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ATT [and Apple] drop the ball: Please rant here

Worst. Morning. Ever.

I'm too pissed, frankly, to type something coherent, so here are the highlights:

I get in line at the GSP Mall in NJ at the AT&T store at 3am. I am the first online.

I wait patiently.


I walk into the store first, and a lovely young lady begins to help me.

Errors start popping up immediately.

iTunes crashes.

OPUS, AT&T's retail software, goes belly up.

More errors on my account, my young lady has never seen them before.

A manager gets an AT&T IT rep on the line regarding my account. The IT rep is completely dumbfounded and repeats all the steps the young lady in the store attempted. Nothing.

At ten I walked out of the store with no iPhone and an old Blackberry with no contacts because they had bricked it while attempting to activate my iPhone.

And no, they wouldn't put one on hold for me, despite being the first one to walk in the store.

In the two hours I was there, 8-10 people received iPhones.

And I was late for work.

Apple + AT&T = EPIC FAIL
 
tswiers said:
Are you fereakin serious? It IS their job to provide customer service and please the customer. That is what they get paid to do, not undermine a process if they are unable to handle some hysteria. I would be happy to be surrounded by excited people wanting to buy a cool new product. Sounds like you are a bitter C/S employee elsewhere. JUST DO YOUR JOB!
Click to expand...

On behalf of people who have worked in a C/S position...THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG!

ok now that I've gotten that little irrational statement out of the way.

The people working at the stores, unless they are managers or assistant managers...are getting paid next to crap to work there. They survive on commissions from phone sales. They don't give a crap if you are happy to buy a product unless they stand to get a cut of commission from the sale. The people manning the door? Don't get a cut of the sale...they just get paid to stand at the door and let people in. Their job is to manage the line...they aren't monitoring stock levels. So they are doing their job. If you have an issue, it should be with the manager of the store...they should be the ones telling waiting customers whether or not they will be getting a phone. They are the ones paid to manage the store in all ways possible, including customer service. Sure the person manning the door is supposed to be nice...but that doesn't include bowing to your every whim and being a fountain of information on subjects they have no idea about. They will be nice as far as letting people in and out and greeting customers...but that's all the further they have to go...because that's all their job entails at that point in time.
 
I drove past my local AT&T store in Monroeville, PA (suburb of Pittsburgh) on my way home from work last night at 11 PM and saw there were already a few people camping out. I figured it was just a single group of kids and decided I wasn't going to camp out. I got there at 6 AM and I'd say there were about 25-30 people in line ahead of me. They were only letting so many in at a time after the doors opened a little before 8. I finally got in and asked for a 16 GB Black and when the runner brought it out she announced it was the next to the last one! Whew! I'm so glad I didn't stop for breakfast like I was going to.

For those who were not fortunate enough to get one you have my sympathies. I think it's really bogus that the workers won't be honest with people and just let them waste time standing in line when they know darn well that they don't have enough for them. When we were waiting before the store opened we'd ask them and they just kept claiming they didn't know how many they had. Yea, right. Even when I was checking out I asked the runner and she said she couldn't say. I worked in retail for 5 years so I have an understanding of what customer service should be and how events like this should be run. It reminds me of Black Friday. Some places just throw you to the wolves. Others are organized and give out tickets for the item you want. When the tickets are gone then they are out of stock. At least then the rest of the people in line know not to bother wasting their time.
 
Frisco, TX

Showed up at 7:45, not sure what I was thinking, but I did.

There were about 150 people in line already. I waited around until about 8:15 when someone got the skinny. They had 80 phones, each customer would take about 15 minutes to upgrade/activate (if everything went as planned of course, and at that rate it would take about two days waiting in line).

Anyone who waited in line for the 37 hours it would take to get to you, then you could give them your money, and they would mail you a phone if they ran out, which you could then bring back to the store to get activated.

Yea.. Right. F-That.

It makes no sense why they would require activation at the store. That is just stupid. Down right S T U P I D!

Add in the incompetence of AT&T employee's, the fact that the activation software was ****ed (not really thier fault) and due to the shear fact that A.) an AT&T employee making $8 an hour really could gives a ****, and B.) training was probaly NIL, why wouldn't they just let us take them home and do it ourselves like the first release.

I mean, give the option to the less computer savy grandmother to be baby sat through the activation and let the more savy do it themselves at home, drop the 200 clams, give me my ****ing phone and keep the line moving.

Just stupid. Whoever made these descisions should be fired.

FAIL​
 
There were 30 phones at my AT&T store. 10 16gb white, black, and 10 8gb black. They did a good job of informing us how many there were left. The reps didn't really know how to activate or change our plans though.
 
Oh man poor guy...

