AT&T, iPhone, and New York City: Fraud? Really?

As Rene mentioned earlier today, AT&T online is not selling iPhones to people in the New York City areas, but physical stores and Apple are selling them. AT&T's latest explanation for this is fraud.

I mentioned this story to the folks that run <a href="http://store.theiphoneblog.comThe iMore Store and they said that they have experienced'waves' of fraud from the NYC area over the years, necessitating increased scrutiny on every order destined for the Big Apple. Much of their anti-fraud system was developed, in fact, in order to deal with fraudulent NYC area orders. AT&T Online refusing to sell anything to New Yorkers is an extreme and extremely bad solution, but it's not crazy to think that it's a bad solution to a real problem.

So either AT&T is lying about their incompetence in running a network or AT&T is telling the truth about their incompetence in running an online store. Or it's a third issue we haven't heard yet, one which we would like to think doesn't involve incompetence.

Dieter Bohn