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AT&T Vs. Apple Store At the iPhone Launch
MBCook tips an article at Gizmodo that begins with a reader's experiences trying to buy an iPhone yesterday at an AT&T store and an Apple store. Many, but not all, of the comments on the post echo this reader's experience: Apple good, AT&T bad. "Day one revealed what all Apple aficionados fear. That AT&T, through the depths of its incompetence, could derail the iPhone."
Honestly, I don't know WHAT THE F happened. Jobs himself said when announcing the iphone release date that those wishing to buy it should "go to an AT&T store.." there were questions about whether Apple would sell it at all on launch date. Then in the days before the release, I saw a lot of talk on the 'net about people lining up at Apple stores, and ZERO people lining up at AT&T.
As some who saw my posts 3 days ago may have noted, i was very excited for the release of the iphone, and i bought four of them. However, this was GROSSLY mishandled by Apple not making it patently clear that Jobs had misspoke (or whatever) earlier. My plan to go to the AT&T owned local store was thwarted when one of our guys went down there (I was in meetings all day) check the line, then reported to me that he was told the store didn't have ANY iPhones at all, but was giving out "vouchers."
By this time the local Apple store was a madhouse. I'd dropped in around noon on my way to a meeting, and it had around 150 people in line (this is a not-so-very-well-known one, inside a crappy mall). By the time I got out of meetings and adjusted the buying plan, it was almost 8. The store ran out with around 200 people still ahead of me in line.
I got up this morning at 8am, and went to the store when it opened. I was the 42nd through the door, and bought 4 of the remaining 18 4GB phones (the 8GBs were all gone). Everyone behind me in line was told a shipment would arrive "later today sometime" and they could wait. No one got out of line and left.
Now that I have the iPhone, i'm as impressed as I hoped i'd be (and glad I bought three more for my colleagues), although it certainly could use some minor software updates (minor tweaks to the UI.. adding of buttons, landscape mode for the keyboard in other than Safari, etc).. but the pinch/stretch zoom, animations, etc are all phenomenal. The phone is very impressive, but does give a few feels of "beta," and the fact that some of the software even between our 4 phones is different suggests to the phones are still "development build" and several major revisions will be pushed through itunes software updates.
Overall, I am very pleased with the phone.. and less than pleased with Apple's management of the whole thing (I mean, it's their reputation here.. not AT&T's.. if anything I feel bad for AT&T, as it seems they may have been screwed out of phones originally due them so that the Apple stores could garner some publicity)
I will also say that the Apple store employees were applauding for us as we entered the store this morning. Really people.. APPLAUSE? WTF. It's a fricking phone, I'm not shaving my head for charity or doing something noble... I'm an American jackass spending $2k on phones because they can play H.264, have a nice UI, and won't crash, LOL. Also, for what it's worth, T-mobile has had my monthly payments for 3yrs now, and I *NEVER* have service (and I live in a major, populated, affluent part of Los Angeles). My treo/blackberry constantly say "no service" in my house. Today I have 5bars on my iPhone. Now, maybe this is just luck of the draw, and i'll have crappy reception in place that t-mobile rocked, but so far, I have zero regrets.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
MY IPHONE DOESNT WORK.
I activated two yesterday, they both worked for 12 hours. This morning neither phone will make or receive calls; or browse on EDGE.
The GSM/EDGE modem is BRICKED -- STAY FAR AWAY. Apple blames ATT, and ATT blames Apple.
These guys are in way over their heads. Meanwhile, 15 hours of tech support hold time later -- still can't make a call.
I need a new phone, I thought about the iPhone, but decided to wait for the OpenMoko if it emerges, if not then I go for a Nokia smartphone.
Firstly, being stuck to the set provider is not very cool, secondly the other two phones are far more hackable for us open-source geeks.
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I'm glad there's people who will put up with all the hiccups, problems, and long waits. Suffering through the frustrations for me. There's no way I'd wait in line for hours to get one of these things. Y'know it's a mass produced item. If you can wait a few days/weeks. Then you can go in at your convenience, no wait, get the phone you want, and hopefully all the activation issues/major bugs will be ironed out by then (if there are any). And v1.0 usually has some bugs/issues.
