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Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise
Thomas Hawk writes "Unfortunately it appears that some activations of Apple's new iPhone have gone badly. After waiting in line 36 hours I'm still unable to activate my phone. I'm documenting the AT&T circus call by call on my blog. I've had my hold calls dropped, been patched into other users unable to activate their phone instead of AT&T customer service reps, been told that my wife must get a new phone and that the family plan can't work for me. I've been told that the problem is that I'm not putting a new chip into my iPhone in the slot on the left side of my phone when no slot there exists. PR Blogger Steve Rubel has also been documenting his problems on his Twitterstream. According to an unscientific poll being conducted by Engadget about half of the people who bought iPhones have had activation trouble with about 38% of problems still unresolved." Even the folks at MacWorld weren't immune to these issues.
Activation problems? With the iPhone being hyped for a year?
Never saw it coming.
Especially since AT&T, a company known for shitty service, was given launch rights.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
(Eventually)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Keep in mind that AT&T is turning on more cell phone accounts at once than anyone has ever done in the history of the cell phone industry. iPhone sales have either hit a million units already, or they will by the end of the coming week. If they perform at 99.9%, that's still going to be a thousand people running into problems.
Everyone I know who's gotten one so far had it activated in a couple of minutes. The real story here is how smoothly it's going overall.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I am aware of the activation problems, especially after seeing this looooong thread on Apple's own forums. However, with regard to the engadget poll, I would be wary of its results-- there are many people who are "haters" of the Apple products, of the iPhone, etc, and I suspect many people who don't own iPhones are responding anyway saying they have activation problems, to skew the poll. My experience has been generally good.. bought 4 phones (I discussed yesterday), and three of them activated almost immediately. My primary phone, our biz dev guy's phone, our operations director.. no problem. The fourth, got the notorious "we need more time to complete this activation" (I was porting a second line, after porting my primary line from t-mobile). After about 12 hours, it started receiving texts, and within 24hrs it was ringing at the correct number. I called t-mobile tonight to cancel my service (40hr mark, or so) and they told me the second number has yet to fully release and to call back tomorrow to confirm it released and my service was fully cancelled.
I admit not to have much technical knowhow with respec to the inner workings of this process, but I don't imagine it's entirely any one aspect.. AT&T, Apple, etc. It's probably due to the slowness of every vendor involved (those releasing numbers, etc) and the sheer volume of registrations over the last 72hrs.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Not because I hate Apple or AT&T ... but because I just went through the process of upgrading a seven-year-old phone (Sprint). And it was a pain in the ass. I went through customer support hell, inconsistent stories, runarounds, transfers ... I was thinking the whole time, "holy shit, people upgrade phones all the time, why the hell does this have to happen to me?"
... and I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who has to go through a stressful activation process :-)
Well, as of this weekend, I completed the month-long process of upgrading
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The Poll that Engadget had about the service problems was fairly badly put together. The only way to be able to see results is to vote first. For for all the people that don't even have iPhones, they had to choose 1 of the 3 options before they could see the results. Since there was no "I Don't have an iPhone" options, it severally screwed with the results.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Lesson: do not launch product that requires extensive customer service at the beginning of a weekend.
The general observation seems to be that activation from a cold start works OK, but anything that requires "number portability" from a previous account may be troublesome. That's no surprise; number portability is usually a mess, because the carriers don't want you to use that Government-mandated feature.
It's still not clear why activation should require a separate computer. Activation via iTunes might be a nice option if you already use iTunes, but it shouldn't be the main route. After all, the iPhone has its very own Internet connection.
The iPhone looks like a great piece of tech, and I might get one someday. But...
It seems like Slashdot has a greater and greater proportion of articles that relate to gadgets (stuff to buy), and fewer and fewer that are about tech developments, science, etc. I'm not bitching about Slashdot, but is it really the case that nerds have become merely watered-down gear-freaks, and no longer employ their mind in the pursuit of knowledge?
Please, oh true nerds, answer my rallying cry!
