Big iPhone headache: Waiting for AT&T activation
So I admit it: I bought an iPhone.
That was the easy part. I should have realized that if the customer service whizzes at AT&T could find a way to mar what was otherwise a perfectly pleasant experience, they would. After nearly nine hours over 36 hours, AT&T has yet to activate my iPhone, and it can't be used until they get around to it, hopefully sometime before 2010.
Buying the iPhone is easy, but AT&T activation isn't.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)But I'm getting ahead of myself. Earlier on Friday, I had taken photographs of the throngs gathered outside the San Francisco Apple store at 6 p.m., and the far more sedate crowd outside the Market Street AT&T store, and decided not to bother standing in line for an iPhone that evening.
I figured I'd read some more early reviews and then pick one up sometime in the next few days after the lines were shorter. And those reviews were promising, including one that said audio quality was superior. Seeing the iPhone ripped apart was also educational.
Then, around 11:30 p.m., I read our News.com article by my colleagues Tom Krazit and Erica Ogg. They had stayed longer than I did and reported that: "Ninety minutes after Apple started ringing up sales of the iPhone at its 24-hour flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York, anyone could just walk into the store and pick up a device with a minimal wait."
Well, Apple stores were open until midnight, so why not? Around 11:40 p.m., I persuaded my wife to join me in a late-night dash to the Stockton Street store.
Yes, they had iPhones. Yes, the sales staff were exhausted after performing crowd control earlier. Yes, there were still two San Francisco policemen standing guard outside, looking slightly bored by now. But there were only two people in line in front of me, including one desperate fellow who had driven far too fast from Marin County north of San Francisco to make the midnight deadline after finding that an Apple store up there had run out of 8GB models.
So far, so good. When I got home, I plugged the 8 GB iPhone into our media-server iMac and typed my information into iTunes. I received an e-mail message at 12:10 a.m. saying: "AT&T is now processing your activation. You will receive an e-mail confirmation once your activation is complete." I had an existing AT&T account, so I figured that adding the $20/month iPhone wireless plan should take only one or two minutes.
Then I waited. And waited. And waited.
It's now 9:06 a.m., and still no change. Against my better judgment, I even took the God-help-me-now step of phoning AT&T customer support, something you should never do unless you're absolutely desperate and learn that some malcontent is running up calls to Zambia on your mobile account, and probably not even then.
Mary-Kay eventually answered. "Unfortunately, sir, you do have to wait," she wearily replied, presumably sick of having to answer this question once a minute since her shift began. "The iPhone will tell you when it is activated."
How long would this take, I asked. Five days? Two months? "I doubt that," Mary-Kay replied. "Believe you me, you're not the only one in those shoes. They did get jammed up last night. It's first-come first-served."
I began to ask her if my existing AT&T phone would continue to work, but the line seemed to go dead. It could be my sucky VoIP service, or Mary-Kay could have hung up on me. I really wouldn't blame her for iPhone ennui after dealing frustrated my-activation-hasn't-happened-yet customers all day.
Now, I've been a computer programmer longer than I've been a journalist, and I find it hard to imagine any system that should take nearly nine hours to perform a database query, do a credit check, and whatever other black box magic is necessary to make this gadget actually work. It's even less likely that the system should take this long in the middle of the night after the east coast iPhone binge should, in theory, have abated hours earlier. And I'm already an AT&T customer, too.
Any bets on how long it'll take AT&T to activate this guy's iPhone?
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)Occam's razor suggests that the more likely explanation is that AT&T has such antiquated computers that some poor saps in another secret AT&T division somewhere in a New Delhi office park are keystroking in my account update by hand. Seriously. We may never know, but it sounds about right.
I'm hardly alone. Some reports indicate AT&T activation is a recurring problem. One local Fox news channel article is titled "iPhone debuts with big headaches." A LiveJournal user entry buttresses my theory by reporting that the AT&T "transfer team" gets in to work at 9 a.m. PDT.
