Oh yes, my friends, a failure to communicate indeed. After waiting in line and shelling out more than $600, I believe myself to be in possession of the first DOA iPhone. I plugged it into the dock and caught a tantalizingly brief glimpse of the Apple logo on its sleek black surface before the screen went dark, seemingly forever.
So far, all attempts to revive the iPhone following Apple’s somewhat limited troubleshooting methodology (i.e.: hold down the home and sleep/wake buttons for eight seconds, rinse, repeat) have failed. I’ve currently got it plugged into the AC adapter in the hopes that perhaps the battery is merely too depleted for it to work correctly. I’ll keep you all updated as I try to keep the tears from my eyes.
Update: Replaced and going strong!
Looks like my first predition has come true!
Don't throw that thing away yet, Dan. I need a sinker for my fishing line.
Oh, that is the cruelest joke the gods have played in a long time. Maybe an offering to Athena will illuminate your iPhone.
-Z
Sympathies, dude. Don't sweat it. Yeah, it sucks, but it'll be back to the store first thing tomorrow, they'll look at it and pop another one in your hands pronto-donto. Both Apple and AT&T have way too much invested in dicking you around. Stuff happens, right?
I have the 2nd dead iPhone. Lucky me.
Mine worked long enough to make 1 call and then the touch screen ceased to work.
I have talked to tech support briefly and am on hold again.
SO bummed.
that sucks... Almost sad to tell you that I'm typing this on my new iPhone :)
Got the iphone, AT&T store sold me a family plan that does not fit my needs and can not be changed to work as promised. I had to call in and change my plan to two individual plans. I waited in line got my iphone and 4hrs later I still can't activate the thing.....I am not happy. I may get an email in the next 24 hours letting me know I can use the phone...maybe!
Wow,
am I the only one with a success story? I walked into the Cambridgeside Galleria at 7:08, had my iPhone at 7:18, went home, activated it, and it works beautifully! A sexy beast!
all my phone does is open iphoto
very disappointing
Am I glad that I didn't get this piece of ka ka. For some reason I just new it is going to be a nightmare. I am gonna wait for a couple of months to get it. Plus another huge down size is that it is running EDGE, that is so lame. Hopefully v2.0 will get 3G.... most likely will wait till then. Hopefully you guys get your phones to worked, feel so bad for you. Wish ya all the best with testing it out.
After waiting hours to buy an iPhone, I could not activate my new phone through iTunes. I then had to call at&t and wait 2 hours before talking to someone. Once I got someone (actually she was nice and appeared to be helpful) she had to transfer me to the activation department. Once I waited awile from them, I got some new kid who kept going back and forth with someone in the background asking dum questions and telling me that I had to have some "web id" that I should have. I told him I did not and never got that far. Then he told me that it will take 24 hours for me to get one. Finally he told me that he could not help me and that he had to transfer me back to Customer Support. I asked to speak to a supervisor, and then he transfered me to some Apple support desk that was only there during business hours during the week and it hung up on me.......argggggg! I knew partnering with at&t was going to be a big mistake. So now I am back in the queue after speaking with someone else (also apperaed helpful and understanding and sorry for my trouble), and gave me yet another dept that I needed to talk to to resolve my issue. It sounded genuine, but here I am almost three hours later and on my last portable phone. My othertwo ran out of battery... Hopefully I can get out of this hell soon... At this point I would love to just play with my new device and not even use the phone features, but of course I can not do that until it is activated. Its completely locked down with the exception of dialing emergency numbers......
My experience has been perfect so far. Activated and Synced within 30 minutes. I truly hope they can fix your problem quickly, because this thing is amazing.
I have been on and off with At&T reps for over 4 hours trying to activate my iPhone - no luck.. did everything recommended to the tee. The At&T server does not want to allow me to use my old phone # which annoys me to no end. Was this revolution launched without the proper testing??
Stood in line for only 30 minutes to get my iphone- at apple's flagship store in midtown. Yea! that was the easy part. Now 3 hours later, still trying to activate it. I've been waiting on the phone for 2 hours 15 mintues and ticking. My husband is trying on another line, being transferred from one office to another. 1st they said we couldn't activate because we had a family plan. We had to drop the family plan, then activate the iphone, then put the family plan back together- but of course we would lose all roll over minutes. then told, actually all of that was not true, but we had a business account so couldn't activate at all. ARGHHH!!! Now i'm on the phone waiting to have business account "Deleted". If that doesn't work, guess i'll have to return the iphone tomorrow- hope i don't have to wait in the same long line as those who are buying....
