You may recall that yesterday I was told to wait for 24 hours for my “corporate discount” to clear from my AT&T account and then return to the Apple Store to buy my iPhone. The “corporate discount” was what was keeping me from being eligible for an iPhone and theory was that it took 15 minutes to clear the “corporate discount” off of the AT&T computer but it took 24 hours for that data to get to Apple. Well, I returned at 1PM, 27 hours after I cancelled my “corporate discount” and I still wasn’t able to get my iPhone. In fact, the kid at the Apple Store just told me to buy it at AT&T (who are out, of course).

I tried calling AT&T Customer Service on my Blackberry, but they hung up on me. I hoofed it over to the nearest AT&T Store and had them check their computers to see if I was eligible and they saw no reason why I wasn’t. I decided to use their phone to see if the people at the “main office” on the other end of the phone had any other ideas. Turns out I’m ineligible for the low price of $199 8GB/$299 16GB price because I got a phone within the last two years. But I was also ineligible for the $399/$499 price for people who are willing to sign up for two more years of service. I was only eligible for the $599/$699 price and they weren’t even offering that at this time. And they couldn’t find anything in my file that explained why I was ineligible. They put me on hold to find a manager.

As you can see, it took almost 23 minutes on hold to find a manager and submit a “case” so they could look into why I’m not getting an iPhone.

On the bright side, I was able to go to Borders Books again and use my discount coupons for CDs. At least Borders seems to want my money.