There's speculation that existing AT&T SIM cards may work with the iPhone, but I haven't tried that yet. Some posts in that thread are saying AT&T is telling customers they need to wait for 24 hours because of high volume. Some people are saying that their existing AT&T phones become unusable during the transition, though at least that hasn't happened to me so far.
It's important to stress that the iPhone can't be used for anything useful, not even iPoddish features such as playing music or movies, until activation happens.
The bottom line? Apple did everything it could to ensure that buying and setting up (and presumably using, though I can't attest to that yet) an iPhone is a pleasant experience. It succeeded magnificently.
But its key business partner, AT&T, has failed miserably. Computer companies know how to load-test a server to figure out how it will respond under unusually high demand. Why didn't AT&T do the same for its internal procedures to handle iPhone activation?
Update +14 hours @ Saturday 2:13 p.m. PT: I received an e-mail message at 12:35 pm PT from the customer-friendly address of do_not_reply@att.com saying: "We are currently processing your order... You will receive an additional e-mail when your order is complete that will provide further instructions to activate your iPhone." That's one informative message.
Update +20 hours @ Saturday 10:45 p.m. PT: I received another e-mail this evening from iPhone_Activation_Support@att.com saying: "We're sorry. AT&T has identified a problem with the information you provided. For more information, call 877-800-3701." So I did. And I waited on hold another 45 minutes. "For some reason it's not accepting the rate plan," the AT&T rep said once they actually answered the phone. And there was more bad news: AT&T Web Order Activation could do no more for me. I needed to call AT&T customer service at 800-331-0500. But, naturally, they were already closed for the evening.
Update +35 hours @ Sunday 11:34 a.m. PT: After I waited on hold the better part of an hour with AT&T customer service, Noah picked up the phone. I was his first iPhone customer. Great, I thought. He'll know exactly how to help me. My fears were justified: He was friendly yet clueless, and clung to his mistaken belief that iPhone itself had told me my existing rate plan was invalid. It took a while to disabuse him of this notion. He put me on hold and called the activation department at 877-419-4500. After some back and forth, the problem became clear: AT&T had realized, to its collective horror, I was not being charged enough under my current rate plan to permit me to add the iPhone's $20/month wireless plan to it. I had to choose one of the default iPhone rate plans, which I did. Noah cheerfully told me that "we've been told to expect 24 hours" for activation from this point on, which would make it a full 60 hours since I first plugged in my darling little iBrick.
Update +36 hours @ Sunday 12:15 p.m. PT: Noah called me back on my existing (elderly) AT&T mobile phone with news. After helping another customer with the same problem, Noah had learned that "I can actually process the activation myself right here." Whoo-hoo! He had me power-cycle the iPhone a few times, which did nothing. But then my existing (decrepit) AT&T phone stopped working and displayed the error "Unregistered SIM," which I suppose can be counted as progress, in much the same way that failure can be counted as success. Noah said I could use the iPhone's SIM card in my existing (ancient) phone. In Noah's defense, he was remarkably pleasant and went out of his way to call me back with more information. It's not his fault he's enmeshed in such a dysfunctional iPhone activation apparatus.
Update +38 hours @ Sunday 1:40 p.m. PT: After reading a few more iPhone horror stories, including one on MacSlash about horrific iPhone problems with business accounts, I began to doubt the reliability of my new friend Noah. In my mind's eye I was comparing him to an Afghan hound: eager to solve the problem but utterly lacking the cognitive skills to do so. So I popped a few Valium and called the AT&T Web Order Activation number again. After Yet Another iPhone Interminable Wait (YAIIW), Vanessa finally answered. "Because you do have a business account we cannot activate the iPhone under a business account," she told me. Ah, so poor Noah hadn't fixed things after all.