My iphone also only opens iphoto and is not recognized as a device when I manually open itunes. So far very disappointed considering the $600+ ispent.
MacFixit is reporting that their iPhone didn't come with a SIM card, so it couldn't be activated by iTunes.
I had a hard time Activating my Account all because my fraud alert on my account... it was hell... but it all worked out in the end though... and I am extremely happy
I guess Michael from Apple Gazette also had some issues with his phone: http://www.applegazette.com/iphone/first-impressions-iphone-video-not-so-good/
Well I bought mine today after standing in line 2 hours at AT&T store which only had about 40 phones which of course sold out before I got one. Only 40 phones!? How stupid are they!? I traveled to an Apple store which had NO line and a ton of them available. I bought one, rand out and when I got home, tried to port my phone number from Verizon and was told by iTunes that would take up to 24 hours. No I'm not waiting that long after all this. So I called, they cancelled that request (or so I thought), started a new account, gave me a new phone number and then said the SIM card was faulty and not working so the phone would not activate. They told me to take it back to the store. So I did that. The store had never heard of this. After 40 mins there they just gave me a new phone, I called aT&T there and canceled the account they set up. Now I'm home at 12:30am having tried to activate a new account without porting an old number in hopes that would speed it along. Now I get "activation will require more time" and am told I would get an email when it was finished. I called and AT&T sorta laughed it off and said they have hundreds of thousands trying this now at the same time and it's overloading their system so taking a while and could be up to 24 hours. So back to square one. A beautiful iPhone that will only let me dial 911 if I need to. We'll see how long it takes to activate, assuming this even works. If not, I'm seriously going to consider taking it back and not messing with AT&T. They should have been prepared for hundreds of thousands of people trying to do this today. The fact that their servers are overloaded is not something that should have happened today.
Argh! my story is JUST like RobinW's above. The lady at AT&T told me my number wouldn't port and that I had to start over, but then iTunes wouldn't LET me start over. When it finally kicked in, I was on hold by that time to the third person (a polite, articulate Apple person; in stark contrast to the AT&T phone automatons), he told me that I had been hosed by the AT&T lady and that she had just been lazy and knew that by resetting and letting AT&T assign me a number that the process would go smoother. I'm still waiting (5.75 hours since purchase) to activate, but now have LOST the phone number I've had for so many years.
Ticked in San Antonio
I didn't have any problems activating iPhone at all.
If your phone was working, you wouldn't be writing here.
I waited in line for 4 hours. Got the 8 gb phone. Can't activate it. I need a credit pre-authorization number and the someone at AT&T forgot to program the cash registers so the code was printed on the receipt. Due to the fact I don't have that number I can not get set up on the phone until I do.
I AM NOT HAPPY! All parties should have gotten these bugs worked out long ago. They only had six months to do so!
got to a store 2.5 hours after re-opening and was done in 5 minutes. Ran thru activation 3 times before it took. Sorry to hear people having issues. The haters like to jump on their I-told-u-so soapbox but in reality the majority of us are happy. Best of luck to those with issues.
!! Hey all you people who only get iPhoto to launch... !!
iPhone requires Mac OS X 10.4.10
Updating to 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 (as stated in the requirements) should resolve your issue. I have found that iPhoto will launch (in addition to iTunes) when there are new photos on the phone to be imported just like any digital camera does.
this thing is great. Waited in line for an hour and change.bought it. Synced and working. Awesome
this thing is great. Waited in line for an hour and change.bought it. Synced and working. Awesome
Well Apple has failed at bat for the first time
not only you are having troubles.. but the people from MacWorld can not make their work either...
the web is full of not working iphones... well the stock will be hit hard on Monday, no wonder they release the product in a Friday after the stock market was closed.
I will wait for 2nd generation iphone with verizon
Atleas you can have the thing in your hand! ;-) We have to wait for another 6 months or so in Holland to get it.
Hope you get the phone to work quickly! Can imagine how dissapointed you must be right now.
Good luck!
I had mine home by 6:20, activated, synced and operating 20 minutes later. I already had an AT&T family account so I just had to add the data plan. I am VERY pleased.
I have now owned my new 8GB iPhone for 12hours and still can not activate it. AT&T really dropped the ball on this one. The phone numbers have all been answered quickly by polite folks, but with no answers. I moved 2 lines over from Verizon. One line is working (outgoing calls only) on a Razor. The 2nd line for the iPhone may or may not be working in the next 24 hours...this really sucks! Yeah! I stood in line shelled out over $800 dollars for 2 phones and asseccories that don't work at all or correctly. I'm feeling pretty stupid as I dress for work and head out the door with no phone. I had to actually write down my ical events for today on a piece of paper. How will the paper remind me to do stuff?
