AT&T lowering credit standards to move iPhones?

A post on personal credit forum CreditBoards by a person claiming to be an AT&T corporate employee working at HQ in Atlanta says AT&T's credit department is getting into the holiday spirit by lowering their credit standards.

According to the poster "radiodesignguy" the change took affect around 10 December 2008 and runs through 1 January 2009 and was implemented in an effort to sell more iPhones over the holidays.

This is primarily due to the current economic crisis impacting the holiday sale's bottom line... So, your are more likely to get a smaller or no deposit at all over the next few weeks.

Unrelated to the credit story, the poster divulges this little nugget about AT&T's attempt to have enough capacity in Washington D.C. during the Obama inaguration:

I just blew $2 MIL of next years budget sending network response vehicles to D.C. for the Obama Inauguration so your phone doesn't blow up with people complaining they can't make a call when there are 500K people in D.C. trying to make a call at once. laugh.gif I sent 16 full towers over there and 20 network performance guys. Now I just need to find a way to finagle a good seat close enough to actually see something and maybe I'll make the trip to "oversee construction."

Bear in mind that it's just a message board and it could be anyone posting – but it's interesting, if true.