Update +38 hours @ Sunday 2:20 p.m. PT: I've been transferred to Aleecia from "business care" who promises to help me out but, as I expected, utterly failed to do so. It helps to keep your expectations low. I should say, by the way, I pay my own bill and am far too much of a peon to have a corporate account: Only CNET bigwigs have their phones billed directly to the company. But AT&T has been giving me a handsome discount of something like $1.25 a month off my phone bill because CNET is my employer, which is what apparently gummed up the works. I finally found an AT&T post buried deep in their site that says IRU accounts like mine may or may not qualify for the iPhone. SLBers and CRUs definitely can't, but some IRUs can. Get it? Anyway, it was Aleecia's bright idea to transfer me to Apple at 800-MY-IPHONE. "What I'm going to have to do is get ahold of the iPhone support themselves and to have them assist you," Aleecia said. But the Apple rep who answered had no idea what AT&T SLB, CRU, or IRUs are, and I figured was too polite to say what he really thought: "Why the hell is AT&T dumping its problems on me?" He did, however, provide me with yet another AT&T number, 866-539-1468, to call.
Update +38 hours @ Sunday 2:35 p.m. PT: YAIIWing. This must be what they mean by the "New AT&T."
Update +39 hours @ Sunday 2:45 p.m. PT: Ashley answers after something like 40 minutes, which is a record time by YAIIW standards. I resist the urge to compliment AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson on reducing average YAIIW from a few hours to 40 minutes. This might count as an unqualified customer experience success -- except for the fact that, after 39 hours, my iPhone is approximately as useful a phone as a hunk of asphalt would be. Except the asphalt wouldn't cost $600+tax or require advanced studies in YAIIWing. Ashley replies: "I'm showing everything's OK with your account." Maybe Aleecia fixed things after all? He puts me on hold to call AT&T Web Order Activation, which is the same number I called over an hour ago in the latest round of YAIIWing.
Update +39 hours @ Sunday 3:00 pm PT: Success! Email arrives from Apple: "Activation Complete." I walk over to the media center iMac and, yep, the little iPhone is blipping away, just wanting to be picked up and fondled. I called my wife from the iPhone and asked her what I should do with Ashley, who was still YAIIWing himself, kind of recursively, and had me on hold on the VoIP line. She said to hang up (she's a ruthless corporate lawyer, you should know). I did.
Another update: We've heard back from Synchronoss, the AT&T activation contractor. They're "extremely pleased" with the way iPhone activation went over the weekend.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
predecessors - the "old" AT&T, the old SBC, the old SWBT, or the
old Cingular?
The only reason they can even survive is because they have so
much money that they've bought every politician in sight, every
regulatory agency in sight, and bankrupted nearly any source of
meaningful competition.
AT&T is THE reason that I haven't gone out to buy an iPhone in
spite of the fact that I'm an Apple fan and have several varieties
of Mac computers and iPods. I MAY break down and get an
iPhone anyway, but I certainly won't expect the service from
AT&T to help make the experience pleasant.
is the carrier. Good luck to all you iPhone owners. You have a
what appears to be a kick-ass phone (for a 1st version), but your
carrier blows chunks and I blame them, not Apple, for many of the
phones limitations.
You can call garbage by any name you want, but it's still AT&T to me.
Reading the posts online seem to indicate the iPhone 'Experience' is that of waiting, waiting, and when you're done, waiting some more. No, you don't get to use your phone- that would be silly. Don't worry, you can still use it as a music/video player or surf the net- what? You can't? Oh. Um....
A big black eye for Apple on this launch and it's both the fault of AT&T for their failure to plan and Apple's for choosing the worst carrier in the industry. That promise a good future for iPhone users if this simple launch that was planned two years in advance failed.
weekends for backup and maintenance purposes they wont
answer requests if under high load thinking they are under a
network attack . When are those procedures planned mostly ?
Weekends and off hours. Iphone uses Social Security numbers
for verificaiton purposes ... by demand of AT&T . Apple has no
use of it at all. Not Apples fault but certainly AT&T's partly for
choosing a verification process they did not run a stress test
upon for YEARS . I wonder if every company runs these at all.