-jb
I picked up my phone last night around 6:30pm eastern, having waited only half an hour in line. The employees in the Apple store at Westfarms Mall (Farmington, CT) were PHENOMENAL. Talk about employees who know what customer service is all about!
I went home, put the phone in the dock, and everything went perfectly! I chose to get a new cell number versus trying to move a number over from Sprint (as I'm sure that would not go smoothly based on Sprint's performance in the past). I got my activation email in less than 5 minutes.
Overall, the experience was flawless. I spent some time playing with the phone last night, and was just amazed. Everything worked as advertised - and usually beat my expectations. Using the keyboard is no different than typing on my BlackBerry - and, in fact, was easier to learn than the little keyboard on the BB.
I'm not sure how many units Apple produced of the phone, but there are bound to be some initial issues with a small percentage of phones. I feel for those of you that have initial problems - I'd be bummed if my new phone didn't work properly. Don't give up - it's a FANTASTIC phone!
Well, similar story. I should have known something would turn sour when the entire AT&T store's computers crashed due to multiple activation requests... my question is, "Why bother with activation at the store when you are going to have to do it on iTunes anyway?" After waiting an additional hour outside the AT&T store (looking in at the handful of people let in) I got my phone, took it home and hooked it up. I have an AT&T acount, so I was promised a seamless transition... not so. I was prompted by iTunes that my activation required additional time and that I should wait for an email... no dice. I've waited long enough. Called AT&T and got the same run around that most of you did. The girl on the line said that they honestly didn't expect the iPhone to sell like it did, so they really weren't prepared for the call volume... PC people will never learn... So it is the next morning and I am still waiting for the elusive email. I'm having fun turning my phone off and on using the sliding key thingy...
I was just wondering if all the non working iPhones came from either the Apple stores or the AT&T stores. If it did, then this would help people buy the working ones easier.
I bought mine at the apple store A crap & crap said it would take another 12 hrs. I activated last night at 9:30 PM EST. They should have activated all the phones and taken their own sweet time disconnecting the people who have bad accounts.
Angel Rios: It might be a little tough to wait for the 2nd generation iPhone with Verizon. Apple and AT&T have signed a never before seen agreement stating that AT&T will be the only phone company to offer and support the iphone for 5 years! 5 years! The only other phone that has had even close to that kind of contract was the Razor, and that contract was a year and a half before it went to other cell phone companies.
Here's proof: http://www.everythingiphone.com/news/iphone-hardware/att-holds-five-year-distribution-deal-on-iphone-20070522151/
Sitting across from the folks at work who support our Cingular/AT&T Blackberries was enough of a deterrent for me. I've listened to them going on very similar wild goose chases for hours on end. All that and I need a $500 or $600 phone like I need a hole in the head.
And now I've commented on the wrong article. Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have passed up that coffee this morning!
When I tried to activate last night I got an error saying my iPhone couldn't be used with my ATT account. My account was erroneously marked as a business account. I was on hold for over an hour and no one in the business area would answer. This morning I was able to activate with a warning that I would get no employer based discounts. So ATT still thinks I have a business account but at leasty phone works and it's great. b
Well, I am really disappointed. I sat for 8 hours yesterday, was first in line at the AT&T Store, bought the phone in 5 minutes, took it home, and made the stupid decision to port my cellphone number from Sprint. Got the email everyone else got, called AT&T customer support, and the person told me that they had the ability to stop the transfer of my Sprint number, but their computers crashed and they couldn't even find my initial request. He did say, though, that they would be open until 11:00 p.m central time. I went to bed. Still no email saying the phone can be activated. I'm at that limbo stage. Do I still try to stop the transfer of the phone number from Sprint, or do I just let this thing go until tonight? Does the process of transferring numbers work on weekends, or is this phone dead until Monday?
Hey is anyone having trouble getting texts from carriers outside ATT like I am??
Just walked right into the St. Louis Apple store this morning (10am) and there was no line at all.
I was able to activate it without any problems at all. As a matter of fact, I was already a Cingular/AT&T customer with a business account. I thought for sure I'd have some problems getting the phone activated.
Nope, in about 5 minutes, my phone was activated and my old phone deactivated. Gotta love how seamlessly Apple made this work.
Wow! Lots of bad stories! What a shame, my iPhone is up running and working perfectly! Man this thing is INCREDIBLE! No problems what so ever, totally worth the 2:30 wait. As for 3G support - no concern to me - no 3G support in my area anyhow.
so what we have we learned from all this? AT&T hoped to ride on Apple's success....instead Apple appears to be riding on AT&T's failure.