Penguinwrangler said:
I'm too pissed, frankly, to type something coherent, so here are the highlights:

I get in line at the GSP Mall in NJ at the AT&T store at 3am. I am the first online.

I wait patiently.


I walk into the store first, and a lovely young lady begins to help me.

Errors start popping up immediately.

iTunes crashes.

OPUS, AT&T's retail software, goes belly up.

More errors on my account, my young lady has never seen them before.

A manager gets an AT&T IT rep on the line regarding my account. The IT rep is completely dumbfounded and repeats all the steps the young lady in the store attempted. Nothing.

At ten I walked out of the store with no iPhone and an old Blackberry with no contacts because they had bricked it while attempting to activate my iPhone.

And no, they wouldn't put one on hold for me, despite being the first one to walk in the store.

In the two hours I was there, 8-10 people received iPhones.

And I was late for work.

Apple + AT&T = EPIC FAIL
Click to expand...

There's word that Itunes has been crashing but only the AT&T stores are bailing and letting people take the phone home and activate there. I'm sure Steve gave his word to AT&T this time that he would make good and NOT do that anymore (as part of their new deal).

Are you talking about the Paramus mall? I'm planning on either going there or to Apple NYC later today.

I did call the local AT&T store here in Hoboken and the guy was nice enough to tell me that there were 40 people in line thereabouts and the 16GBs were only available in white. That tells me that they are going to be all gone there. Last time I was in line and two people in front of me there they said only 4 GBs left. Then I drove to Paramus and walked out with a phone in five minutes the next morning.

I knew the in store activations would slow things to a crawl but surprised that it has done so right out of the gate. So whatever the line is THIS TIME, imagine it three times as long, because that's what it really comes down to.

You poor guy. :(
 
morning of disappointments for some

Looks like sticking with sprint with their new instinct and waiting till christmas was a good idea after all;)
 
Indianapolis Castleton store. Got there at 8:00 (overslept :(), about 50 people in line. About 1/2 hour later, manager came out and told those of us near the back of the line that there would not be enough for us - store had received 40 total phones. From what I'm hearing, it was probably for the best. I'll go back tonight and order the phones; hopefully they'll be in next week.

Fail=me for oversleeping.
 
Sad

Similar to the OP, waited in line at the Dallas Northpark store in what I felt was a favorable position... only about 40 people ahead of. We asked if they would have enough phones. "We should" they replied. Get to the front: no more 8g and only 11 white 16g.

They walked through the line and counted people before the store opened. They handed out sheets that asked how many phones you were buying. They could've let people know when they were about to run out. They could've...

They didn't.

To all those people who *spent* money by taking off work to stand in line and get this phone, AT&T has basically given you the finger.
 
B1RDFLU said:
Looks like sticking with sprint with their new instinct and waiting till christmas was a good idea after all;)
Click to expand...

Yep. There's no 3G in eastern PA except for three cities so I'm probably going for the new Treo 800w on Sunday. I was kind of surprised by AT&T's 3G, also. Since upgrading my Touch to the latest Rev-A rom, I'm getting well over 1000 kbps everywhere around here. 3G doesn't exist here but I've read a number of reviews of the new iPhone and 3G in general and the reviewers seemed to be real pleased to be getting 400 kbps. Really? That's it? They did go on to say that they expected the speed to pick up as 3G filled in more area but that's not even half of what I get and I'm not getting anything near what some other Rev-A users get in larger cities.
 
cjbex said:
To all those people who *spent* money by taking off work to stand in line and get this phone, AT&T has basically given you the finger.
Click to expand...

yeah i was one of those people. not as bad as the post ahead of me who was first in line, but i was pretty close up there. i am still raging about the stupidity of me wave a grand at apple, and rather than take the money i get a swift kick in the nuts.

it's customer service like this that put sprint at the bottom of the pile when they used to own it. in store activation is the worst failure apple has committed. that's right, please your little bitch att and f$$k your paying customers. in all fairness, i'm glad they bent me over by not letting me pay vs bending me over afterwords.

f$ck att.
f$ck apple.
f$ck steve jobs.
 
Penguinwrangler said:
And no, they wouldn't put one on hold for me, despite being the first one to walk in the store.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't let you buy the phone, even in its unusable state? Seems like some have had success in that at AT&T stores.

