iPhone 3G S Customers Reporting Activation Delays

[casmith07]

After about an hour of awaiting activation (actually transfer of service from 3G to 3GS), I called AT&T. The AT&T rep was clearly clueless and wanted to blame "iTunes."

I told her I needed her to "push through my activation" and she was able to do something in their system that, after I shut down and restarted my phone, resulted in immediate service activation.

Hope this helps anyone in similar straits.

yes -- this is what they can do. The AT&T guy that helped me at the store yesterday said for if some reason it didn't activate to come back and he would "force" the activation, but they only do it in extreme cases.

It worked just fine for me though - activated and placing and receiving calls and voicemail set up all within 30 minutes of taking it out of the box.

 

[twoodcc]

not the first time this has happened, but you'd think they would be prepared by now

 

[Synergy37]

Situation: Upgrading from 2G to 3GS. The new SIM card would not work, but using the old SIM card did.

Solution: Called ATT and they lady on the phone was very helpful and said I needed to activate the new device and accept some TOS. Went through this and turned off the phone, put in new SIM, turned on, and the phone now works.

 

[m-lo]

No surprise -ROFLMAO

You would figure both Apple and ATT would have learned from the 3G debcle last year *sigh* glad I didnt upgrade yet. C'mon ATT let the 3Gers upgrade early for 199/299!

 

[bytethese]

For what it's worth, I was told by an Apple rep when I purchased my 3Gs that "Your activation make take a wh....oh, looks like it just activated."

 

[rappr]

I was upgrading my fiancee's iPhone 2G to 3GS, then swapping the 3GS with my 3G. Tried to activate 3GS and got the "may have to wait 48 hours" message. Called AT&T and they got it activated over the phone in about 10 minutes. Swapped sim cards between my 3G and the 3GS, and we're all set!

 

[DiamondMac]

I do understand how frustrating it can be as I have gone through what many have with the last 2 iPhones.

But, the fact is (and at this point, it is a fact), Apple can't promise 100% success on release days whether that is activation problems or something else.

Now, some have 0 problems and more power to them....but as we can see on this forum alone....MANY have problems on the release days

The solution is just to wait until later in the nights to activate OR download the software later that night.

 

[megfilmworks]

Oh my!

 

[mwdbruno]

Update to my personal dilemma, in case anyone else has been down this road...

Girlfriend took phone to the not exactly local ATT store @ 10:30AM. They tried a restore, 12 different SIM cards, 3 calls to Apple, 2 Managers and a District Manager...and no success...

Apple still recommends they replace the phone...of course they are sold out!

I really like my new 32 GB iPaperweight though

 

[aristotle]

Wow AT&T customers have such bad luck with these things. I went to buy a 32GB 3GS on my lunch break. When I got to my office, I swapped the SIM from my 8GB iPhone 3G into the new iPhone and it activated within seconds.

I'm thinking of unlocking my old 3G and selling it on ebay.

 

[aristotle]

Update to my personal dilemma, in case anyone else has been down this road...

Girlfriend took phone to the not exactly local ATT store @ 10:30AM. They tried a restore, 12 different SIM cards, 3 calls to Apple, 2 Managers and a District Manager...and no success...

Apple still recommends they replace the phone...of course they are sold out!

I really like my new 32 GB iPaperweight though

Did you have an AT&T SIM before? If so, simply doing the initial setup without a SIM at the store and replacing the sim later at home would not have worked for you?

 

[Wegmans]

So i'm going to have to get a replacement 3GS, I have a genius bar appointment tomorrow, but man this sucks! Like someone said before, I love my 32GB iPaperweight!

 

[creativepath]

I thought I was in activation limbo and called AT&T twice with no luck...

Then I just power-cycled the phone - according to the advice above - and it was active! phew.

 

[bikertwin]

1. Got the phone yesterday, connected to iTunes and it said wait for activation
2. Still nothing after 25 hrs & rebooting phone several times.
3. Called 866 number from earlier in this thread and it said phone was already activated.
4. Called AT&T and they said it was Apple's server problem, so they transferred me to Apple.
5. Apple rep was like WTF??!! and transferred me back to ATT and explained problem.
6. AT&T rep took my serial & IMEI #s from new phone and said we might get disconnected. He told me to shut off new phone first...
7. We got disconnected, so I restarted new phone and voilà, I had phone service!
8. He called me back to set up data, but no 3G symbol on phone and Safari didn't work.
9. I turned off phone and rebooted and--voilà again--I now have a fully functioning phone!

 

[livingonvideo13]

I tried to activate my phone Friday afternoon and it told me the 48 hours to activate. I waited a few hours but needed to use my phone so I just put in my old sim card from the 1st gen iphone and it was working.

24 hours later I get a text message from AT&T the says "Your data plan is ineligible for iPhone 3g. to prevent excess charges and enable Visual Voicemail, contact your telecom manager or AT&T"

I put back in my new Sim card that came with the phone and still get no service so put my old Sim card back in. I am guessing that my old one will be cut off which I will then put the new one back in and hopefully have service.