Hope nobody owns any Apple shares.
Note to all:
Porting over a number is a process allotted up to 24 hr by gov't. regulation, at request of service providers. Don't ask why--that way madness lies.
Make sure you've got OSX 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 up and running before you try to activate, and that you've got the SIM card in place.
Many problems are arising because of unrealistic expectations, given the bureaucracy one knows is lurking (and herking and jerking) in the background, and many of the others are secondary to failure to read directions.
Now, that all said, AT&T support should have been better prepared than they were, especially since they're the only service provider with which Apple partnered....hmmm....just a sec....only provider....no competition....poor performance....why am I not so surprised, all of a sudden?
Bought mine at 6:15pm, and activated & synch'd with no problems.
The EDGE network is much better than people would have you believe, and the browser zoom in/out font clarity is awesome. The phone and the experience have surpased my expectations.
I'm sorry that others have had problems, but I've got to believe that the most people have had few initial problems and therefore might represent the silent majority.
My activation took 17 hours and four phone calls. Nick in AT&T's customer service (800-331-0500) department was a rock star and followed through until the end. I have no reason to doubt his partial explanation that AT&T's systems are grinding up the process for some activations because of what he termed "posting out." In essence, other carriers don't have the manpower to handle the transfer of phone numbers on their end. This is affecting the operation of all activations, even for current AT&T customers. I'm still pissed at AT&T for this, but not nearly as much now that Nick came through and delivered me an activated iPhone. He even went so far as to call me back to make sure everything was working between the iPhone and iTunes after I received the activation emails promised yesterday.
Ok. phone is activated, but the built in earpiece (speaker) crapped out on the first call. I can still hear phone calls when I put it on speaker phone, but not when held up to my ear. Apple had me restore the phone and power cycle it (I told them it was a hardware issue, but what are you gonna do?), and now I've been on hold for almost 30 minutes waiting for someone to "figure out" about sending me another one. I sure hope they don't expect me to send mine back first, 'cause that's not happening. Why can't I simply go back to the AT&T store where I bought it and exchange it? I love Apple, but what the heck?
Heck if AT&T was owned by Apple I guarantee there would be little or no issues with activation
all phone companies suck big time they outsource tech support to india they have some poor guy or gal reading from a list of possible remedies then they transfer you to the higher up person.. keep doing this until you get back to the US support and eventually you find a person who knows what he's doing most of the times AT&T verizon sprint all the same shit they all suck so Steve when are you going to offer a reliable well supported wireless service ?? I think Apple should buy AT&T
Wow, no one saying apple phone sucks?. Can you imagine microsoft releasing a phone that was DOA?. Granted, this is apple first attempt so things should vastly improve but i have a feeling my apple friends would never have forgiven microsoft if this was a microsoft phone.
it would seem that 90-95% of everyone's problem is the idiot user syndrome.
23 hours and waiting for activation. att and apple have dropped the ball on this one. No one can help. No one knows what to do. No one can do anything, but tell me to wait. Thanks.
I knew the iPhone was coming, so I bought "last month's" Sony/Ericsson Walkman phone. The memory may be puny, but it and the battery are swappable. All the calls are clear.
Mine has worked perfectly from the start.
Some of these posts are extremely suspect; I wouldn't be surprised if a few Redmond shills have been sent here to spread seeds of discontent.
Considering the hundreds of thousands of phones that were sold yesterday, and the endless complaints people have with cell providers, I'd call this launch a huge success. The Apple Store here in Nashville had it totally together; I was 32nd in line, and was in the store by 6:08, out the door by 6:12, and in my car driving away by 6:15. Twenty minutes later I was activated and syncing my photos and music.
I got my iphone relatively quickly. The networks overloaded so the wait at the AT&T store ended up being an hour despite me only being 15th in line. But I got the phone, and freaked out because I didn't have Tiger. So a friend who was going to the mac store in roosevelt field, LI around 11pm picked up Tiger for me. Installed it, upgraded to 10.4.10, downloaded and installed the update for iTunes 7.3, and it was gravy. I thought.
So I went to bed at 4am, left the iPod on the charger, figuring they'd move my number over, deactivate the old phone, and activate the iPhone while I slept. I had already had a Cingular account and it said existing accounts would take longer, so I gave it time.
This morning, of course, activation was a no-go. The iPhone's battery had a little symbol of a plug on it, so I, using my keen senses, figured "This means, plug me into the wall!" I did so and went out for a bit. When I got home, I plugged it back into my computer, nothing happened, still no activation or anything. Well duh, I must've screwed up taking it away from the computer. My bad. The instructions didn't say to leave it in the dock until it activated.
