This may be old news for some of you, but I have been feeling fairly confused about how things may play out for those of us who are iPhone Pay As You Go customers, in terms of what the iPhone 3G may end up costing.  Well, when I say confused I should really say pessimistic – as most of what I’ve seen reported has implied that PAYG customers would probably be paying *well* above the standard $199 / $299 prices for existing (eligible) or new customers. 

In fact, just today there are some bleak reports over at CrunchGear talking about O2 in the UK charging almost $700 for the iPhone 3G without a contract, no fixed contract deal, and an Apple Insider article saying that pre-pay customers are likely to pay over $600 for the phone.

So after seeing Gear Diary’s earlier post on confirming eligibility for upgrade costs for the 3G model, I gave the AT&T site a look for some further insight on this … and not shockingly got none via that route. 

Then I decided to give AT&T a call.  First I called the national 611 number and spoke to Customer Care and then Sales.  My question, I think, was a fairly straightforward one:  as a PAYG customer, will I be able to get the new iPhone at the standard $199/299 prices, or will the cost be substantially higher as I’ve not been on a ‘standard’ iPhone contract. 

Both individuals I spoke to seemed very,very unsure about answers on this subject.  One told me that "GoPhone customers aren’t really considered existing customers".  Nice – I’d say since they happily take my money each month, I would very much consider myself a customer.  Both ended up saying they ‘think’ prices would be much higher for me as a GoPhone customer, but were not able to confirm this even after checking with supervisors.

Then I tried a call to a local Austin AT&T store and got a much more confident sounding individual (though I don’t know of course whether that translates to a more accurate answer).  This person told me without hesitation that the cost for a PAYG ‘customer’ would be $400 for the 8GB model and $500 for the 16GB model.  Or, of course, I could just take a brand new tow-year standard contract, just like any new customer, and pay the $199/299 prices.

I guess none of this should be, or is really, surprising news.  Two things did leave a very bad taste though – how confused and uninformative the first couple reps were – I mean, we’re a little over two weeks away from a mildly important and possibly a little bit money-making launch for AT&T, you’d hope that they’d be trying to get their folks a little bit polished on these subjects – and of course the whole ‘not really considered an existing customer’ thing makes you feel real warm and fuzzy about things …

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