[Captivate General] bames:
I did purchase my captivate off contract. Not to keep unlimited data but because i thought the next 12 months would bring some very interesting devices and didn't want to burn my early upgrade. FTR though i did look at purchasing it on contract and they may not allow this anymore but at that time they were still going to grandfather my unlimited data with the $149 contract price deal...i just couldn't have taken advantage of some of the mobility (walmart wirefly etc) deals that are $49 or so. So you could have purchase on contract and kept unlimited i just didn't see the value for me...i would have been locked in for two years and spent $149 on the phone vs. the $299 i paid off contact (was able to get store to sell one 2 days before it launched....within a week of the launch i think they had upped the contract price to $499.

Hmmm...the spirit and intent? You mean only offering limited options and hard-selling people more data than they would need through fear?

My first data plan was an EDGE unlimited plan with the htc 3125. At that time i believe you had the choice of unlimited of 200mb cap. At that time it was even less of a choice because the overage charges were so ridiculous (fairly minimal overages could add up to $100's of dollars very quickly it wasn't the current $10/1gb over structure) The sales pitch was to give examples of high overage charges for a customer on the capped plan then really push people towards purchasing unlimited package. For all those blaming the customer.....99% of the blame rests at the feet of ATT. Don't push someone towards an upgrade that offers unlimited use and then cry foul when they take full advantage (not talking about idiots that download 20gb of iso's because they think they are sticking it to the man).

A funny aside that relates to how their initial billing stucture could get out of hand and really pushed people into thinking they needed unlimited plans.

I decided i wasn't getting a good enough data/media experience with the 3125 so decided to cancel my data plan. Called in and requested that they turn off my data plan at the current billing period (was already 20 days into current period). Well...the month ends and i get a cellphone bill around $400.00 with $300+ of it being for data usage (a fairly insignificant amount of data no less but i was being billed for every bit used beyond zero since they did it retro). When i called in to investigate the moron support person had backdated and retroactively removed the data plan i had already paid for to the start of the previous billing cycle and then retroactively billed me for the data i had used during the time that i had already paid for unlimited. Long story short they fixed the problem and removed the charges but its a good example of how they pushed people into the mindset of needing UNLIMITED literally for protection from data overage extortion.

What i find somewhat humorous and ironic is the sentiment expressed here by several that are attacking anyone who tethers as being in violation of the TOS (thus breaching contract) and as part of the problem. Guess what if you have rooted your phone and/or installed a custom rom....your every bit as in violation/breach. You could also argue that since you can't do tethering (without a plan) without first rooting and installing a custom rom then anyone who does such is part of the problem because if you couldn't/didn't root/install custom rom this wouldn't be an issue in the first place. I have no empathy for the idiots that think they are sticking it to ATT by downloading mass quantities of data out of spite but this is a minority of users and many of them aren't even using tethering to do it. I am not sticking up for those people i am simply sick of people assuming that anyone who uses tethering is "one of those people" and ignoring the fact that with many of todays phones people can and do ciphen data just as quickly untethered (torrents are one of the biggest bandwith stealing data intensive things you can do and phone that are essentially notebooks/tablets are being used as persistent portable torrent download/upload tools).

Get real people 95% of the people in this thread are in violation of their TOS (and guess what most of us are still ATT's best and most loyal customers...including the majority of users that tether responsibly without a tethering plan). 13 consecutive years w/ cingular/AT if they don't want 13 more they are welcome to cancel my contract @ anytime.

On a side note if you want people consuming less data where is the logic in data getting cheaper as you use it.

Examples, if you have:

1. If you have 200mb plan you pay $25 for 1st GB. ($15 for 200mb + $10 if you go over but remain under 1gb)

2. 2gb plan you are paying $12.50/gb for the included 2 GB.

3. If you use 4gb or have a tethering plan w/4 GB you pay $11.25 per GB.

4. If you use 6GB you are paying 10.83 / gb