I live in Europe and belive me as a system administrator for Mac
os X platforms i perform stress tests on a regular basis for every
system installed i consider it a requirement for validation of an
installation . I can't say it is the same everywhere especially in
the Windows world.
The activation process and lock out is more an anti theft
measure than anything else ... Apple wants your phone activated
but if it is stolen how do you make sure the account/device does
not get abused ? Deactivation by default. This step makes sense
to me in a context where Apple laptops are one of the most
looked after stealables in Europe.
carrier long before AT&T loomed into the picture. You cannot
forsee everything, and Cingular was the only major
carrier that allowed Apple to do what Apple wanted to do.
I am very thankful they completed this deal before AT&T
came into the picture because AT&T would never have allowed
the deal in the first place. In a sense, it's a blessing, and a
curse. Fortunately, this curse runs out in two years for
Apple.
No one can deny this truly is a breakthrough device.
The rest of the industry can be thankful that the other carriers
were so short-sighted. It allows all the other manufacturers to
take a cue from Apple (once again), and start producing similar
devices (I am still a mac loyalist, but let's be real about
it).
Bottom-line ... the consumer, and enterprise
market place will benefit greatly from this.
Reports are only on the houses that are up in flames.
Sure there will hiccups and AT&T should compensate accordingly.
Hold them to their promises.
were activated first, and there was only a small delay.
I bet, as
we rolled across the country, the activations increased
exponentially. I bet someone pulled the plug on something in the
old AT&T (not former Cingular) offices somewhere.
is now processing your activation."
I am/was a current AT&T customer for the past 15 years or so.
tntpayne
iphone is in coma stage. Apparently, my plan is from three
years ago and is not compatible with the iphone. After getting
the notice from AT&T thru e-mail, I spent all night long and the
early morning talking to Customer Service from both sides.
After getting the correct plan at 2AM, I am still wating for
activation. This morning I was told by the Apple customer
service just to leave the iphone connected till the activation
happens. I hope to be able to use my phone soon.
So for older AT&T subscribers, make sure your plan is updated
before you start the activation proccess thru itunes.
unprepared for this launch and for many customers it is frustrating
for this delay in service. They have every right to be upset! and any
real consumer that educates themselves on the ranks of other
providers knows AT&T is the worst in the industry. JUst read any
article on the subject of Cell providers. www.JDpowers.com, or
newsweek, or comsumer reports etc. yes with new service there is a
wait and the network is overloaded and whos fault is that?
AT&T!!!!!.
objective reporting. His issue is real, as it is for many others. I
was able to activate my phone, but I did not the wait from
AT&T.
The author is on the west coast, I am on the east.
There were bound to be very few glitches for those who had the
chance to activate their phones first. But as the process rolled
across the country, and increased, the odds of a simple act (of
like a backup), increased.
Declan is completely correct, as
well as a few other posters. AT&T dropped the ball, because
they weren't full prepared. Remember, this merger between
Cingular, and AT&T is new. With the old attitude of AT&T part
of the equation, it was bound to happen. It is sad.
Anyone
notice that most people chose to visit an Apple store (if they had
the opportunity) versus an AT&T store. People wanted phone,
and were willing to deal with AT&T, but only at a
distance.
Maybe this will be a firm wakeup call to AT&T
about how they go about servicing their consumers. One
shining light, is that AT&T just picked up a hell of a lot of vocal
consumers.
The most recent estimate I have heard for activations starting now is 24-48 hours. This is from an AT&T rep.
An AT&T business DSL customer of mine wanted to increase his bandwidth to 1.5/1.5 symmetric. He was told by AT&T that he would have to cancel his existing account and then open a new account. What kind of ******** is that?
If AT&T spent half as much on technology improvments as they do on marketing they would have a useable infrastructure.
phone 2 was added to the account and activated 28 minutes later 8:36pm and 9:02pm eastern time respectively. this included my time to enter the info and receive the email.
sorry about the problems others are having.