The other thing (and this won't help you now - sorry - but for others reading) is to just sign up for a new AT&T account like I did. At least you can walk out of the store with something to show for your waiting in line all night. Of course, untold headaches lie ahead for me in getting my old number onto my new iPhone, and for getting my activation fees refunded to what they should have been for an existing user ($18 instead of $36). I will be dealing with those things asap and report how it goes. Probably won't happen today though - I don't think I'll have much luck reaching AT&T today on the phone (though I may give it a try).
 
cjbex said:
To all those people who *spent* money by taking off work to stand in line and get this phone, AT&T has basically given you the finger.
Click to expand...

yeah i was one of those people. not as bad as the post ahead of me who was first in line, but i was pretty close up there. i am still raging about the stupidity of me wave a grand at apple, and rather than take the money i get a swift kick in the nuts.

it's customer service like this that put sprint at the bottom of the pile when they used to own it. in store activation is the worst failure apple has committed. that's right, please your little bitch att and f$$k your paying customers. in all fairness, i'm glad they bent me over by not letting me pay vs bending me over afterwords.

f$ck att.
f$ck apple.
f$ck steve jobs.

yours truly, a former fanboy
 
mkoesel said:
The other thing (and this won't help you now - sorry - but for others reading) is to just sign up for a new AT&T account like I did. At least you can walk out of the store with something to show for your waiting in line all night. Of course, untold headaches lie ahead for me in getting my old number onto my new iPhone, and for getting my activation fees refunded to what they should have been for an existing user ($18 instead of $36).
Click to expand...

HELL NO!!! they made me that "offer" also. "here you go sir. we can f$ck you by just not selling you the phones. but if that sounds enticing, we can ROYALLY F$$K you this way. i have 8500 roll over minutes. i'm not giving them any excuse to take those away. if i'm losing them, it's going to be by going to another service provider.

i am so pissed right now.
 
No, they wouldn't let me purchase the iPhone because they couldn't even get me the upgrade on my account. It was not an iTunes issue, this was an AT&T issue. We didn't eve get to the iTunes part.


I'm trying to decide how hard I want to hunt for a 16GB black iPhone tonight. Part of me feels like I'll be vindicated to get it by the end of the day, part of me doesn't have the desire. Whoever thought they could just make this roll-out work without training the people who needed to implement it and without testing the servers adequately, should have been fired hours ago.

FYI, the AT&T reps I dealt with today, who were all incredibly sympathetic and willing to go the extra mile for me, all admitted, right on down to the Manager, that they knew days ago this would be a disaster because they never received training beyond a pamphlet.
 
All the stores in NC seem to have gotten 40 phones (info from friends around the state). I was 35th in line and ended up with a white 16G (I wanted black but I'm content).

After 45 mins of trying to unbrick in the store they sent me home to do it. I of course got an error that I needed to install SSL 3.0 (it's installed). I tried again in 20 mins and it times out trying to access the iTunes Store (I assume to unbrick). Try 20 mins later and am now waiting for it to access the iTunes Store.

Painful...really painful. I didn't think it would take the entire day. Good thing I took the day off in anticipation of problems.
 
i know a lot of you are down on the whole thing but my experience was pretty good considering all the mess.

i knew some of the "smaller" local stores would have a smaller stock and i opted to go to the mall. the line was actually shorter than the two other area at&t stores. a few people came over from being in line at the other smaller area stores complaining that the stock was limited. they tried to cut in line saying they had waited already somewhere else. it was quite ridiculous and these were adults doing this.

as i suspected, the mall had a much larger stock but no one could foresee the issues with the itunes activation. this may have happened last year but they did take the device home to activate and you knew it was an apple issue. regardless, the at&t people tried to accommodate as much as possible and were even kind enough at one point to explain in general terms the size of their stock as the line grew and the stock dwindled. they were quite kind to everyone explaining that so people didn't have to wait too long or could make a decision to stay taking a chance.

i was at least number 30 in line with at least another 40 behind me and they seem to cut off the line letting people know somewhere around the 60 mark. when i got in the store, there was quite a few still left. i had to leave during the activation process because i had a meeting. this was the time when everything started falling apart. they let me take the phone and told me to return at my convenience. the staff was very fast despite in the early stages as i waited only about 30 to 40 minutes before i had a phone in hand. the store manager just called me to tell me that i could activate the phone using itunes at home. how polite was that? he expressed that i should possibly wait until the evening considering how crazy it will be going across the country with the time changes to the west coast.

my store: Langhorne, PA. - Oxford Valley Mall

they were great.
 
slimchrisp said:
f$ck att.
f$ck apple.
f$ck steve jobs.

yours truly, a former fanboy
Click to expand...

All that anger over a iPhone. Got something else going for you? If not, it's going to feel like a long time before you're going to get a phone.

And regarding the servers going down: People were trying to buy this thing in 20+ countries around the world on the same day. You should expect Apple to beef up their servers to handle a larger capacity, but not to accommodate the 200,000 (or whatever) number of people all trying to access the servers at the same time. As this type of launch doesn't happen often (in fact, it never has for Apple), and will happen very infrequently in the future, I wouldn't have expected Apple to get new servers just for this launch. Beefed up? Yes. An entire system to handle the entire expected load for single day? Probably not.

So honestly, who was expecting a smooth ride today?
 
