Well boys and girls my sad story has a happy ending after all. I called a AT&T store near where i work to see if they would sell me the torch for 499. He said he would so that yesterday afternoon on the way to work I stopped in.
They got me one and at the register I told the CSR what had happened that morning. So she said she would get it a try because that shouldn't be right. She ran into the same problem and the CSR next to her told her to talk to the store manager, which she did. Came back in a couple of minutes and a few keystrokes later I had my upgrade and kept my data plan.
My hats off to those guys. They went the extra mile when they didn't have to