So I left it on the dock and a couple hours later I called AT&T and asked them about it. They transferred me to iPhone support who proceededd to tell me tons of information I didn't ask for about phone help and servicing plans that'd be out in July. Ok, what about my activation?
"Wait a couple more hours, it'll try activating again. It should automatically retry even though you took the phone off the dock."
It's 830pm now, and I'm about to call them again. In the mean time, I have no cellphone, because my old phone was already deactivated overnight.
I have to say that I'm one of those ATT customers who had no problems. I walked into the Westfarms Apple Store, went straight to the counter, bought my phone, drove home and needed five minutes to activate it and it's working great. Biggest question to answer was how many sms messages do I get a month.
It has been over 28 hours since I started my activation process. I received the email with the activation id yesterday (Friday) at 7:29 PM EST, but still not activated.
My iphone only opens iphoto
I am one of those no-activation people... it's only been 6 hours so far so I feel lucky, but spent most of that time on the phone with ATT people all of whom seem to have different reasons why things aren't working and wouldn't you know it it's always something that involves another group or another department. Most recently I got an email saying "We're sorry. AT&T has identified a problem with the information you provided. " asking me to call a phone number and give them a code; I did so and had a 1 hour and 35 minute trip around hold music and different departments, none of whom knew anything about the email or what it meant or what information they needed. In the end they decided that since I didn't call Nextel to tell them that I was porting my number, it must be my fault.
No, I don't work for Microsoft or any competitor. The only sour grapes here are those of someone who was really excited about this purchase, happy to pay such a huge price for a new and innovative piece of technology and who feels like he was given the shaft by people who don't really give a damn about the customer experience. AT&T wanted all these nice sticky high revenue customers, but then somehow didn't put two and two together to realize that you have to serve them too. Shame on them...
I too have a dead iphone. Same story. Will not power up. Will not charge. Will not reset. Dead, dead, dead.
I'll let you know what happens when I take it back tomorrow.
BTW, none in stock at Cingular store, but plenty at the Apple store at the mall.
I was soo excited to get the iphone, that once I got home I immediately downloaded the itunes and started to activate. Well, that started around 1pm and it's now close to 1a.m. PT and my phone is still in the activation process. I've contacted AT&T twice and all they keep saying is "we apologize" (and how they know I'm frustrated and that thousands of people are also in the same activation process because of the overload). Whatever! I'm disappointed! How can both AT&T and Apple, both reputable companies, not foresee this happening and to not be well prepared with some type of back up system. If my phone doesn't activate soon, I'm going back to the store to get a refund!
36 hours later and still no activation. I feel very small and powerless. I have been lost in a sea of pawns...being churned through by 2 corporate giants. Just when I think the top of the pile is near, I am turned under and have to begin the climb again. Will my iPhone ever activate?
-jb
This is sad!
36 hours later and still no activation. I feel very small and powerless. I have been lost in a sea of pawns...being churned through by 2 corporate giants. Just when I think the top of the pile is near, I am turned under and have to begin the climb again. Will my iPhone ever activate?
-jb
This is sad!
Been trying to activate it for 36 hours as well.. on the line with AT&T for a total of 1.5 hours...
What gets me though, why couldn't they just let us use the other functions of the phone while waiting? Gee, that would have been too easy.
Ugh.
(Porting from Verizon)
Before I got the iPhone, my number was eligible for transfer. I checked a hundred times to make sure- I wasn't going to buy a $600 phone if I couldn't keep my number, which is imperative because I get many business calls on my cell number.
I went through activation Friday night and go the "we need 24 hours" e-mail that I know thousands of others got. At 24 hours, I was freaked that my old phone would shut off (as the e-mail said it would) and the iPhone wasn't activated yet. I called the activation 800 number that was in my 24-hour e-mail. After 75 minutes on hold I talked to a nice guy who tried for quite a while to figure out what was going on. He eventually told me that my number was ineligible. WHAT??? I went on the AT&T website and checked myself. It now told me my number was ineligible. He suggested I call customer care in the morning because they were now closed, and possibly call Verizon (my current carrier) to make sure my current line wouldn't be shut off. He then said that to prevent my old number from being released into space, he should cancel my activation request. I grudgingly accepted.
I now think that my number transfer is lost in space somewhere and that it would certainly be possible to transfer my number... I just need to talk to someone who knows what they're doing. By the way, I did call Verizon this morning (they were closed last night) and they said they never got a request to transfer the number but if they did there should be no problem transferring that number.
