So I started out trying to order from Apple since I've always had a good customer experience with them. The Apple site was down and after waiting about 20 mins after the pre-order started I went against my better judgement and ordered from AT&T.
Somewhere around 5 hours later I receive a confirmation e-mail stating they phone will ship in 21-28 days. A few hours after that I check my order status, estimated shipping date 10/31-11/11.
So at this point I start doing some research here on the AT&T site and I find out that I cannot cancel my pre-order even though AT&T claims they can't fill my order for 2 months. Now AT&T has right around $1000 of my money locked down with no intention of filling my order in any reasonable amount of time.
So I keep digging to try to figure this out and I discover that not only is AT&T charging me their uncalled for $40 "upgrade fee" for each of my three lines ($120), they're also going to charge me $25 more a month per line for a total of $75 a month.
So by renewing my contract for 2 years I actually get to pay more for my phones than if I chose the ridiculous next plan for 12 or 18 months...
After finding out that renewing my plan is actually a shading back door way of making me pay more for my phones than if I just purchased them outright with no plan at all, I started looking around at other carriers.
Basically the short version is almost everyone has better data plans for less money than AT&T and I haven't seen any complains about them confiscating money they have no right to.