The iPhone is clearly a product that’s targeted to people with some disposable income, considering it runs around $500 normally. But even people who would spend $500 on a phone (that’s more than a phone really) could have less-than-perfect-credit scores.  All it takes is one late payment and suddenly you could be flagged as ‘average’ credit or something!So what happens if you go to the store to pick up your iPhone, only to find out your credit isn’t as good as you thought?  Well, you actually won’t be turned away, like what happens with most things you apply for and your credit isn’t good enough.  Instead, iPhone just requires that you make an additional deposit of $250, making the grand total $750 for an iPhone!

Seems like a ridiculous amount of money to me, and I really like technology and the latest gadgets… but I suppose it’s not all bad. If you keep your iPhone activated for 12 consecutive months and make your payments on time, then iPhone will actually refund you the $250 deposit you made for having less than perfect credit.

AT&T: Have You Ever Wished You Had Service…. “You Will” (Remember those AT&T commercials in the 1990’s - where they’d talk about all the things you might want to do, like tuck your baby in from a phone with video; carry your medical records in your wallet; Send a fax from the beach… and then they’d follow up with “You Will”, because they were predicting the future advancements of AT&T)

Ok- so anyway, let’s say you have to have the Apple iPhone.  In order to use the gadget, you have to have a separate AT&T account.  You’ve probably heard stories from people who live outside of AT&T’s service area though,which means you can’t use the phone or internet portion of the iPhone.  Hmmm… I bet there are a lot of people just a teensy bit upset over that in the lands-outside-AT&T-service-area!

Let’s say you’re lucky and AT&T services the area you live in.  I totally recommend activating the phone before you leave the store, instead of doing it at home because of the credit issue.  If you have bad credit, or just credit that isn’t perfect, you are going to have to make a deposit before you can activate the phone and it’s much better to find that out before you get home all excited to use the phone only to find out you can’t until you pay the deposit.