FTA: The price increase might be to curb demand.

I understand being a cheap farker and refusing to pony up $5 for a month of TF, uy 99 cents for a 3GS? Really?

but
not "uy"

itsdan: Knight without armor: I understand being a cheap farker and refusing to pony up $5 for a month of TF, uy 99 cents for a 3GS? Really?

Ever seen Extreme Couponing where they act like $30 for $500 worth of groceries is "a lot"?

Well can you really put a price on the heart disease and diabetes they're going to get eating 50 tons of prepackaged foods?

From Macrumors: "this is being done to help prevent fraud as the 99 cents cannot be billed to your bill. It must be charged to a credit or bank issued debt card. Fraudsters are using stolen identities to steal these handsets ... been an issue since they went free."

There's got to be some tax loophole they're trying to exploit.

If someone searches for phones based on price, this will shift the 3GS to a different category.

Generally the categories are:
Free
$1 - $49
$50 - $99
$100 - $199
$200+

Or something similar - ranges may be larger, but the point is the same. This removes Apple phones from the Free category.
It also means you MUST pay something before you can walk out the door, thus meaning they have some payment from users - which may help with identity fraud and perhaps change the taxable amount, but I suspect it is more about where it shows up on their site.

A zillion times nothing is still nothing.

KarmicDisaster: A zillion times nothing is still nothing.

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'

/you gotta have somethin'

Silly submitter, everyone knows eleventy billion is more than infinity, since infinity is only 10,992,521,963,881,023,952. However, I still hold hope that one day, science will discover infinity is an even larger number than that.

Opiate of the Lasses: Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'

/you gotta have somethin'

IFYOUWANNABEWITHMEEEEEEE

/cheerful piano riffing

The price is still to high if you have to deal with AT&T.

Jal-co-za: If someone searches for phones based on price, this will shift the 3GS to a different category.

Generally the categories are:
Free
$1 - $49
$50 - $99
$100 - $199
$200+

I don't think you thought their cunning plan all the way through...

who cares what the price of the phone is?

It's the overpriced phone, text & data plans that suck ass.

Wow, almost 20 posts in this thread, and not one comment bashing Apple.

Tophersky: Wow, almost 20 posts in this thread, and not one comment bashing Apple.

Apple raped my dog.

I am an I-phone 3GS, so gettin a kick out of these replies.

my guess is that it was done to prevent fraud. forcing a credit card transaction to get the item to ship will keep a lot of fake orders from being placed.

The solution to the problem:

Droid.