:).
I for one am sick of bleeding on the bleeding edge. "Oh new and shiny today!". Tomorrow it's just old news "Yeah so what..." Good luck to all of you suckers. I'm on AT&T right now and looking to drop them after my contract is up. I'm hoping Apple gets a version out that will work with another provider... but I'm gonna wait and see. It's definitely not automatic but that interface sure is slick
For anyone who doesn't get this, it's a reference to AT&T's monopoly days when Saturday Night Live had a sketch starting Lilly Tomlin in '76 called simply enough... "The Phone Company." Surprisingly, I can't find a YouTube video.
I don't think it's much of a surprise to anyone that AT&T might end up the weak link in this partnership. But I submitted this story because I think it shows just how different some companies (like Apple) view the consumers compared to others (like AT&T). This just happened to be a fantastic example of just how different the two ends of the spectrum are.
Of course, if you were to look through enough of my posts, you'd see I don't have much regard for cell phone companies (or cable companies, or...). But then again that's quite common on Slashdot.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
No it's incompetence.
I recently bought a new smartphone. I refuse to buy any locked phone so I got a unbranded unlocked Samsung SGH-i607. Dropped in my sim and all was happy.
I called up AT&T to add unlimited smartphone data service to my phone. They said I cant. I asked why and they said that the Samsung is not a smartphone.
I then had to explain for 25 minutes how they sell the damned thing as a smartphone on their own website and that it is in fact a smartphone, please charge me $19.99 more a month and turn on the service.
I had to go through 4, FOUR transfers and 2 managers all of them not believing that a product they sell as a smartphone is really a smartphone. Finally I gave up and told the next guy I had bough a new TREO 700w and need the smartphone unlimited plan.
They said OH! and activated the changes.
AT&T is rampant with incompetence. This happens every time I have to call them, people dont know what they sell or even offer let alone what to do.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As New England Telephone became NYNEX and NYNEX became Verizon, I continued to keep my long distance service with AT&T for no reason other than that I always had. At the time of the incident I'm about to describe, I had been an AT&T customer for approximately twenty-five years at the same address and the same telephone number. And I doubt that I had ever paid late even once.
About the only thing that changed was that, as an experiment, instead of mailing them a check, I used my bank's online bill-paying service. Things went OK for several months. The month of the incident I am about to relate, I authorized online payment of AT&T's bill about eight business days before the due date. The bank's online site said that payment would take five days, because apparently AT&T didn't accept electronic payments from them.
Then, one night, at dinnertime, I got a telephone call from a collection agency saying my account was overdue.
Briefly, the facts as they ultimately emerged were: a) the bank statement showed the bill as having been "paid" about five days before the due date; b) the image of the back of the cancelled check from the bank showed AT&T's bank as having received it several days before the due date; c) AT&T's own records showed the bill as having been paid one or two days late.
AT&T's billing office was perfectly nice and acknowledged having received payment. In a few days they sent me a written acknowledgement.
But the collection agency wouldn't stop calling.
AT&T kept saying they had told the collection agency they had received payment. The collection agency kept saying "This office has not received that information."
The collection agency refused to provide me with any contact information other than a post office box number.
I mailed them photocopies of the back of the cancelled check and AT&T's statement showing payment. The people on the phone said they had not received them. (Since they would not provide anything but a PO box I couldn't send the material by certified mail).
They continued to phone me every night at dinner time for several weeks.
Eventually the calls stopped, but I was extremely ticked off. I sent a polite, well-worded letter to the CEO of AT&T--who was it? Ivan something-or-other? Seigelman? Seidenberg, saying I thought I'd been treated pretty badly and I wanted them to at least refund that month's bill, about $65. Someone from Seidenberg's office called me, talked to me, listened carefully, apologized nicely, and said they would indeed send the $65.
A week passed. No $65. Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. No check in the mail.
I switched my long-distance service to another carrier. I left a message with whomever it was at Seidenberg's office, explaining why. I got a returned message from the same person, who sounded genuinely upset, saying that she had instructed some office or other to send me the check but that apparently it hadn't happened. A week later I did, in fact, get a check for $65.
