Hey, everybody,
I know that there are others on this forum (and elsewhere) who use StraightTalk service with their iPhone, and who, like me, have been impacted by the upgrade to iOS 6 (this is only one such example). iPhone users with StraightTalk service have never had it easy, but iOS 6 has made things even more difficult.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, iPhones see StraightTalk SIM cards as AT&T SIM cards, and so automatically configure themselves with the data settings for the postpaid AT&T network. This breaks both internet data and MMS messaging, and iOS blocks you from correcting its mistaken assumption about the SIM card even if you are using an unlocked iPhone (as I am). With iOS 5.x and earlier, there were software workarounds for this that didn't even involve jailbreaking, but Apple has patched those in iOS 6 without fixing the central reason why people needed to use those workarounds in the first place, which means that after upgrading to iOS 6, you will not be able to send or receive MMS messages if you are a StraightTalk customer.
My frustration is four-fold:
1) That Apple created a broken provisioning system that can, in certain situations, make faulty assumptions about the network the user is on.
2) That Apple actively prevents the user from correcting those faulty assumptions.
3) That Apple broke the ability for people affected by this bad design decision to work around the problem in iOS 6 without providing their users with an alternative fix.
4) That Apple prevents users who are affected by this and who want to have a working phone again from downgrading back to iOS 5.
Now, it would be one thing if Apple didn't sell unlocked phones, in which case the discussion would always come back around to which carriers are officially supported by Apple in the United States, and StraightTalk wouldn't be on that list. But Apple DOES sell unlocked iPhones directly to customers in the United States. And it isn't StraightTalk's fault that the iPhone is automatically configuring itself to use the AT&T network when you put a StraightTalk SIM card in the phone. So this is something that squarely falls on Apple's shoulders to fix.
So, yeah, if you search around the internet for "Straight Talk iOS 6 MMS", you'll find plenty of examples of people affected by this issue, and many of them are busily attempting tons of different things to see if there is a new way to work around the issue in iOS 6. But I had not read about anybody actually picking up the phone and calling Apple to see what they had to say about this. So I did. I picked up the phone, and opened a case with AppleCare on October 16.
Frustratingly, I have gotten nowhere so far, and it has now been 3.5 weeks since I first contacted Apple about this. But after being in the hands of AppleCare Support for a week, I managed to get my issue pushed up the chain to Executive Relations. I wrote a letter to Tim Cook on October 24 and copied Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall (this was the week before he left). I got a call back 2 days later from someone at Exec. Relations who said she was contacting me "on behalf of Scott Forstall". We have talked back-and-forth a couple of times since then, but unfortunately as of today, she still has no new news for me. She did mention to me just this afternoon that it had become a "big political situation over here", which I thought was interesting, but she didn't elaborate on that.
So I wait. In the meantime, I decided to post this here because I want to encourage anybody else who might be in the same boat as I am (and I know that you're out there! I've seen your forum posts!) to also get hold of Apple and complain about this. If nobody complains to them about this, how will they know that there is a problem? Don't just accept the fact that StraightTalk doesn't work properly with the iPhone because of a mistake on Apple's part. If you do contact Apple, I would encourage you guys to make the same two points I've been trying to make to them over and over: first, there is no reason why StraightTalk or any other GSM service provider should not work properly with an unlocked iPhone; and second, until Apple gets this fixed, they should allow anybody affected by this to downgrade their phones back to iOS 5 so that they have usable phones again.
Honestly, it's that last point that has really gotten my blood boiling recently. It really is unacceptable that Apple made a change to iOS 6 that broke a feature of my phone that I had working perfectly before (MMS messaging), and that they are going to make me wait for whatever fix they come out with in the future instead of letting me go back in the meantime to a version of the software that we already know works (and we know this because it worked for me and others in the past). Preventing people from downgrading their phone software strikes me as being very customer-hostile when the customer has a legitimate reason for doing so. So I don't just want Apple to fix this issue with StraightTalk on their phones: I also want them to acknowledge that their ill-conceived software downgrade prevention policy is actively hurting me as a customer by denying me access to a version of the software that already exists which would fix my issue. Instead, they are content to make me wait for a new release -- whenever that might be -- that may or may not contain a fix for this problem. THAT is poor customer service, and a poor experience.
In addition to the phone calls I have had back-and-forth with both AppleCare Support and Apple Executive Relations, I have exchanged several pieces of written communication with Apple about this, and have decided to post one of them publicly. The one I am posting is the one that goes into the most detail about the problem and about my frustration with trying to find a solution for it. This is not the one I sent to the executives: that one was a much shorter letter in which I simply tried to summarize the salient points of this more detailed letter. I actually sent this to the Product Feedback team for the iPhone on the recommendation of my initial AppleCare representative.
You can read it here: http://www.anderson-net.com/~nathan/letter-to-apple
In closing, I do wish to publicly acknowledge and thank my AppleCare support reps as well as my Executive Relations rep, who ALL have been extremely understanding, sympathetic, kind, reasonable, and generous with their time. Apple's support staff truly is second-to-none.