This device is unbelievably good. And, given the volume, I can't complain at all about the combined Apple and AT&T service experience thus far.
unlocked and moved their Tmobile SIM card into the iPhone and
it works like a charm. AT&T is a joke!. I am a huge Apple fan and
am so dissapointed that a great company like Apple went with
the worst Cell Phone company on the planet.
Like most consumers I really want the iPhone but would rather
stay with my mobile provider then go to the darkside for a
iPhone. My BlackBerry does all the iPhone can to a point, but my
service is the best and the Customer Service from my provider
can't be beat!. Sorry Apple but no iPhone for me until you all go
to a real mobile provider.
Probably the best first day sales of any mobile phone ever...
People wait for days in line...
...kind of makes waiting 24 hours seem petty.
for AT&T to get its corporate head out of its equally corporate
arse. I agree with the others who have stated that Apple made a
HORRIBLE choice in going with AT&T. The company sucks! The
phones could have and should have been up and running
immediately.
Why oh, why didn't Apple build a standalone model? I'd love to
have an iPhone that worked with WiFi only. As it is, I refuse to
buy an Apple/AT&T product. I already have a Verizon phone and
can't afford a second phone through AT&T.
a customer have spent $700 (iPhone +accessories+ tax), waited in
line and have anxiously awaited the iPhone expierence? I DONT
THINK SO!!!!!
Mobile cell number in less than 5 minutes.
I keyed my AT&T user info in and then 30 seconds later I was good to go, and that was around... 8p.m. EST.
Activated without any problem at all.
iPhone intro. Even Apple had troubles the first week of the iPod.
My real complaint with Apple is why sleep with one carrier?
This limits your marketing so much! So far in the price plan I
have not seen anything really that great offered by AT&T.
Why not allow all carriers to offer a version with some special
software? This would make everyone happier with all parties.
I think for now my thought is no iPhone for me. I like my free
phone every two and have just upgraded my Nano to a iPod.
I really see the iPhone as a great product with a limited appeal.
At the very least Apple should offer a fully functional version
without the cell phone.
This would only apply to anyone that started as an Old AT&T Wireless customer before they got acquired by Cingular, and has kept their plan since being acquired by Cingular and now rebranded as the New AT&T.
I actually have an old Family Plan (3 lines) and wonder if the iPhone will accept my phone number and plan during activation.
When Apple introduced the 22" Studio display in 2002, I HAD to have one. So I scraped together $2500 hard-earned dollars and went down to the local store and got one. Cool, I thought to myself I've got the best display
from the best company and it's state of the art. It was... for about 4 months until Apple introduced
the 23" HD studio display, lowered the price on the unit I bought to $999, and then discontinued the unit a few months later, leaving me with an obsolete display and $1300 in debt.
The 22" display is still on my desk and working great, but it is a constant reminder of how dumb we can be with our money when we've just GOT to have the coolest and the best stuff on the block.
In less than six moths I'd be willing to bet we see improved versions of both the iPhone and IPod just in time for Xmas giving. You're also going to see a lot of folks seriously pissed when they can't upgrade their current iPhones without a major financial hit from Apple or AT&T.
I'll stay on the sidelines for now and avoid the Playstation 3 rush to ruin.
we'll enjoy six months of cell phone bliss while you waste away
using your obsolete technology. Maybe in six months you can buy
my used iPhone on ebay when I get version 2.0. Relax.
- Trust me, it's in the bag!
- by gwats1957 June 30, 2007 1:04 PM PDT
- I was looking @ the first deconstruction of the iPhone listed on the web and I was struck by the fact that there is lot of unused space inside....space that could be used to house a 100 gig mini HD, a bluetooth transmitter, perhaps a higher resoluton camera?
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 4 pages (135 Comments)This phone is not the ending, but the beginning of a whole new generation of handheld products from the coolest company on earth.
God bless you early adopters, but the night is still young!
I hope you haven't spent ALL your $$$$ in one place!
I weep for you, but tears are from Laughter!