But I had already switched, and needless to say I didn't switch back.
For the next year, I got periodic mailing and occasional phone calls from AT&T saying they missed me, and wouldn't I switch back.
Unbelievable. I'm very lazy. Absolutely all AT&T ever had to do to keep me as a customer was to exploit my inertia and not do anything to actively drive me away. They lost a 25-year customer by a) siccing a collection agency on me for one bill that was two days late according to AT&T... and on time according to the back of the check, and b) utterly screwing up the follow-up.
The original comment was Jobs saying in passing to someone, that they woudl have "a better chance" at an AT&T store. That turned out to be wrong, but to my recollection there was never an official annoncement saying AT&T stores were the place to go.
You already knew everything you needed to know about which store being faster, based on how they operate day to day. I know; I went into an AT&T store a day or two before. Just a few cash registers? Simple math says throughput will be low, compared to how Apple handles transactions every day with emplyess that roam with checkout machines - whcih can be added along with more employees. AT&T simply cannot add more registers as easily.
Now, I do think AT&T employees should have been better about informaing the line as to what was going on - Apple store employees are great that way, and were really working the line I was in. But there again, you can go into stores ahead of time and judge the quality of line servicing you will get just by daily interaction with regular visitors.
I odn't think AT&T should get jabbed too hard for basically being like any other retail outlet, caught in a tidal wave they could ill comprehend. Instead this is an opportunity to realize just how good Apple store eomployees are, that they seem happy with the job and are also well prepared for epic sales events such as this one.
I filled out the feedback on my Apple store receipt commending the people that work there - I think if other people had a good experience, they should do the same and let Apple know just how special the front line employee base they've managed to grow really is!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is not normal. But it what society has become. Products, products, products! Buy more, buy faster! Buying makes you happy. etc. Nerds are no different from anyone else. Teenage girls buy makeup and clothes to make them happy. Nerds buy shiny new iPhones. People aren't rational, smart companies acknowledge that.
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"Coverage" isn't the only metric people should judge carriers by. In years of use, I have rarely encountered lack of coverage with AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T. But a poor experience with Verizon (and a Treo 700p, if it matters) led me to cancel service before the end of the evaluation period. I was tempted by the EVDO, but the sound quality was not up to snuff. Verizon coverage in a highly populated resort destination was also poor, while AT&T Wireless (the original) had excellent signal strength and coverage. As for the sound quality, high frequencies were clipped by Verizon, such that S and F were often indistinguishable, leading to misunderstandings, even when the speaker was asked repeatedly to repeat (to the point of annoyance!) Furthermore, Verizon/700p seemed to go silent during gaps in conversation, and these silent gaps could not be distinguished from a transient loss of signal. In contrast, GSM AT&T generally has a soft white noise going on in the background when the connection is good, so it's usually possible to distinguish a gap in the conversation from a gap in service. During an important conversation, a gap in service demands that the other party be asked if they might have said something that was lost in the ether. With Verizon, you'll be tempted to do this often.
At 9:30 pm, I started the activation process using iTunes. An existing AT & T customer, I figured this would be no issue. I was wrong.
I saw the dreaded, "Your activation requires additional time to complete." and waited. and waited and waited.
I was told the following fun things from AT & T customer service:
I was sent an e-mail from AT & T giving me an order number. When I mentioned to customer service that number, I was told, "That number doesn't really mean anything to us."
It's 10:34 pm on Saturday night, and my iPhone is still an iBrick.
http://www.htcherocentral.com
No, it's not crazy. Why did I (and thousands of others) stand line up for hours? If you would like a hint, pick up an iPhone and try to exploit its advertised features. Now pick up an unfamiliar cellphone and try to exploit its features. The amount of time I spent in line is dwarfed by the amount of time I spend trying to learn how to use a fraction of the advertised features of whatever cellphone a plan offers me. That's assuming, of course, that the usefulness of the cellphone hasn't been hampered by the provider itself.
