Why premier customer can not get their iPhone directly from Apple?

I'm not sure what you are referring to... I'm a premier customer, and I have purchased my iPhones directly from Apple in the past with no issues. I'm not sure what makes you think that he can't purchase directly from Apple if he wants to. Since he has ordered from AT&T he would need to cancel his existing order, and get hi upgrade status reversed before he could go to Apple. Also, if he had selected to purchase using NEXT, that might add extra complexity to cancelling, since the NEXT agreement would also need to be cancelled, and reversed so he could get a new NEXT agreement. Also, I'm not sure that all Apple stores sell phones with NEXT for AT&T, so that might be an issue, but if he's purchasing a contract subsidized phone, that's a proverbial piece of cake.