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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.
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."
If you read the other person's problem thingy, it states quite clearly that this is not AT&T's problem, but it is a problem with iTunes and the iPhone.
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.
Well, they did choose the most predatory monopolist of the cell phone industry, but Verizon said no.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
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.
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 worked for Cingular for quite a while before they merged with AT&T - and for a while afterwards. My jobs ranged from fraud prevention to customer service. My position in fraud prevention was the most interesting, as a large part of the fraud we saw was from cell phone dealers themselves. They'd steal credit card information from one customer, tell the rest of their customers that they could come pay their bills at the store with cash (when they weren't authorized to do that), pocket the cash, and then use the stolen card to pay the bills. When you see 100+ accounts paid with the same credit card, you know something is up. That said, before AT&T moved in, my job was basically to help people. I was in a position where I called people who were using a lot more minutes than their plan offered, and instead of charging them the insane amount they would have paid for going over, I offered to switch them to a plan that would cover their usage. The most extreme example that comes to mind is someone who had used so many minutes over their plan that their next bill would have been well over $2,000 - they were flagged, I called them, and convinced them to switch from the lowest priced plan to the highest priced one, because that meant they would save about $1,800 a month. How's that for customer service? Sure, we could have just stuck that guy with a $2,000 bill, and put his nuts in a vice. But we did the right thing - we looked for customers who would be hurt and spent our time, money, and resources to help them out. Guess what one of the first programs that got cut was when AT&T took over?
Brand new product fails to have flawless launch. Film at eleven on The No Fucking Kidding News Network.
All Apple have done by their move is ensure that anyone buying their phone package is locked into a contract that with the phone costs anywhere upwards of $2000 for two years. That represents absolutely terrible value for money. You really would have to be blinded by the hype to buy an iPhone on those terms. It's an utter waste of money especially considering other technical deficiencies such as lack of 3G. Perhaps a firmware update will fix that issue because there's going to be some severe buyers remorse if an updated model appears with that feature.
How many GSM providers are nationwide in the USA? AT&T, T-Mobile, anyone else?
They couldnt' set up a service with Verizon Wireless (an example) because they just don't do GSM technology.
It's unfortunate that AT&T is so clueless on this coming out of the gate. I think the iPhone has mind numbing potential. GSM is the right choice if you consider a world wide market, but not for US market, because GSM is more widely used globally. Economy of scale in units manufactured dictate that they go with GSM for a global market.
If you look at the techcentric nations of the world, the United States is not the leading country. We don't have the digital high speed cellular networks or internet broad band speeds of other nations. I just don't think you can safely market a product of this type to only the USA when we have a global market to consider.
How many GSM providers are national in the USA? ZERO. Not one of them has a network with "home" service where I live or with ANY service in most of the places I spend time other than home and the office. You may find it surprising, but that vast middle part of the country is part of the nation, and it is by and large CDMA-only. It sucks, too. And here's AT&T, whose shitty service doesn't surprise me given that they lie about having the largest digital voice and data network in the country, given that only a CDMA provider with lots of good partnering agreements.
I have trouble understanding why you were moderated insightful, since publicly available information disproves the second part of your hypothesis.
Total revenue for AT&T first quarter of this year was $28 million compared to $22 million for Verizon and much smaller numbers for others... Leader in market share for wireless at 27.1%
I think the more likely explanation is AT&T is much, much larger than any other GSM provider in the U.S. (As in more than twice as large... subscriber-wise). By far has the most GSM network infrastructure and bandwidth. I think the desperate hurting for money thesis is totally ludicrous.
I'm really interested in more info on what the nature of the activation issue is, so I'm disappointed that all the articles I read on it seem to be Apple fanboys saying "it definitely can't be Apple's fault, must be AT&T." But they don't provide any details... Most GSM phones don't need to be "activated" at all... put a(n appropriate) SIM card in and it works. What happens during activation? And before launch I heard that you'd be able to activate via iTunes at home... What happened to that?