Caught in iPhone Activation Hell, Part 2
Shortly after I finished writing my previous iPhone-activation-hell entry, something seemingly wonderful happened: iTunes displayed a "Let's Get Started" screen. Had my griping been premature?
I filled out the form, gave my iPhone a name, and put in my Apple user ID and password. ITunes asked me what contacts, calendar, e-mail, etc. I wanted to synchronize. I was thrilled; a working iPhone was almost in my grasp!
Yeah, right. After 45 minutes (during which the phone flashed the word "Synchronizing" and iTunes showed a busily twirling icon), the phone still displayed the words "No Service" in the upper left corner. The couple of thousand Outlook contacts I thought I'd transferred were nowhere to be seen, nor were the iPhone apps (for AOL Intant Messenger and Twitter) that I'd tried to download from the iTunes store. My music did show up, but that left me with a rather pricey MP3 (or AAC) player with Wi-Fi--an iPod Touch.
And now iTunes had turned its back on me completely. Whenever I tried to log in, it sent back messages saying it couldn't complete my request because there were problems with the clock on my PC--it wasn't synchronized with Internet time. ITunes' help file also suggested that one of the reasons I couldn't log in (even when my iPhone wasn't attached) was that my PC might not be accepting cookies from iTunes. This seems highly unlikely since I've been a customer for quite a few years.
I called AT&T and got a sympathetic customer service representative who basically said there wasn't much I could do: Apple's servers just weren't prepared for the onslaught of new users. He also said that AT&T's sales people should have done the iTunes part of the activation, and not sent me off to do it on myself. Small comfort at this point.
So, 5 1/2 hours after I left the AT&T store, I'm still without a fully functioning iPhone. And I'm not very happy about it. I'd been looking forward to this day for weeks, which just goes to show that if you trust in technology, you're asking for heartache.
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
I read horror stories about AT&T customer service from last year,but I thought you they surely resolved those problems this time around.Sadly,I was proven horribly wrong time and time again.The ?bouncer?(I call him that because that is how he was acting)controlling the line was extremely rude. When we asked if they even had enough phones to get through the line we were rudely told(with a holier than thou attitude)?I can?t divulge that information? like it?s some sort of state secret. All we wanted to know is ?are we wasting our time??
This is exactly why I won't buy Apple products. They look great, sometimes work well, but their service and apps are buggy as all heck. Couldn't have Apple predicted all of its "followers" would be caming out all night to pick up the latest gadgetry? I'll stick to my Instinct by Samsung/Sprint, thank you. And to my Sansa MP3 player that cost $30. And to Windows, and everything PC in general. Apple is a cult.
I had issues activating my phone. I called customer service where I was kindly advising that iTunes was crashing due to the huge onslaught of iPhone activations. She encouraged to try again in a little while. I tried later and synced successfully. That's when I realized the store rep had not activated my new sim card...so I craftily removed my sim card from my previous phone and installed it in the iPhone 3G - and VOILA - I have a perfectly functional iPhone 3G and I LOVE it. I don't think that Apple or AT&T were quite as ready for the release as they suspected they were. It may be off to a slow start but I think Apple's iPhone 3G will be a huge success once it gets off of the ground.
Well with all the complaints made about your newest iphone I should be happy to have a sprint centro that I has been replaced 3 times.
I'm just waiting on DHL to bring out my 4th replacement. Keep smiling boys There's a vampire behind your.~ RUN ~v~ don't LQQK Back!
My Centro Sucks Santa Monica Pier Sea Salt! 3?
dclemons