secret, I love Sony, and all things Sony. I’d probably give my first born child to them, if I thought they would take it. But lately I’m a little disappointed. C905 spectacular amazing device, that on paper trumps just about every other out there assuming you don’t like touch screens, which I don’t. But nevertheless it was released by Sony as the C905i in Q4 2008, and made available by every major country excluding the U.S. by Q2 2009 :C905i,C905c,C905a.

But hey, it’s all good according to all the major & reputable phone comparison sites it was supposed to be released as the C905 aka Tobey (why they picked this name, still boggles my mind) on 9 June 2009. I was happy I was ecstatic, words could not describe my joy. Needless to say, I was a little discontented to find out on 10 June 2009, that AT&T had none could not tell me the price, but merely told me they were back-ordered and that I should try the following week. As popular as this phone is I accepted this and figured if I could wait, 6 months I could wait 1 week.

So I call into AT&T today 16 June 2009, to discuss this phone and maybe ascertain the upcoming price of the model. Low and behold the representative I spoke to this time, informed me that the phone was on back-order as Sony had not sent the phones to AT&T yet, that they weren’t to be released officially until 15 June 2009, and they had no idea of the price. He suggested that I wait another week, and call back again. Feeling a little slighted, I decided to go ahead and talk to someone at Sony, see if I could figure out where the bottleneck is at. (Really wish I hadn’t done that.) According to Sony, the Phone has been released across North America, notably Canada & Mexico, but not in US and he couldn’t speculate on whether it would even be released in the US. Needless to say, at this juncture I’m not a happy camper.

Gotta admit its kinda funny the “greatest country on earth” home of “freedom & liberty”, birthplace of the IPhone & the Pre, and we get the 905 dead last. Feel free to leave some, this appear on Facebook as well.