Iphone 3g has no service EVER!?

I know that ATT has the 30 day trial to return the phone and service even though you signed a new contract. Well exactly after the 30 day period was up the phone started having NO SERVICE anywhere. I searched all over the internet seen 100's of post saying the same thing. Some tried to resolve this problem by turning off the 3g mode. I did that but it didn't work for me. ATT is jipping me $100 a month for NO SERVICE. I went to the store and was pretty pissed that they would give me no kind of refund and said that I should call apple. Well I did. (took me over 30 minutes to get to a tech) They said the closest apple store would be in san antonio 150 miles from where I live! I am not going that far just to return a sucky Iphone. THey gave me the option of waiting 3 more days to return the phone and have a new 1. The thing is I've almost been a month without service and there's nothing the can do . I don't understand. I want to end my contract but they said it would be a 175 ETF (early termination fee) I got so mad! Is there anybody out there who has canceled their contract and didn't have to pay this sh*t ETF fee. I'm soo fustrated. I left Sprint FOR this? Oh yeah I upgraded to 2.0.2 because they said it should fix the problem. It only made it worse. I have no signal all day, If i did it would drop once I touched the phone. I'm SOOO mad. again I need to know how to cancel without paying the 100. I've heard all the smart as* remarks I don't need to hear it. Please....

Best Answer :
It is going to be way, way less trouble for you to just talk to Apple's iPhone support folks on the phone and just arrange to have them mail you a box so you can mail in the phone for repair. It doesn't take long: they overnight the box to you, then it overnights to and from them. You'll only be out a few days. If you can borrow an unlocked or AT&T phone from someone, you can even put the SIM card from your iPhone into that while the iPhone is getting repaired and just use the one you're borrowing in the meantime. Seriously, this is your best option.

Unless, of course, the iPhone is damaged. In which case you have a much more difficult problem.

But, if you choose the more difficult path and still want to return it:

Did you buy it from AT&T or from Apple? If you bought it from Apple, contact their phone support and ask to speak to "customer relations". See if they can help you. The problem is, Apple has nothing to do with your cell phone plan, only with your phone. AT&T is the one in charge of your plan, and thus in charge of terminating it. CR might be able to pull some strings, but they may just as likely be unable to. You will probably have to talk to AT&T as a result, since they're the ones who will want to charge you the ETF. Just keep asking to speak to a manager until you get someone with the authority to override the ETF and make your best case.

As someone who dealt with iPhone support on the company side of things for both Apple and AT&T, I can tell you that it will help you tremendously to keep your cool when speaking to them. Be calm and rational. Do not yell or shout. Acting like a wild angry person will not help your case, they are much more likely to give you what you want if you're reasonable but firm.