I hate you, AT&T
Busy morning — Kimi’s exhausted and in pain (honestly, I think the baby’s going to arrive any day now), so I took Sammy out with me. Dry cleaning, bagel shop, Costco, Children’s Museum & Zoo, Stanford shopping center for lunch, and then the UMF bit. Shiny new 8g iPhone, at $200 less than what I’d thought about paying for it.
Only now to activate it:
38 hours? 38 HOURS OF MAINTENANCE? Nothing going until Monday at 5:30am? I first called the Apple Store at the Stanford mall to see if this was accurate, and someone named Joe there said this was news to him but activation was an AT&T issue. He could give me the AT&T phone number. Sure, I said. The number he gave me was for DIRECTV. Joe, Joe, Joe. Sorry Joe. You’re fired. In a few seconds online I found the AT&T phone number from their iPhone FAQs page — it’s 1-800-331-0500. I called and eventually the woman admitted that yeah it’s probably down until Monday morning. 38 hours? 38 HOURS? AT&T, you’re fired. This is gross incompetence of the most preposterous proportions. 38 hours?
The main reason I needed a phone is because my old one, a SLVR L7, has started to have a bad speaker — I can hardly hear. So don’t call me until Monday, because I can’t hear you.
I hate you, AT&T. So much hate. You’re fired.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Same problem here in Pasadena, except no one mentioned the 38 hours. Called the 800 number and they said to try again tomorrow. In the meantime I’m going to try running iNdependence to at least get the WiFi up and running.
Welcome to AT&T.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Two hours later and trying again, it says 36 hours. So they have their story straight. Doesn’t make it any more acceptable.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Over on the Apple discussion forums, they’re saying this has happened twice before — activations down for the entire weekend. Unbelievable. They clearly did not fire enough people the first two times this happened.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
iNdependance installation successful! The wife is using the iPhone over WiFi right now. Crisis averted.
If you get desperate you can try this (at your own risk of course):
http://code.google.com/p/independence/
September 15th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Hey — I’m caught in this loop too and boy am I ticked. BUT, after speaking to 7 people at AT&T and Apple, Here’s all I know.
1. At&T is saying that both Apple and AT&T are doing upgrades — but I know that AT&T is dong a full billing system shift.
2. If you complain loud and long enough, you can get a $50 credit off your bill. I say this because I was offered one, and I want AT&T to pay as much as possible. You have to talk to the AT&T iPHone help desk people — 877-419-4500 — and then after you explain to the first line person how horrible this is — ask for a supervisor and ask for compensation for the lack of service. If you have to, tell them that you know they are offering other people credit.
Enjoy — and hope you get the credit too.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:48 am
21 hours to go, still down.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Two posts I made at the Apple forums about this activation problem were deleted.
A Little Birdy, thanks for the support and sorry you’re stuck in the same boat. I tried the number and spoke with a rep; she was insistent that no credit was offered, even when I threatened to cancel my AT&T service.
I also tried calling 1-800-MY-IPHONE and complaining there that the retailers weren’t warned. The rep there blamed it on AT&T. I asked for a credit and he offered to transfer me to a satisfaction specialist, but then came back and said they weren’t available until Monday.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Oy, the pain.
Earlier today I read that another frustrated iPhone owner was able to activate. So I undo the iNdependence activation and try to go through AT&T again this morning.
This time I made it through the dreaded Apple/iTunes login portion of the sign-up process! I was then asked to accept AT&T’s terms of service, then Apple’s terms of service, then I was asked to confirm the upgrade of my existing AT&T account!
At that point I was thinking to myself, “I’m so close to having a working iPhone”…
Then it happened. I got to the final step — which apparently connects the iPhone to the iTunes store for a final bit of activation. After about 10 minutes of waiting I get an error indicating my phone is unable to connect to the Apple store. After numerous retries I’ve given up for now.
My phone is in some weird state where it appears to be activated through AT&T, but it’s unusable because I still haven’t activated through iTunes, and apparently won’t be able to until tomorrow.
This is insane! This is the sort of business practice that got Microsoft in trouble not so long ago.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:57 am
This actually just got a lot worse. Just realized that my old phone was deactivated by the iPhone activation process. But I still can’t use the iPhone.
September 16th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Ouch, Kirk, sorry to hear it. Keep at those phone numbers, keep escalating to supervisors, and don’t get off the phone until it’s fixed. Good luck, keep us updated.
In speaking with different reps, this may be a California-only issue.
September 17th, 2007 at 9:12 am
2:30am: No go — wait 3 hours.
7:30am: Activated, finally.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Posted here yesterday, but for some reason it didn’t go through. Fortunately, I saved it for a longer post I’m working on for my own blog.
Finally got the phone activated on Sunday afternoon — after being told there was nothing anyone could do but wait until Monday AM. Here’s what happened:
Called AT&T, explained my situation. Operator tried to provide assistance, but obviously there was nothing she could do. She transfers me to Apple. The Apple operator explains that it’s AT&T’s fault and there’s nothing he can do. He transfers me back to AT&T. The new operator explains there’s nothing she can do.
Finally, I ask to speak to a supervisor, he tells me that my iPhone SIM is activated and that I should eject it and put it into my old phone until the iPhone activation issues are resolved. That’s not exactly the solution I was hoping for.
I ask for compensation and he refuses. I hint that if I’m going to be removing the SIM from my new iPhone I might as well unlock it and install a T-Mobile SIM. He grunts and says “we can’t support that”. I say “of course you can’t”.
Realizing I’m getting nowhere I hang up. Then it dawns on me. My iPhone SIM is activated, I just can’t get through the iTunes activation portion of the process. But I’ve already used iNdependence for activation and deactivation. So I give that program another shot and re-activate the phone — this time with the SIM that is now being recognized by AT&T.
IT WORKS!
So, despite being told by both AT&T and Apple that there’s no possible way to activate my iPhone until tomorrow AM, I now have a working iPhone.
Don’t try this at home.