It’s officially been 24 hours…
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen those words in the past 24 hours, but it’s far more than I would like to admit. If you’ve followed my Jaiku or Twitters over the past day+, you know I still do not have an activated iPhone. This has been bothering me to such an extent that it actually disrupted sleep last night and gave mea headache for most of the day. To say I’ve been in a bad mood would be an understatement.
In case you’d like the short version… went through initial setup within minutes. (Actually was filming that for an unboxing video that will be far from relevant by the time I’m live with this thing.) Got to the more time needed BS message and sat looking dumfounded for a moment. About a minute or two later I got an email from the iTunes store stating the same thing and that I’d be notified by ATT when it was ready. About 15 hours later I got an email from ATT inviting me to the website to manage my account and all that usual getting started BS – which is extra BS for me as I am already a customer and have an account! Just shy of 18 hours later I got an email from ATT with a confirmation number confirming my processing – not activation of course, but that it was in progress. Nothing since …
My old phone SIM was killed by the activation process so there’s no going back to my prior devices. The iPhone SIM while reported to not work in anything else does in fact work in my Nokia phones (just tested this) and just confirms how messed up ATT is. If I can use the SIM, that means it’s been activated in the system and they have some very special extra lame system handling JUST iPhones which is the problem. It is “just” a phone anyway… regardless of how cool it might be.
I was told by Apple today that I could try a few things. First press the home and power buttons for a few seconds at startup until the logo screen appears… try it outside. Nothing. Apple also suggested I go to AT&T and get a new SIM which I did and was told a)they were not allowed to do that for iPhones and b) that would disrupt the process of activation since the SIM and IMEI are linked. This led me to try taking the SIM out and re-seating it. Nothing. BTW – the SIM is a 3G SIM and says so on both sides…. interesting.
I’m left with a few choices. 1 – Continue to suck it up and hope I magically activate soon. 2 – Kill this process with AT&T over the phone, go back to my other SIM once it activates (assuming it does) and then try again later with the iPhone. For now I’m sticking it out. Like some sick personal challenge, I can’t get beaten here.
I freaked on the ATT staff who shook their heads and hands and called (the same number!) customer support I’ve been dealing with but I somehow got to someone who seemed at least remotely in the loop – perhaps enough time had passed for training to occur. Anyway I pushed quite hard and was able to get a free month of voice service from the call – even though I am still without any service. I guess that and my hat will get me a free bowl of soup!
I’m out of thoughts here other than to try and chill. This is way beyond my control clearly and well beyond the control of anyone I’ve spoken to. It’s broken and will be until it’s fixed. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
PS – Apple’s phone system said (and I heard this countless times in the hour I waited) hold time is estimated at 5 minutes or longer. My wait was 1 hour and 15 minutes and I suggested they update the time expectation.
What a painful and frustrating experience so far. Hopefully soon you’ll be enjoying your iPhone and putting this nightmare behind you.