Activation problems plague iPhone 3G launch

Posted by willgonz
11 July 2008 @ 11am

Ummm you do not need to activate your iPhone in store. The AT&T in my area has just been giving the phones out with the shrink wrap on.

Posted by Justin Bryant
11 July 2008 @ 11am

Problems for upgrading phones to 2.0 as well.. was able to download it from iTunes, install, but no connection to the Apple store for re-activation… now I have a nice paperweight on my desk as well.

Posted by SUGilbert
11 July 2008 @ 12pm

Patience! I too had problems updating, but finally it went through. Just wait for the “error” and click to music then back to iPhone and wait again. Eventually it goes thru.

Total time, though, was around 2 hours. :(

Posted by P356
11 July 2008 @ 12pm

You should be in the UK. Little or no stock (apple as normal has kept most of its stock for the american market - and there was I thinking it was a multi national). Went to 3 stores in total…all sold out of 16gb iPhones in the space of 5 minutes. Online activation with O2 (the carrier) went down within in minutes…police called to Apple Store in regents Street to diperse crowd….not Apple’s finest moment.

Posted by likeafox24
11 July 2008 @ 2pm

I waited in line for four hours in Austin, TX at an AT&T store. I was 10th in line. Only two customers left with activated iPhone 3Gs. After nearly an hour of waiting, they told us to just take it home and activate it there. I was relentless. And, I suddenly achieved a breakthrough at around 10:15am central time! It was working. I spent 30 minutes or so synching my data from my first-gen iPhone back up, and Presto! I was up and running by 11:30am central.

This was the easiest phone transition (from a data perspective) that I’ve EVER had….after synching, EVERYTHING was back just the way I had it on my first-gen iPhone. Even the web pages I had had open in Safari were saved!

The only thing is that you have to enter in all the passwords again for wifi networks and for email. I presume this is for security purposes.

So…everything’s normal, and I’ve been LOVING the new iPhone 3G. I couldn’t be happier.

Just be patient…I sympathize with all of you who are without a working phone and are sad that they can’t play with all the new features. But TRUST ME: It’ll be worth the wait!!!!

Posted by frannyc28
11 July 2008 @ 4pm

At least you all have their bran new beautiful iphones… check this experience at the magnificent 5th Avenue store in New York City and their “LOVELY” so-called GENIUSES…

ISo as a lot of other people I embarked on the quest to get a new iphone. Well Since I live in Harlem (in NYC) I went to this store thinking there will be less people than at the Apple Flagship store. I was right. 5 minutes lining when an AT&T rep came out of the store and announced that they did not have 16GB BLACK Iphones available.

Across the street is the subway station so I decided not to waste any more time and go to the Apple Store. Jump on the subway. Got there. 3 blocks of line. Not bad. The lines was moving fast. When I finally reached the front door Apple had the first problem with the activation of the phones. It took them 1 hour to fix the problem. and they had to slow down the amount of people because the system kept crashing. SO to cover 1 block of the line it took 2.5hs.

Finally I got to the store. Downstairs. ANOTHER LINE. 20 mins later ZACH was taking care of my upgrade. Since the get go he was having problems with his processing unit and had to restarted it like 3 times. He finally scanned the 4 codes on the box. Since I was upgrading my original iphone the process went fast… or I thought it was going to be. After I finally opted for the unlimited SMS plan and accepted all the terms and conditions ZACH pressed the submit activate button and the whole hell broke loose. Zach’s UPC (or whatever the name of those evil machines is) returned an error code.

Also from the get go he explained to me he was JUST hired so he kept asking other people how to, what does it mean, and so so about the UPC behavior.
So he took me to the back of the store were the Genius Bar (genius? give me a brake!) is located. According to them the activation needed some confirmations from AT&T and a final manual activation if the error was cleared from AT&T. The person MANAGING the area and organizing the line for the area took my name and cell number and asked Zach to SUSPEND the activation and transaction and print the receipt so they could give the error codes to AT&T for them to verify them and just overwrite their system to activate the phone.

After waiting for another 40 minutes and after witnessing how a couple of Apple Stores Reps totally ignored the line of people waiting and cut the line just for their costumers to be taking care of I spoke again to Zach and to the SO-CALLED organizer of the section and they decided to help me right away.

It was Nicki who took the case. Nicki asked Zach for the receipt of the transaction and I saw him going totally pale about that. He explained to Nicki (I don’t know what or if the color of the shirt the reps wear have something to do with the position they have but I guess that DARK BLUE means Supervisor) which was directing the whole thing to solve the problem, that they other rep told him to SUSPEND the case and that nothing was printed when he did that.
She then told him: YOU SHOULDN’T SUSPEND THE TRANSACTION! Now we don’t have the error codes to let the AT&T people know what is going on. Of course all this was happening without them knowing that I was listening to the whole sh**. Nicki finally asked me to go with her to one of the apple stations to try to solve the problem.

She contacted AT&T and explained the situation. And also let them know that because of a glitch on their system the printer didn’t print the receipt with the error codes. Then she argued for like 20 minutes with the AT&T rep. repiting over and over that it seemed I was not elegible for upgrade. I think I told her about 10 times I WAS ELIGIBLE and also pulled my AT&T account where clearly stated I was indeed eligible for effing upgrade.

