Actually no, they're punishing individuals with bad or no credit... below is my post from the prepaid thread.
This is VERY important for anyone on the prepaid plan. This is not stated anywhere that I can find but discovered it today and confirmed by AT&T and Apple. The iPhone data plan on prepaid does NOT include the 200 text messages. You have to pay an extra $4.99/month if you want these or 15 cents each! No where do I remember that being stated in the agreement during the iPhone activation in iTunes. In fact, all I remember is that it was presented as regardless of your voice plan, the $20 data plan for EDGE, Visual VM, and 200 text messages was standard for any iPhone activation - please be aware this again is NOT the case for prepaid. AT&T sticks it to you with less any time minutes, less N&W minutes, and no mobile to mobile when you get the equivalent prepaid voice package and then sticks it to you again when it comes to the data plan. When calling about this discrepancy, AT&T was very hostile and rude saying that the iPhone should have never been allowed to be activated with a prepaid plan (funny considering it's a built in option in the iTunes activation) while Apple apologized profusely for any confusion and offered to escalate the complaint about the misleading nature of the activation process after checking and double checking if this was indeed correct.
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