I have been using the 3G service with my old Sim in the 3gs and they better not be charging me "extra" since it is their fault they are taking so long to active my new sim.

 

[aristotle]

Are any of you guys existing 3G service customer being told to get a new SIM? If so, why? They should be able to do the pre-SIM set up at the store and you should be able to take your existing SIM and use it right away.

 

[gwangung]

Anybody having problems with transfers?

Old cell phone number with the old provider rings when the number is called, but the iPhone is up and working...

 

[michelle21]

Umm no YOUR 100% wrong.

How do I know? I have a 100% working iPhone 3G S. For your information, my the phone's SERIAL number is different than the SIM ID #. So if my phone number is registered to my phone's serial, why would changing the SIM matter? My serial is that of my brand new 3S and it is paid with my existing and current phone number. The SIM ID is entirely separate.

You my friend, are wrong. Thank you.

Oh - and PS: I still had to connect to iTunes. But it did not activate the same way as all of you are doing.

Partly right, if you swap sims, call ATT and they will update their systems. In fact I needed to swap my two lines, the support person changed some settings in the system than had me swap sims.

 

[fetchin007]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

I have to say the pre-order option was the moat amaZing thing ever--it made the process so simple and I didn't hav any issues activating either.

 

[C1KK]

Still wasn't activated after 24 hours, decided to take some advice and call AT&T, luckily I spoke to someone that knew what they were doing, he asked for my SIM card number, call got disconected, and 2 minutes later my 3GS was activated with service.

 

[caliguy]

Finally, mine works.

Yesterday, when I got my iPhone, I called about 4 times throughout the day to try to get my iPhone to activate. Each rep told me that unless power off/on fixes my problem, I just have to wait (which doesn't make sense, there has to be an underlying problem as thousands of others in my area activated just fine).

Today, I call and the rep simply has me give her my IMEI number and my SIM card number for the new 3G S. It works. Why don't those idiots run me through these steps 20 hours beforehand?

Also, according to an AT&T manager, MMS on iPhone already works. Hmm.

 

[Dominus]

IF you got yours UPS: you MUST do this!

Okay, as I posted earlier, tried power-cycling, popping out sim, calling AT&T multiple times, was told to keep powercycling and call later if it still didn't activate. Apple store also was clueless when I called them.

Based on posts here, I called AT&T again this morning and told them to check and make sure I was registered as an iPhone 3G S phone not as my old iPhone. I told them to check the IMEI number (it's on the box) and the SIM chip number (you have to pop this out of the iPhone and read it to them).

Sure enough, it wasn't updated! As far as I know, you're never going to get activated if you don't do this. Sure enough, at least some of our home-delivered iPhones aren't properly set up in their system.

With respect to those who had no problems with activation, you're just making it harder for people with problems to find solutions if you keep posting what a breeze it was for some of you. No offense.

 

[gwangung]

With respect to those who had no problems with activation, you're just making it harder for people with problems to find solutions if you keep posting what a breeze it was for some of you. No offense.

Actually, I would think it would be somewhat useful in ruling out some factors that AREN'T at fault....but that's just me...

 

[Toadkillerdog]

Okay, as I posted earlier, tried power-cycling, popping out sim, calling AT&T multiple times, was told to keep powercycling and call later if it still didn't activate. Apple store also was clueless when I called them.

Based on posts here, I called AT&T again this morning and told them to check and make sure I was registered as an iPhone 3G S phone not as my old iPhone. I told them to check the IMEI number (it's on the box) and the SIM chip number (you have to pop this out of the iPhone and read it to them).

Sure enough, it wasn't updated! As far as I know, you're never going to get activated if you don't do this. Sure enough, at least some of our home-delivered iPhones aren't properly set up in their system.

With respect to those who had no problems with activation, you're just making it harder for people with problems to find solutions if you keep posting what a breeze it was for some of you. No offense.

It went smoothly for me at about 4pm on Friday. No probs whatsoever...

(Could not resist)

However, backing up original iphone to iTunes took 8 hours on Vista 64. No solution I have read anywhere speeds up my backups. Think it is a Vista 64 bug. Couldn't use the new phone for hours.

 

[jeremymaxwell]

Restarting Works

I read on this thread about trying restarting the Iphone, and it worked...I got the phone at 5 PM Friday, and nothing happened until I restarted the Iphone at 9 AM Sat Morning. Instantly connected.
Bad thing was that the Apple Store People told me I would still recieve incoming calls on my Blackberry (T Mobile) until the iphone was conected. That was a lie. The second I signed on for the Iphone, T Mobile shut my Blackberry down.
It also would have been nice if The Apple Sales gave you a heads up about restarting in case the Phone Doesn't connect, instead of making us hunt down info on MAc Forums... But thanks to mac forums anyway.