Is anyone else having this specific issue? I have spoken to about 8 different departments and nobody at AT&T seems to know where to route the call or what to do. Most of them just type in my number (as I can on the AT&T website) and the only information that they can come up with is that my number is ineligible. No one can tell me why it was before, or what I can do besides get a new number, which is not an option for me.
I'd love to hear if this is a widespread issue.
Before I got the iPhone, my number was eligible for transfer. I checked a hundred times to make sure- I wasn't going to buy a $600 phone if I couldn't keep my number, which is imperative because I get many business calls on my cell number.
I went through activation Friday night and go the "we need 24 hours" e-mail that I know thousands of others got. At 24 hours, I was freaked that my old phone would shut off (as the e-mail said it would) and the iPhone wasn't activated yet. I called the activation 800 number that was in my 24-hour e-mail. After 75 minutes on hold I talked to a nice guy who tried for quite a while to figure out what was going on. He eventually told me that my number was ineligible. WHAT??? I went on the AT&T website and checked myself. It now told me my number was ineligible. He suggested I call customer care in the morning because they were now closed, and possibly call Verizon (my current carrier) to make sure my current line wouldn't be shut off. He then said that to prevent my old number from being released into space, he should cancel my activation request. I grudgingly accepted.
I now think that my number transfer is lost in space somewhere and that it would certainly be possible to transfer my number... I just need to talk to someone who knows what they're doing. By the way, I did call Verizon this morning (they were closed last night) and they said they never got a request to transfer the number but if they did there should be no problem transferring that number.
Is anyone else having this specific issue? I have spoken to about 8 different departments and nobody at AT&T seems to know where to route the call or what to do. Most of them just type in my number (as I can on the AT&T website) and the only information that they can come up with is that my number is ineligible. No one can tell me why it was before, or what I can do besides get a new number, which is not an option for me.
I'd love to hear if this is a widespread issue.
Sorry to hear about all the problems. I've had no problem whatsoever. Porting an existing AT&T number would definately work better than from another carrier. And, pre-signing up for an iTunes account along with having the other pre-reqs taken care of problably didn't hurt.
Hang in there, the iPhone is worth the wait. Good luck!
Tom
When we called At&T for activation ( since we got that message in iTunes) the girl on the phone said " YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY KNOW YOUR iPHONE MORE THAN I DO..."
That is SO pathetic! why wasn't At&t prepared for this??? they've had months...
and what about APPLE? they don't listen to their costumers complaining about At&t being the only service supplier?
We will bring BOTH of our iPhones back to the store tomorrow. I think it will be the only way to SEND A CLEAR message to Apple.
I bought my iphone on Friday when they went on sale. I waited 9 hours in line. It's Sunday night and I have still not been able to activate my iphone. I must have called AT&T about 8-9 times and they haven't been able to help me out yet. I'm suppose to get a call from AT&T tomorrow from someone who's supposedly is suppose to activate my phone. We'll see what happens. I hope they call me bright and early in the morning and are successful at activating my iphone. I'm soooooooooo extremely frustrated right now! If this guy can't help me I'm taking this piece of crap back to the store I bought it from.
As soon as I got my iPhone home, I connected it to iTunes and it worked perfectly. I am very happy with it. The only thing I am concerned with, and I have not had it long enough to know its 'secrets,' is the battery usage. At first, it did not last too long. After charging it a long time, and only using only the iPod, the battery is great. I think the battery does not last long when when integrating all the other usages, but that is typical at first, just to see how things work. As adults, we learn how to conserve energy, we may have to do the same thing with the iPhone, until an upgrade becomes available, and I hope it is a software issue, and not another one we have to buy. Then Apple will lose me.
Thanks a ton for this help, my iphone screen went blank, and this saved some poor bastard at the apple store a long tirade about how my 2nd iphone was a peice of garbage, too ( first phone kept losing service and never regained it )
Hi also had some problems with my iPhone especially syncing it to Outlook, I found a great free tech support site that have some great information about lots of problems, it is amazing to see how many comments are listed here and on the tech support site.
here is the page for iPhone Support
Hope it helps!
Try updating your iTunes to 7.3- It's the update that allows iPhones to be activated.