I'm not trying to shift blame at all. I said myself that 25% of the phones I purchased had activation problems. But I don't posit that as evidence that 25% of *ALL* iphones have had activation problems. Look at the replied to my last three comments (which all got modded +5, btw), and you'll find the exact people i'm talking about who may have clicked "my phone is still unactivated!" when they don't even own one. (for the lazy, comments: here | here | here)
Replied to those comments, you'll see people who said they would laugh at me/whomever they saw on the street using an iPhone, people calling me stupid/dumb, calling those in lines "emo retards," calling those in line "suckers," etc. Now, most people who choose not to buy an iPhone just do so out of logical choice, and that's the extent of their involvement.. but there most definitely is a vocal minority that feels slighted by Apple.. I really don't know exactly why, but I can say for sure that when I spent $600 a piece on my unlocked Treos (as did many others a few years ago), I don't recall a sizable portion of people calling me retarded/dumb/etc. The fact is a lot of people online have some sort of irrational distaste for the iPhone, and for those that buy it. And I don't believe that 40% of the people who bought the phone so far are still without service (as noted in the poll). I suspect it's in the single digit percentile, which still sucks if you're in that group, but 40% it isn't. I even posted a link to the Apple discussion page that has hundreds if not thousands of relies from people with activation problems.. but Apple is quickly approaching the "million iPhones sold" mark, and I don't imagine that of those million there will be several hundred thousand that take 48+hrs to navigate an activation quagmire. But hey, maybe I'm just lucky in my experiences. Engadget even noted themselves that they've activated 6 iphones without any problems.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
We're the phone company, we don't have to.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
no it's not, for $499 it'd want to suck my fat cock 3 times a day
http://thomashawk.com/2007/07/hot-donkey-after-36
Ramen
Posting fromm iPhone. :)
how's that lack of tactile feedback workin' out for ya?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Posting this from my iPhone. I had trouble activating at first too. After waiting 10 hours I figured out that the problem was with transfering my old verizon phone number. I asked them to cancel the activation and started again with a new number -- went through immediately.
You cant do anything with the phone until its activated, no ipod, photos, nothing except calling 911. So the wait can be frustrating, and its very hard to get info out of ATT.
It's ffffffuckin' aaawesommmmme!1!
I'm ptsonig tihs form my iPnhoe, and I'm gald to say taht I've had no porblmes wsoeavrthr!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
both mine activated fine at about 7pm pacific.
As far as the keyboard, it's one of my favorite parts. Not having used any type of small-form-factor keyboard extensively, after 5 minutes, I was typing far faster than I ever had on a blackberry-style device (which I've played with for similar short periods of time).
That's why I came to this thread to post about it!
Perhaps this has been explained elsewhere, but here seems as good a place as any for me to ask the question: How is Cingular/AT&T not being to be a disaster for Apple.
Because we hate all cell carriers. We expect to hate the cell carrier.
After activation is complete though, we don't really have to talk to the cell-phone carrier. Then we just have the phone experience, which is great. That's when cell service may start to arise as an issue, but we've also been trained to accept that as a fact of life.
One thing Apple did well right off the bat is to not have to have us activate at the store, already a better expereince for most people despite the problems some are having. I myself am porting a T-Mobile number - while the number itself is not yet ported (and may take days more as T-Mobile apparently ports pay-as-you-go numbers by hand) the actual activation of my phone worked just fine, and I was abe to make calls and otherwise use the device almost instantly - it's only incoming calls and SMS I can't get just yet.
Frankly I expect a lot of issues to vanish Monday, when the regular people get to work instead of the poor weekend shift.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's like jewelry - a status symbol. People buy jewelry not because they are doing optics experiments or need a portable glass-cutting tool. iPhone has a potential to be eventually usable for making calls, but given that the battery in it is not replaceable (now we know for sure!) it is clear that iPhone is designed as a toy, to be a toy, and it is sold at a price of an intricate toy as well. In other words, it is not a businessman's strong and solid weapon of communication - it's a gentle, flimsy and feminine fashion apparel.
TFA says it took 36 hours, but he's all sorted out.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Brand new product fails to have flawless launch. Film at eleven on The No Fucking Kidding News Network.
If you think full internet browsing on mobile devices is a brand new thing, you need to need your head out of your ass and take a better look around.
You know, I really hate reading about the PS3. So you know what I do (this is a secret, so don't let anyone else hear about it), I stop reading after I come across the word PS3. Most articles about the PS3 include it in the heading. I have installed this special widget in firefox called a scroll bar (you can probably download it from somewhere), and I scroll past the story.
