What was your experience when applying to either Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon with bad credit? [See Details Inside]?

I had a little bit of a problem after my divorce from my first wife. This was back in 2003. My wife and I were with Cingular (now AT&T) and she cut off my cell phone as I was driving from Delaware to South Florida by myself. I went to establish cell phone service with them, and evnthough I was a customer with my wife, and paid our bills on time, they wanted a $500 deposit from me. So I balked and walked out. I then tried to apply with Verizon, who wanted a…wait for it…$1000 deposit from me, to which I fired a sleu of expletives at the sales person, and stormed out. I then went to Sprint, who not only approved me, but approved me with NO DEPOSIT. To which I promptly signed up with them, and have been a customer of theirs ever since. I have never been outright denied, however, the verbiage they will use is “your application has been approved, and we are requiring a deposit of $_____.” Which in my eyes is essentially a denial, because they know that more than likely you will balk at the deposit, because of its prohibitive amount. With that said, I recommend you go with Sprint… Hope this helped, and good luck. BTW, Sprint has the iPhone :)

When I first applied with Cingular (which soon after became ATT) they required a $100 deposit which was refundable after a year if no payment problems.

I did and after a year, it was promptly refunded. I got one of their basic Samsung free phones. About a year later, I got the iPhone with no problem and no deposit.

However, there was a friend of mine with bad credit who applied for an iPhone and they required a $500 deposit for a year. Had he opted for a lesser phone it would have only been $100.

I seriously doubt that any company would let an iPhone go out the door with no credit record or a hefty deposit to back it up. They would be risking toomuch.

But if you were to get a more basic phone and establish a good track record with them for about a year or so, you’d likely get an iPhone without difficulty.

They really don’t have much choice regarding the iPhone since the market value is $500–600 and they are already taking a bath from subsidising it so heavily for regular customers. A new iPhone with a two year contract only costs each customer $200. Thats quite a difference.