5 hours and close to 10 calls and still not activated. This is almost as smooth as Steve Jobs's options fraud. Smooth as exlax.
next time just set it up to be activated at the store you dillweed instead of getting people to create itunes store accouts
Bring it back to apple and they will give you a new one for free
i know this because it happened to me and apple gave me new one
After all the hype that was created by Apple and AT&T for the iPhone, just like thousands of our brotheren, we got lured into buying one for ourselves. Though we wanted to experience the pleasures of urban camping by standing in the line to be one of the first few to hold iPhone in their hand, but my head pulled rank over my heart and we decided to wait for at least few of the initial issues be resolved before taking the plunge.
After waiting for weeks, we found an occassion that we could use to bargain with our heads and convince ourselves to buy the first of the potential 4 iPhones in the family.
It was my in-laws 37th wedding anniversary and we convinced my father-in-law to shell out more than 600 dollars to buy the phone for my mother-in-law (if I was going to experiment, it rather be on my father-in-laws dime!)
(Note to my wife: Honey, I'm just kidding. None of this was planned)
Anyhow, we all sat in the car and burned the gas to drive 18 miles to the nearest apple store and within minutes were proud owners of iPhone. Me being the tech-whiz of the family, everyone had their hopes on me to use my tech prowess to bring the device to life as soon as we reached home.
All excited with the family watching, I proudly pulled the equipment out of the box, hooked up the cables and launched iTunes. I then connected the phone to my PC's USB port and to our excitement iTunes magically recognized that we now belonged to the privileged list of iPhone owners.
The iTunes software asked us for all the personal information like the phone number we were trying to get activated etc. Then it displayed a message asking us to wait while AT&T activates the service. Our hearts pumping and blood rushing to our cheeks with excitement, our eyes kept moving from the computer screen to iPhone with anticipation. We were already debating who will make the first iPhone call and to whom..... Boom! All our dreams shattered, our hearts broken - we saw a message on the computer screen saying that AT&T needs additional time to activate the phone and we will be notified via email once the phone is activated.
We kept refreshing our yahoo email account first on every 15 minutes interval, and slowly moving up to on-hour-every-hour cadence. No luck!
Next day in the afternoon we received an email congratulating us that the iPhone has been activated and all we need to do is plug it back into iTunes to activate it.
So here we go again. We plug the phone back in and go through the process. To our amusement the phone opens up and we can see those beautifully aligned pretty icons on the iPhone. We were even able to load all the pictures and music on the device. As soon as the synchrinization finished, we picked up the phone with fingers twitching to make the first iPhone call ....
No go.
There was no service on the phone! It was a nice 600 dollars iPod, but we couldn't make a phone call as AT&T had not activated the phone.
I then called AT&T. After 20 minutes wait time, I was able to speak with a representative, who asked me all the standard questions from the checklist in front of him; made me reboot my device and my computer twice and then asked me to remove the SIM card and read the numbers to him.
Once I read the numbers to the AT&T rep, he said that the numbers were off by a digit in their system so he transferred me to the next level of tech support.
After waiting for just a couple of minutes, I got to speak with the second level technical support. I was certain that he will be able to modify the single wrong digit in their system so that it matches the string of numbers on my SIM card and I could use my phone. But to my surprise he said that he is not able to change the digits in his system and I will need to go to the local AT&T retail store to get a new SIM card for the phone and they will be able to activate the phone for me. After spending 1 hour 40 minutes on phone with AT&T, our iPhone was still not functional.
Next day, we take time out of our busy schedule and go to the AT&T store. Due to 4 people ahead of us on the sign-up sheet, we had to wait for 45 minutes before we got any service (they should seriously consider adding more benches or chairs for people to sit while they are waiting. It becomes a challenge to keep standing for 45 minutes with a four year old child - while they are at it, they should perhaps also consider a play area for children if they plan on keeping their custmers waiting for 45 minutes. Some studies have also indicated that a HD TV and free refreshments in waiting area help reduce the aggrevation level in custoimers - just my 2 cents to AT&T).
Anyhow, we finally got served and the AT&T rep (Eric) put a new SIM card in our phone. We asked him with excitement "is the phone working now?". TO our dismay, he said that we will need to take it back home and plug it into iTunes to get it activated.
On asking why they can't activate it right there in "AT&T Company Store", he responded that they do not have a computer with iTunes loaded.
On asking "so do you mean that if we don't own a computer, we should not buy iPhone?". He responded: "Yes. That's exactly true. I suggest that you take this phone and return it back to the Apple store". Shocked by the response, we came home and plugged the phone back into iTunes.
