So you were actually able to pay full retail off-contract?
I went on the apple site just now to try my luck and selected store-pickup (of course the one store that said 9/19 pickup available was way out in Rancho Cucamonga, no thanks, lol!) but the only way I could do that was to choose either the AT&T NEXT plan or do an early upgrade which would have been $200 off the contract price but still a 2-yr contract. So the 128 gb space gray 6 would have been $749 with apple care (plus taxes and whatnot) vs $949 full retail. Which would have been fine but we would be stuck with a contract for another two years. We also would still have been eligible for our full upgrade in May 2015.
But as of this morning, delivery was estimated October 7-12 and we would have to be home and we couldn't ship to an office since our bill goes to our home. So we are just going to take our chances a couple of weeks after launch and go into a store.
Oh, and I just chatted with an apple rep today and they confirmed that even if we buy off-contract, the phones will be locked to AT&T or whatever carrier. But since the phones will be paid for up front, AT&T should be able to unlock them for us.
Also, during the chat, the apple rep said that pre-orders have now ended.