So, unless you prefer dumping hours of your precious life down the tubes reading a poorly-written manual to learn (or, morel likely, not learn) a crappily-designed UI, it should seem quite normal. Life is too short to memorize arbitrary menu navigation.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I had a similar bad experience with AT&T and good experience with Apple:
Executive summary
- AT&T Mgr. refused to give basic information (do you have enough iPhones for all 20 people in line?)
- AT&T Mgr. lied about availability (iPhones are sold out all through the city)
- AT&T Mgr. intentionally tries to hide Apple Store availability to get more sales for his store.
- AT&T screwed up the order for the first guy in line, who had been waiting for hours. By the time he realized they gave him a 4GB phone, there were no 8GB units left.
- Apple store had many iPhones. Completed quick, easy, efficient transaction.
The long version:
I wasn't about to wait in lines for more than 15-30 minutes, but I headed up to the closest AT&T/Cingular store which was in an area I thought might not get a lot of traffic (Kalamazoo Rd & Hwy 6, Grand Rapids, MI). There were about 20 people waiting in line at 5:55PM, so I joined in.
The AT&T rep came out and asked for a show of hands on how many people wanted 4GB vs 8GB. Almost everyone wanted 8GB, and by his grimace I saw that was going to be a problem. I asked him how many phones they had, and he said "I can't tell you that". I persisted, asking if it was worth while for those of us near the end to wait. He said "if we run out, we can process the order and direct ship to your home". So, now his intention was obvious.. keep as many people there as possible, and try to get more sales even after running out of phones. There were 4 or 5 employees, but for some reason they only allowed two people to enter the store at a time, and the transactions seemed to take forever.
Against my better judgment, I stayed in line. About 45 minutes later, they had slowly processed 10-15 people ahead of me. One of the earlier people came out and said they had run out. Shortly after that, the first guy in line returned. He had bought an 8GB iPhone and later found that they had given him a 4GB unit. Now all the 8GB units were gone.. The manager came out and asked if anyone in the line was paying cash and wanted a 4GB unit. One guy jumped at this, and they took his money, gave it to the first guy, and gave the cash guy the iPhone. Kinda shady to avoid a return..
The AT&T people said that no other stores in the city had iPhones left. (I had already tried to call the Apple store to see their status, but couldn't get through.) And they said they would do free next day shipping, and claimed that ordering in the store would be faster than online. I am in Eastern time zone, and I thought the online purchases might be closed until 6PM Pacific. So, I went ahead and ordered it there. The guy taking my order seemed like he had never used the sales system before, and it took 5+ minutes to complete my sale.
Shortly before I got in the AT&T store, some guy walked up and asked why we (the four remaining laggards) were waiting in line. He said "there's no lines at the Apple store at the mall, and they have plenty left". We had all seen coverage of the campers at the Apple store on last night's news, so we thought he was messing with us, or trying to get us to give up our spots in line.
On the off chance he was telling the truth, I drove over to the mall. There were a lot of people milling around the store, fondling the iPhones on display. I asked an employee if they had any left, and he pointed to the rows of iPhone bags behind the genius desk and registers.. there were over a hundred there on the floor. I picked up an 8GB iPhone, the Apple employees were plentiful, helpful, and efficient. The purchase took all of 40 seconds. Ithen zipped back over to the AT&T store to void my earlier transaction.
They voided my iPhone order without argument (I was a bit surprised at that). I explained to the manager that he was incorrect when he told me that there were no more iPhones in the city, and told him of the hundreds at the Apple store. He quickly called another AT&T store and began comparing notes with someone there.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
The AT&T store that I lined up at (local Apple Store was mobbed, I guess wrong about who would have enough, etc.) was performing the credit check on every single person who bought on. They let in 6 people at a time, and the line moved once every 15 minutes tops. They botched it. Then I went to a local Apple Store (one reported to have huge lines) and picked one up this morning. Took seconds. The Apple guy rang me up where I stood, gave me the box (in a pretty custom bag) and receipt, and sent me on my way. Total elapsed time, 5 minutes, including ooh-ing and aah-ing the demo model and being friendly with the sales guy. Apple: Win AT&T: Cruddy
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I went to the AT&T store in Santa Clara. I showed up at 4 and was about 40th or so in line. I estimate that by 6 there were probably only about 100-150 total in line. The line went very slowly once 6 o'clock came around. I attribute this to two things:
1. The staff was trying to upsell accessories and AT&T DSL service.
2. Their computers were bogged down due to the event.
I had (have) a Cingular RAZR already, and he identified me in the computer. I don't know for sure, but pre-opening announcements were made to the effect that they were going to set you up with an account in the store prior to your iTunes activation, probably as a means to prevent eBay arbitrage.