Very upset at the store rep's rudeness and attitutde, on our way back home I decided to call AT&T customer service and file a complaint against the rude employee. After waiting for about 15 minutes I got a rep on phone and she patiently heard my whole story (not sure if really was listening or not), but when I stopped talking, she simply told me that she cannot file a complaint against another AT&T store rep. I will need to go back to the same store and speak with the store manager!! Very upset at this point, I asked to speak with her supervisor and to my utter shock, she outright REFUSED to let me speak with the supervisor. She said there were no supervisors on duty! When I asked the rep's name, she gave her first name as Cynthia and refused to give any other identifying information. I asked her which call center she was from and she told me it was in South East. That's all she could give me and then she hung up on me.
We came home and plugged the phone back to iTunes.
The system walked us through the process again and came back with the message indicating "AT&T needs additional time to activate the phone and we will be notified via email when it is activated" - Deja Vu!
So, I pick up the phone again and dial AT&T again. After waiting for about 20 minutes, a representative came on the phone. I explained my ordeal to her and she said that she could not do anything for me. I just need to wait till I receive an email confirming the activation. I demanded explanation and initially she denied providing me any details citing her inability to look at the status while the activation was being processed.
Since I kept insisting, the explanation I received was that AT&T had already activated the SIM card and they were waiting for Apple to do their piece before sending us a confirmation email.
Knowing that the first time, the issue at core was that they had wrong SIM card in the system, I asked the AT&T rep to read me the SIM card digits from their system. To my disbelief, they still had the original SIM card (the one that was off by a digit!). I was totally frustrated by this time and I asked the rep to update their system so that it shows the new SIM card number that I got from AT&T Retail Store. She put me on hold for about a minute and then confirmed for me that she had updated the information in the system. That made me wonder, if the rep had the ability to update the SIM card information in the system, why was I sent to the AT&T Store in the first place??
I asked the rep what happens next. She said that the new SIM had been activated by AT&T and I could put it in any phone and I would be able to make calls. She said that she could not do anything more at this time. Now we just had to wait for Apple to complete the activation on their end.
Not fully convinced, I called Apple's customer service. The Apple representative was quite nice and empathetic to my story and informed me that there was nothing that needed to be done on the Apple's side. It is all AT&T for activation.
Feeling stuck between the 2 companies, I asked the Apple rep to explain the situation to AT&T Rep. Apple rep put me on hold and called AT&T. I once again explained the situation to the AT&T Rep who re-iterated that I have to wait for the email indicating my service has been activated. She could not do anything till that email was received.
I agreed to wait since there was nothing else I could have done. But before hanging up the phone with the AT&T Rep, I asked her to read back the SIM card number that she had in their system for our phone number. As I guessed, she gave me the original SIM card numbers (the one with a single digit off). I told the AT&T rep that just before calling Apple representative, I was told by another AT&T rep that she had updated the SIM card information - what happened? To which she responded that there could be something wrong with the phone. I should consider taking it back to the Apple Store.
Taking her advise, we took the phone back to the Apple Store.
Fortunately, we met Steven Commander, the store manager at AT&T Store. He was extremely helpful and was very apologetic about the whole situation. First person who really felt sorry for the whole situation.
He then replaced the phone for us and we were all convinced that it will work this time because that's what AT&T rep had told us. I did not want to leave the Apple store till the phone was activated, so I asked Steve to get the phone activated for us before we leave the store. It was around 6:00 PM on a Saturday evening. Steve plugged the new phone in with the SIM card that AT&T store had given us. The system walked us through the activation process and lo and behold ... we get a message "AT&T requires additional time to activate your phone. You will be notified via email once your phone is activated"!!!
We were in total disbelief! I dialed AT&T's customer service again and got a message that their call centers are closed and I should call back during normal business hours!!!
Steve looked up some numbers on his computer and came back with an AT&T rep on phone with him. The AT&T rep (Otto V. from Canada) was extremely helpful and understanding - just like Steven at Apple - must have been our lucky day. I think that the stars up above were showing their pity on our plight). Steve and I took turns talking with Otto, who put us on Hold multiple times, got the secong and third level of technical support involved. After staying on phone for about 3 hours (I am not exaggerating - it really was 3 hours!!), Otto came back and apologized for our experience (first AT&T rep to do so!) and explained that there is an issue with their billing and customer care software which is not letting them update the SIM card number. They have opened a ticket with their IT department and we will receive an email once the issue has been resolved. It was store closing time, so we left the Apple store after spending 4 hours of our Saturday evening in the Apple store.
Here I am writing this note on Sunday morning. Getting iPhone to work has become my new hobby and mission. I will keep you posted once the phone is activated!
Please wish us luck and send me the email address of AT&T VP of customer service, if you have it.
I truly believe that Apple made a mistake signing up a multiyear contract with AT&T and putting themselves in a situation that could potentially send their customers away from Apple!