Really bad in-store pickup experience. I must have talked to about 10 different AT&T and Apple reps before picking up my phone, as I was doing a cross upgrade--using my mom's upgrade eligibility to order the phone. They all told me something different, of course, but the gist of it seemed to be that I could swap out the ip6's sim card and replace it with my ip5 sim before activating the phone and all would be well. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't let you do that in the store--the transaction doesn't count as "paid", apparently, until the phone is activated. The genius, however, was convinced that it wasn't an issue--that he could activate the new phone on my line no problem. I asked him repeatedly if he was sure, really absolutely sure that this wouldn't mess with my mom's phone service--I didn't want her to have to trek to an AT&T store, since she's under a lot of stress right now, and is easily frustrated by anything technical.
So of course, despite repeated assurances that he knew what he was doing, the "genius" ended up activating the phone on my mom's line and killing her phone service--exactly what I wanted to avoid, as she now has to go to an AT&T store to get a new sim for her phone. And it took them nearly two hours to figure out how to reverse the activation and re-associate all the numbers with the correct phones so that she could even get a new sim for her phone. And the final solution to get the phone activated on my line? Guess. No really, guess. Yep, I just had to pop my old sim card in the new phone.
Lucky for me my mom was more understanding than I thought she'd be (more than I probably would have been in her place), but I feel guilty for putting her through any added stress, and am still pretty pissed at the apple genius for knowing what he was talking about, and at Apple for this stupid policy that you can't take the phone that you bought and paid for out of the box without activating it.
So of course, despite repeated assurances that he knew what he was doing, the "genius" ended up activating the phone on my mom's line and killing her phone service--exactly what I wanted to avoid, as she now has to go to an AT&T store to get a new sim for her phone. And it took them nearly two hours to figure out how to reverse the activation and re-associate all the numbers with the correct phones so that she could even get a new sim for her phone. And the final solution to get the phone activated on my line? Guess. No really, guess. Yep, I just had to pop my old sim card in the new phone.
Lucky for me my mom was more understanding than I thought she'd be (more than I probably would have been in her place), but I feel guilty for putting her through any added stress, and am still pretty pissed at the apple genius for knowing what he was talking about, and at Apple for this stupid policy that you can't take the phone that you bought and paid for out of the box without activating it.