After I paid, he dropped the phone in a bag and actually sealed it. Not sure what the point of that is/was.
The last oddity was that a store employee was stationed by the door and was locking and unlocking the door as people would enter and exit. I pointed out to them (on the way out - I'm no fool) that the fire marshal would have a fit if he caught them doing that. Crowd control is understandable, but locking the only means of egress from a retail space when customers are present is a bit of a no-no.
When I got home, the iTunes activation procedure with the phone was everything they promised it would be. It was only a couple minutes before the iPhone was up and running.
A very old joke, that I heard years before I worked at Kaleida Labs, a joint venture of Apple and IBM. At Kaleida I experienced the full impact of being the butt of that joke. The funny thing about the joke is that it's actually true, and applies to AT&T now as much as it did to IBM in the past.
-Don
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You should've said YMMV.
I upgraded my phone to an HTC TyTN about 8 months ago. Now, for the record I owned an old iPaq 3855 which I'd put Linux on five years ago so I at least had some practice with WinMo... but I was at least 5 years "rusty" or more. I received the phone during a day when I was going out to dinner with my family that night. My wife bought the phone down to me as we met at the restaurant. No sooner had I got my paws on it than I had opened the box, flipped the SIM from my existing phone and played with it while we waited for a table.
By the time we sat down for dinner (about a 30 minute wait or thereabouts; it was a Friday at a seafood restaurant in a Catholic town... go figure) I had already become comfortable with the advertised features, sent at least two text messages, set up my IMAP account to receive my mail and made a phone call. 30 minutes... OK... I played with it for a further hour or so after I got out of the restaurant, but I already had the basic functions down. I just played with it because it was a new toy.
The key thing is that afterward, I installed applications to *augment the functionality*, something you really can't do with the iPhone. No, the web apps don't count; I can use web apps on my HTC TyTN and do so often (gmail, yahoo mail, google calendar etc.), and it's a much more pleasurable experience on 3G than it would be on EDGE. Plus, I use Opera... I have a choice in browsers.
I admit, I went by my local Apple store yesterday and played with the iPhone. While I admit that the interface is slick, it's just not that impressive. I like it, I really do... but in the 15 minutes I played with it before I had to get moving (I had a party to go to last night) I navigated around, surfed some web sites on WiFi, played some tunes... all OK... but this is all stuff I can do with my TyTN... even the WiFi thing. The interface is "shiny", but lacks flexibility. I can't change the interface to fit my work flow; something I can easily do with third party apps on my TyTN. The core functions of my TyTN remain the same, but the interface is more consistent with the iGTD type workflow model; something I use to be efficient with my tools. Maybe it's not for everyone, and yes my friends who've played with it often find themselves wondering how I have it set up... but it fits my workflow and does exactly what I need it to do. And the core functions despite iPhone fans screams are never more than a single button push away because I have real physical buttons on the device. There's an email button, an Internet button and a call/hang up button. These are the core functions and they are quicker for me with the TyTN because I don't have to power on, press the menu button then tap the mail icon on the screen. Doesn't matter where I am in the TyTN's interface, if I want mail I hit the mail button. OK... I have to hit the power button as well, but that's 2/3 of the steps the iPhone requires. How's that an improvement?
I've said for some time the iPhone's not targeted at me. After playing with one, I have to say it just reinforced that idea for me. My wife might like one (she has a Motorola SLVR that she likes, but it frustrates her sometimes)... but the iPhone costs 5 times what her SLVR cost me, and at least with her SLVR she can switch out cards for theoretically unlimited MP3 storage (though recently I gave her an iPod Nano for music... better interface)