I went to the store in Newton, MA and the guy outside said they were all sold out. He also said 3-4 other stores nearby were as well. he said the same thing happened last year - I said wow i guess they didn't learn.
 
Philly AT&T - Ditto...

Been to several AT&T stores in the Philly/South Jersey area - all same story - selling out so quickly and so much the same story at each of the 7 stores I went to (actually waited in line three separate times to be told the same story... Clearly a colossal underestimation by AT&T. Maybe those at Apple stores will have better luck, but since I get some measly corporate discount on my rate plan, I was told I have to go to an AT&T store.

Does that make a lot of sense? I hear you can't get corporate discounts on the new iPhone rate plans, so why does it matter that I have one now?

Ugh...

What a wasted morning, except I did meet a lot of nice folks in line, and the AT&T employees were pretty friendly, considering. No beef there. Just wish they had been supplied sufficient inventory. Poor forethought.

Oh, and had to mention, on my final trip home after my last defeat, I got sideswiped - hit and run - scraped up the whole side of my car. So that just about makes my day complete...

$%#^%

It's noon here, now I can have a drink.
 
I posted this in another thread, but my experience:

Got there at 3am, due to rumors of only 40 at stores. (normally up to 4-5 am anyway)

At 7AM, they told they had enough for everyone, which was about 37 at the time.

At 8AM, the line seemed to have doubled, I was part of the first 10 let in (as 5 leave they let 5 more in, but first double checked eligiblity for each person through a cell phone they had). But I didn't see them update if they had enough for all the new people since 7AM, the total might have been 75 people.

I'm an existing customer who was not eligible and use the loophole of borrowing a friends iphone and activating it on my sim a couple days ago.

In the store, asked for my cell number. Asked for ID. Scanned 16gig iPhone (left it seale and there was a 2 minute or more delay) I signed digi screen for contract. Then I swipe my credit cart, signed for that. Then I was done. Simple told to take it home, put in my old sim card, unbrick with itunes. Which I now have to restart my pc since I needed to install 7.7.

I hope those people in the back of the line
 
Looks like my experience is like many others........long line, short supply and a D!ck of an ATT employee that played dumb as to how many they had in stock. Not as if it mattered since I was about #50 and had to be to work by 10am anyway. I got there around 7:05 taking a shot at getting one and left at 9am as it was taking 45 min per person to activate and simple math told me either get out of line and get to work to make some money, or stick around and call off work and have the chance of not even getting one today. The little toady (ATT guy) working the line wouldn't give an answer as to how many they had in stock. I guess I'll try to go back during my lunch break in the afternoon and see if I can get on a list (if they are even doing that) and get it once it finally comes in. My smartphone works just fine, so no giant fiasco, just a let down to not have my shiney new 3G in my hand.

ATT store in Mishawaka, IN
 
I'm not upset of the lack of supply. I can semi-understand that. I can even understand systems being overloaded and networks crashing.

My agitation today is in AT&T's lack of forthcoming knowledge. They have been instructed to push the "fulfillment" sales in order to not lose a potential sale. So when asked how long it will take they won't give you a straight answer, only a "couple of days". Fortunately we didn't go that route and came home and read this forum, where it was posted that these orders can take 5 to 7 business days and that corporate wants them to push these type of sales in order to keep new stock that comes in open for those who just happen to walk in, and to keep people from leaving and driving to an apple store to make the purchase, since you are paying for it upfront. After reading this, we head back to the store to find out if they are expecting any new stock today. To which we are told, I don't know, but you should do fulfillment order. So we ask again when does your shipments run? "All the time" is the reply. Another guy finally chimes in and says we get them in the afternoon. Back to the original sales guy "If we get them today, we can't sale them until tomorrow though. I strongly suggest you do fulfillment." How many days will that take? "A few, he says" How many? "I don't know?" We then say, Well I read it could take 5 to 7 business days. "Ummmm. yeah, thats what we were told to." :eek: He did fess up and say that they lost several sales to people driving to Richmond to the closest Apple Store this morning.

How hard would it have been to say. We may get some in today, but if we do, we can't sale them until tomorrow. You can try your luck again tomorrow, maybe call tonight to see if we got some in. Or if you would rather, you can order one now and it will be here in 5 to 7 business days. That will save you trip of driving back and forth and the gas from driving to Richmond.

:confused:
 
Got to my local Att store at 5:45 am was number 25 in line. 7 am att store employees are out side counting the number of people in line. We all asked how many they had in stock and they would not tell us as per APPLE policy. At 8:30 they stop at number 20 in line and are out of stock. I would estimate maybe 100 people in line waiting. They knew they only had 20 last night. Why on earth would they let us stand in line knowing damn well we were wasting our time. I just don't understand how this is good customer service. Oh well I will get one all in due time.
 
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