-- Nathan
I know that there are others on this forum (and elsewhere) who use StraightTalk service with their iPhone, and who, like me, have been impacted by the upgrade to iOS 6 (this is only one such example). iPhone users with StraightTalk service have never had it easy, but iOS 6 has made things even more difficult.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, iPhones see StraightTalk SIM cards as AT&T SIM cards, and so automatically configure themselves with the data settings for the postpaid AT&T network. This breaks both internet data and MMS messaging, and iOS blocks you from correcting its mistaken assumption about the SIM card even if you are using an unlocked iPhone (as I am). With iOS 5.x and earlier, there were software workarounds for this that didn't even involve jailbreaking, but Apple has patched those in iOS 6 without fixing the central reason why people needed to use those workarounds in the first place, which means that after upgrading to iOS 6, you will not be able to send or receive MMS messages if you are a StraightTalk customer.
My frustration is four-fold:
1) That Apple created a broken provisioning system that can, in certain situations, make faulty assumptions about the network the user is on.
2) That Apple actively prevents the user from correcting those faulty assumptions.
3) That Apple broke the ability for people affected by this bad design decision to work around the problem in iOS 6 without providing their users with an alternative fix.
4) That Apple prevents users who are affected by this and who want to have a working phone again from downgrading back to iOS 5.
Now, it would be one thing if Apple didn't sell unlocked phones, in which case the discussion would always come back around to which carriers are officially supported by Apple in the United States, and StraightTalk wouldn't be on that list. But Apple DOES sell unlocked iPhones directly to customers in the United States. And it isn't StraightTalk's fault that the iPhone is automatically configuring itself to use the AT&T network when you put a StraightTalk SIM card in the phone. So this is something that squarely falls on Apple's shoulders to fix.
So, yeah, if you search around the internet for "Straight Talk iOS 6 MMS", you'll find plenty of examples of people affected by this issue, and many of them are busily attempting tons of different things to see if there is a new way to work around the issue in iOS 6. But I had not read about anybody actually picking up the phone and calling Apple to see what they had to say about this. So I did. I picked up the phone, and opened a case with AppleCare on October 16.
Frustratingly, I have gotten nowhere so far, and it has now been 3.5 weeks since I first contacted Apple about this. But after being in the hands of AppleCare Support for a week, I managed to get my issue pushed up the chain to Executive Relations. I wrote a letter to Tim Cook on October 24 and copied Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall (this was the week before he left). I got a call back 2 days later from someone at Exec. Relations who said she was contacting me "on behalf of Scott Forstall". We have talked back-and-forth a couple of times since then, but unfortunately as of today, she still has no new news for me. She did mention to me just this afternoon that it had become a "big political situation over here", which I thought was interesting, but she didn't elaborate on that.
So I wait. In the meantime, I decided to post this here because I want to encourage anybody else who might be in the same boat as I am (and I know that you're out there! I've seen your forum posts!) to also get hold of Apple and complain about this. If nobody complains to them about this, how will they know that there is a problem? Don't just accept the fact that StraightTalk doesn't work properly with the iPhone because of a mistake on Apple's part. If you do contact Apple, I would encourage you guys to make the same two points I've been trying to make to them over and over: first, there is no reason why StraightTalk or any other GSM service provider should not work properly with an unlocked iPhone; and second, until Apple gets this fixed, they should allow anybody affected by this to downgrade their phones back to iOS 5 so that they have usable phones again.
Honestly, it's that last point that has really gotten my blood boiling recently. It really is unacceptable that Apple made a change to iOS 6 that broke a feature of my phone that I had working perfectly before (MMS messaging), and that they are going to make me wait for whatever fix they come out with in the future instead of letting me go back in the meantime to a version of the software that we already know works (and we know this because it worked for me and others in the past). Preventing people from downgrading their phone software strikes me as being very customer-hostile when the customer has a legitimate reason for doing so. So I don't just want Apple to fix this issue with StraightTalk on their phones: I also want them to acknowledge that their ill-conceived software downgrade prevention policy is actively hurting me as a customer by denying me access to a version of the software that already exists which would fix my issue. Instead, they are content to make me wait for a new release -- whenever that might be -- that may or may not contain a fix for this problem. THAT is poor customer service, and a poor experience.
In addition to the phone calls I have had back-and-forth with both AppleCare Support and Apple Executive Relations, I have exchanged several pieces of written communication with Apple about this, and have decided to post one of them publicly. The one I am posting is the one that goes into the most detail about the problem and about my frustration with trying to find a solution for it. This is not the one I sent to the executives: that one was a much shorter letter in which I simply tried to summarize the salient points of this more detailed letter. I actually sent this to the Product Feedback team for the iPhone on the recommendation of my initial AppleCare representative.
You can read it here: http://www.anderson-net.com/~nathan/letter-to-apple
In closing, I do wish to publicly acknowledge and thank my AppleCare support reps as well as my Executive Relations rep, who ALL have been extremely understanding, sympathetic, kind, reasonable, and generous with their time. Apple's support staff truly is second-to-none.
-- Nathan
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