While she waited for the AT&T rep to get back to the line, she explained to me that the system failed while processing the activation and now if she tried to activate it the UPC will not allow her since the system took the phone as ACTIVATED already. When I told her: WHAT ABOUT GRABBING A NEW PHONE and process the activation and upgrade again with a brand new phone she proceeded to explain to me some NON SENSE that I could easily translate into: JUST IN CASE WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE ANOTHER PHONE VOID and have one less to sell. or two. So by now it was 2pm (6 hours waiting 2 hours trying to solve the problem) and she came and told me about my next possibility: To be on the safe side you should go to an AT&T Store. The UPC is not seeing your upgradable status (how did she know if she didn’t try to process it again I have no clue). I know you are eligible for upgrade but the UPC is not seeing it and there is nothing we can do about it.
I though I was going to loose it and tear her soul apart.
AFter complaining for about 30 mins. an AT&T rep showed up and try to solve the problem. Well it is not exactly what she did. She just tried to convince me to go to an AT&T Store.

I asked them again: WHAT ABOUT TRYING WITH A NEW PHONE? again the same answer. This time a little more honest: We can’t figure if it was an Apple problem or an AT&T problem so, if we process another phone and it bounce again we will have 2 phone to return to the factory…

I think I did keep my coolness up until that moment when 1 FU**ING came out of my mouth. ON TOP OF ALL THE FRUSTRATION I HAD TO HEAR THAT I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SWEAR! Thank god she was not reading my mind because she wouldn’t be happy if she could hear I was thinking about all her family. The ones alive and the ones dead too..

3PM and I was still there trying to figure it out what to do. They contacted 2 AT&T stores and they asked to hold a phone for me. They said they needed to find out if that was possible. Nicki and Shea (The AT&T REP) asked me to wait for a couple more minutes… I did.
After 20 mins. no one was there anymore. I looked for Nicki… GONE… I looked for Shea… GONE…

Totally frustrated jumped on a taxi cab to the 42 AT&T Store. I got there. Half a block line. Not bad. when I was 10 people to go into the store… THEY HAD A PROBLEM AND THEY COULDN’T SALE MORE IPHONES because their credit card system was down and it was not going to be solved until tomorrow.

GREAT!

I got back home after going to the AT&T store on 34st. to the one on 14th St. Nobody seems to have anymore iphones.

So I asked if they are going to have tomorrow, even knowing that they answer was yes because the AT&T rep at Apple store told me that YES THEY HAVE but they are only allowed to sell a certain amount each day. WELL it seems that the AT&T stores are doing their own business because they are saying the will not have more phones until next week and offered me to get into a waiting list for $30 (non refundable of course) that can take about 3 to 5 business days. But once they get the phone I will get mine…

And here I am… writing all this trying to vent and let all the frustration go…

Hope all of you get your phones soon and do not have to go through all this kind of crap.

Best!

Posted by carusolips
11 July 2008 @ 5pm

Well, here’s a story from North Hollywood, CA.

Very similar as the rest of the world… in line by 7:30am… #87 in line… THEN, when there are only 12 people ahead of me, they announce there are only 7 left. As sucky as that was, that’s not the real problem here. The REAL problem started when I finally got up to the counter to “order” my iPhone in the next shipment. The REAL problem is AT&T.

AT&T requires that one qualifies for the iPhone; something I’ve been making sure of that I do since I signed a new contract with them less than 2 months ago. I have email documentation from them stating so, etc. Well, the rep tells me that I don’t qualify for THESE prices… that I qualify for the REGULAR price of $399 for the 8gb. REGULAR PRICE??? Am I missing something somewhere??? Nowhere did I see that the prices of $199 & $299 were discounted prices (If this was stated somewhere, then I’ll stand corrected).

So I contact AT&T who verified that the email documentation that I received was erroneous; that I don’t qualify. But since it was their mess up, they’d honor it and that I should bring it to an AT&T store. They also admitted that it was up to the store manager to honor it and he/she might not. Hmmm… That’s the way to stand behind your word, isn’t it?! Some customer service.

The moral of the story is: Just because you qualify doesn’t mean you do, and double-talking corporations always win.

Posted by areyoujokingreally
11 July 2008 @ 5pm

just to set a few things straight. no matter what apple told you, at&t only has a limited number of iphones in their inventory at any given time. at least in the store i work in.. believe me. i’d sell every single one i had if we had more than what we received.

in terms of the unbricking problem, i had expceted it as the point of sale systems crashed last year. when such a large group of people are accessing the same site at one time, it’d be more than probable that something of the sort would happen. when i activated the iphones that i was able to activate this morning, the unbricking process took, on average, 15-20 minutes per phone.

i really feel bad for the person who did all of the running around in NYC. an AT&T rep should have at least offered to direct fulfill the order for you at an AT&T store. you wouldn’t have left with a working iphone, but one with your name on it would have been mailed to you within the next weekish (the days no one knows..)

i really hope that everyone who wants a 3g iphone gets one without too much trouble. the phone is absolutely stunning (no, i don’t have one yet..) but my store had demos to show (and for our reps to play with)

happy iphoning! :)

Posted by frannyc28
11 July 2008 @ 7pm

To areyoujokingreally:
For the first time since I became an AT&T User (actually it was 8 years a go so it was a CINGULAR client) I have to believe that in my case the problem was on the apple side and not on the AT&T side. Fact is that AT&T says I am eligible and APPLE admitted they didn’t want to have another one voided.