I used to click on every PS3 story and complain about it, but then I realised that I was just being a complete wanker, and stopped.
So, how the fuck do you get moderated up, how many stupid people really hate iphone stories, but still feel the need to click on the link, and read all the comments to the end. What a bunch of retards.
I don't know about shitty but it is kind of expected that all the wireless providers will have the same level of service as 95% of US providers (by customer base) use the same software to run their systems - Amdocs Ensemble. So it all works the same way. The only difference is in marketing and how big a smile you get at their stores. Even the CRM runs on AMDOCS Clarify so all the call center reps are working from the same script.
**Life is too short to be serious**
From this article..
"I can't think of another product launch that has been like this. When we went into the store I was almost moved to tears, it just made you feel really special."
"Nothing matches this - it's like going to a rock concert. As I went down the stairs in the store I was thinking 'this is what Sting feels'."
"It feels great, oh my God, overwhelming. I never thought this day would come - and now it finally has, it's mind-blowing,"
"I'm going to run home and ring people just to say 'Guess what, I've got an iPhone, bye!"
You SAD, SAD, HORRIBLE, PATHETIC people..
It's just a phone!!
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Switching can be difficult, but not nearly as bad as getting out of a cell phone contract!
I am not a crackpot.
That's not true for this GSM phone, or any other GSM phone sold in the US. Unlike in Europe, where such practice is illegal, the US cell phone carrier lock their phones to their SIMS. You can't used a AT&T GSM phone on the T-Mobile network, or vice versa UNLESS you manage to convince the provider to unlock your phone (or in the alternative, find a way to unlock it, usually for a fee, from the internet). The justification for this practice is that phones are heavily subsidized by the carrier in the US (you pay a small fraction of the actual cost of the phone). The justification for the iPhone (for which you pay FULL price) is that Apple is too greedy?
The other thing the SIM thing is good for in the US is to switch phone within the same company. i.e. my wife and I are both with T-Mobile, and we decide to switch phone (and keep our respective numbers).
Steve needs faithful followers, truly dedicated to Apple's world-changing mission. He doesn't need fair-weathered followers, who criticize him or his wonderful products.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
GSM coverage is definitely not excellent in the central U.S. plains or the Rocky Mountains. There is coverage now on interstate highways and in cities and larger towns, but smaller towns and highway routes have spotty coverage or none at all. There were a handful of small telephone companies that sprung up to fill the void in the past few years. Two of the largest such have been recently acquired.
Western Wireless was acquired by Alltel.
AT&T recently acquired Dobson Communications (which was the largest vendor licensing the Cellular One brand). I think that the "new AT&T" realizes that Verizon will kick their ass if they don't start competing on the coverage front. Nobody can touch Verizon in the U.S. for actually getting a wireless signal in more places.
The AT&T coverage map is, ahem, optimistic, regarding its coverage in the plains states. The Dobson/Cellular One acquisition helps with this, but not with the rocky mountain states.
Here is a relatively honest assessment of GSM coverage in the western US: Cellular One coverage map (includes the Dobson network and all the other mom-and-pop licensees of the Cellular One brand).
The Alltel coverage map is also a little deceptive, because it mixes their GSM network in with their other network, but they provide much better GSM coverage in the west than anybody else, thanks to their acquisition of Western Wireless. Both T-Mobile and AT&T were asleep at the wheel and either should have acquired Western Wireless. It will be more difficult for AT&T to assemble a network which can rival Alltel or Verizon in the west. Fortunately, they are able to lease time on the Alltel network for their customers, as does T-Mobil. Oddly enough, Alltel does not provide GSM service to its own customers.
It's not clear that AT&T can fix this problem via acquisitions. Alltel already bought the company that AT&T should have acquired. What's left now is a whole bunch of relatively small players. AT&T will need to go on a major buying and building spree if they are really serious about providing nationwide cellular GSM coverage. They have been cherry picking the best (highest population density) markets for years, but they'll need to get serious about providing coverage to the rest of the country if they don't want the "I can't get an iPhone because AT&T doesn't offer service in my area" blogger chorus to drown out their efforts to promote the iPhone beyond the initial product launch. The stock valuations of AT&T and Alltel are interesting, too. AT&T has brand recognition, but they are themselves possibly an acquisition candidate.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.