Also, areyoujokingreally, you know that it is not true the AT&T stores have NO IPHONES Available but NO IPHONE AVAILABLE after a certain amount that by contract Apple and AT&T agreed to offer at the AT&T Store. This was confirmed by 1) The AT&T Rep. at the Apple store (I guess she was there to control the process) and 2) The Manager at the 14th Street store in NYC that with a wink told the ones that were left without a phone: Come back tomorrow morning. We have more to sell. (another person asked: yes, but how many are you going to received? 20? 50? and he replied: I can tell you we already have more than 100 to sell tomorrow. and 100 for monday). SO I guess that’s the lucky number of iphones that they are allowed to sell at the AT&T Stores… at least that’s the story here in NYC.

I will try again both the Apple Store and the AT&T store, since I have been told by AT&T costumer care that since the process was never finished They should be able (Apple) to process it again. ;)

What I still can’t understand is: HAving the experience because of last year problems and knowing the amount of people it was going to try to get the iphone on launching day, Apple and AT&T didn’t get prepare to accommodate their costumers… which is very bad on both the companies sides.

Posted by drwcl
12 July 2008 @ 6am

I get no iPhone because of buggy connection between Apple and ATT sales systems.

I waited 3 hours in line at an Apple store, had 2 iPhones in my hand, and ended up walking out of the store with nothing because of an activation error code ATT cannot fix for 24-48 hours.

* Wanted to go to ATT first, but ATT stores in Chicagland area were all out of iPhones early

* Many Apple stores were also, but there were still more there, so I end up at an Apple store.

* BUT: There is a glitch between ATT and Apple sales systems that flags a customer account formerly with a business employee discount as a problem that means the iPhone CANNOT be activated by Apple until ATT support “removes the flag” (took an hour to find this out).

* There is an ATT store (out of iPhones of course) downstairs from Apple store, so Apple rep and I walk there (with ATT support rep still on Apple guy’s phone) to see if they can intervene. Turns out there IS NOT SUCH FLAG VISIBLE when viewed from ATT systems. If I could buy the phone at ATT (which is all out), it would have worked.

* Apple folks very solicitous but NO PHONE LEAVES THE STORE UNACTIVATED, PERIOD.

* ATT and Apple people say this has happened a dozen or so times to each of them this day.

End result: After 3 hours in line and 2 hours trying to activate products in-hand, no iPhone because the people who have them (Apple) can’t activate them, the ATT problem there can’t be fixed for 24-48 hours, and the people who could have successfully sold me an iPhone (ATT) don’t have them, and Apple won’t release phone to me for later activation (I have to come back — at least they put the phones aside to hold for me).

Both companies seem hopelessly deadlocked into a broken process and inflexible policy set.
* Apple should have provided sufficient ATT stock, if Apple could not work through activation issues like this.
* ATT should have found (by the time I got to this, Fri at 8PM) a live work-around for what the support rep said was a problem widespread through the rollout all day. Sending paying customers away for 24-48 hours while “the team that works on those tickets makes the change” is silly.
* Apple should have handed me the phones to activate later.

Posted by drwcl
12 July 2008 @ 3pm

Well, now: It gets better.

ATT call #2:

I called ATT today to check status on the trouble ticket filed last night to get my account ready for iPhone activation.

There was no ticket.

The representative today indicated that the problem was the “BGM flag” on my account, indicating a business employee discount. Standby and it will be removed … oh wait, it won’t come off. Well, this ATT representative filed a “billing ticket”, said to check back in 4 hours.

ATT call #3:

Four hours later, I call back. This third representative checks, and tells me that since I have combined billing with my home phone, that’s the problem. I can only purchase an iPhone3G at an ATT store, it will never work at an Apple store.

Also, it will take 4 hours to *5 days* to get the BGM flag fixed.

No, they can’t arrange for an iPhone to be held at an ATT store for me to get, that’s against Policy.

They are all very sorry, and appreciate my business, but there’s nothing at all they can do about it.

I am, of course, free to cancel my accounts, there will be an early termination penalty, that’s the Policy.

There sure are a lot of Policies to prevent someone from buying an iPhone at ATT and Apple.

Posted by dmsjit67
8 August 2008 @ 6pm

I was able to walk into an AT&T store in washington state the day they came out and buy one no prob. I only have a few issues with mine. First is the picture message feature, or lack of i should say. Second is, still no flash player. either im missing something, or this is the biggest hunk of crap ever. The web pages load nice and quick, everything looks so pretty, then theres this little cube with question marks on it? WTF!?!?
http://www.sourcingmap.com/iphone-cases-c-983_1757.html