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Got it to work, finally, had to do it myself

OK, I got it to work

1. Went to ATT store and got a new programmed SIM card
2. Went to the Apple store and they popped the new sim card for me and they said go home and try syncing it with iTunes again, buddy. We just make the hardware
3. Entered all the info, gone through the steps, everything works!!!!!!

18 hours later. After 5 phone calls to useless ATT reps, and I had to take care of it myself, what a joke. Make sure you use good wireless, we tried doing it last night at the starbucks and their wireless signal blew.

Good luck!!!!
 
Well, this isn't good news but it isn't bad news either.

I'm porting over my number from T-Mobile. I took hamedatl's suggestion to call (1-866-802-7560) and I was through in only a few minutes.

Good news, they said it will be activated. Tonight. At 11:30pm. 27 hours after I sent my activation request through itunes. Which doesn't give me much confidence in AT&T, since they've royally screwed the iPhone's successful launch.

What I'm afraid of is when 11:30pm rolls around, the iBrick isn't going to turn into a cinderella.

Glass slipper anyone? Please if you find it, let me know!
 
Update

So trying to take the squeaky wheel approach. After being told that problem ports being pushed through with occasional success, I told them I wanted them to call T-Mobile and try it. The manager said the original rep would help me do that. After a couple minutes on hold, the rep said that it would be best to wait for it to go through automatically that I might screw things up if I tried to push anything through.

I said, that her manager had said she would help me contact T-Mobile, and that's what I wanted to do. After a little back and forth she put me back to her manager who started backpedaling and said I should just wait, but I told her I would take my chances. She said it might push me back a day, and I said if it did, I would just take my phone back, so I would push it.

THEN, interestingly, I was transferred over to some other AT&T department, where this guy said they had received my number from T-Mobile, but the APPLE server was backed up and had not finished processing all of my information to send back to AT&T and have them activate my iphone and disconnect my old service.

He said that trying to do anything else (add another number, and port over my number later) could lose my original number, and back me up as long as a week.

I then confirmed that he was waiting on Apple, which I find it hard to believe, and he said yes, so now I'm on hold with Apple waiting to see what the hell they have to say.

And the saga continues...
 
No iPhone for Permier Accounts

Bottom Line, drove out to the Walnut Creek Apple Store, around 8:00. Three or four people in line, yes they had 8gb phones. Before I stopped at the AT&T store no 8gb, and they confirmed I could not activate my Premier account thru iTunes. Ended up buying one, but did not open it. This AM I checked the Premier website and it says this


# iPhone and associated wireless service are not eligible for corporate discounts
# Not available to Corporate Responsibility Users or other corporate-liable users, or to Individual Responsibility Users participating in Split Liability Billing


A line to an FAQ basicly says you can either set up a new IRU account, or de-enroll our exisiting account. Either way you lose the premier account discount. For me that is about $20 per month. I guess my iPhone will remain unopened, and maybe will go back to the Apple store.. Maybe I will have to wait until AT&T makes their billing system compatable, and maybe by then they will have 16gb iPhones…
:(
 
I just got off the phone with verizon. ATT DID NOT SUBMIT THE PORT REQUEST!

Call them if you are having issues. 1-888-898-7685

Trying that now ... I woke up this morning hoping it was resolved over night. 14 hours later, I have moved from annoyed to pissed off. Verizon said that the ports department is really busy so my hold times are gonna be long ... I find it funny, because I really wonder how many people are bailing from other providers.
 
You won't believe it but I finally got the darn thing to activate. I happen to have a second, unopened iphone. I took the SIM from it, put it in my iphone and hooked it up to my mac. I finally got the screen to start the activation process. I removed that SIM, replaced it with my original iphone SIM and went through the activation screens. Got the 3 minute activation screen and the phone activated within 2 minutes.

I think the BMG code was an issue. Removing that code, cancelling the initial activation and reactivating seems to work. I'm going to let the dimwits at ATT know about this.

ETA:
Spoke too soon. Looks like the new SIM was activated and works great. I'm headed to take the second one back. Those who have business accounts that are having problems activating may want to try getting another SIM from ATT
 
The port dept. told me that my number will be transferred from Verizon at 1:03 PM, and I would receive a text message on my iPhone....I told him that MY iPHONE ISNT ACTIVATED!!! and he was really nice and transferred me to a knowledgeable guy who was able to check out my account, tell me that everything is perfectly fine, and I should just wait on the email.

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! This is insane!!!!!
 
Trying that now ... I woke up this morning hoping it was resolved over night. 14 hours later, I have moved from annoyed to pissed off. Verizon said that the ports department is really busy so my hold times are gonna be long ... I find it funny, because I really wonder how many people are bailing from other providers.

Joy ... so, Verizon is claiming that AT&T hasn't sent the request yet. So, now I am on hold with AT&T ... I have a feeling this is gonna take a while. Wish this phone had speaker phone ... gah.
 
14 hrs so far. No activation.

Called the 877 #.

Got thru quickly.

Script dude went over the info (just talking points.)

But then I have him check my tmobile account # (i am switching from them.)

He did double check so at least I know it is in the system with the correct port information. Said 250k activations since last night... I've got work to do no..

HOLY MOLY! Just got the email from ATT... will post in a bit.
 
I then confirmed that he was waiting on Apple, which I find it hard to believe, and he said yes, so now I'm on hold with Apple waiting to see what the hell they have to say.

And the saga continues...

Please let us know what Apple says. I received the same line from ATT, but thought they were just passing the blame. Now I'm wondering who really is the hold up.
 
This is so ****ed up it is not even funny. Apple I hope you learn your god damn lesson from this; and that is let the ****ing cell carrier activate the phone on site; at their store. Sure you can still sell them in your store, but then tell the people to go to a AT&T store to activate.

This is such a back and forth pointing game; I am starting to get really ****ing pissed off.

All I can say is Apple, welcome to the wonderful world of ****ed up cell phone business, and just when I thought no one could screw it up worse than it already is.

-mark
 
ok. Itunes says Congrats...

Now going to start the sync.

Syncd

Now putting some music on. You need to use the music tab?

Can't drag and drop yet.
 
Well, my iBrick is like Paris Hilton...pretty, but useless. :p

(PS...love whoever came up with the iBrick name!)

Whaahaahaaahahaha, good one.

Btw, if it's giving any comfort in knowing. 2 years back, my brother bought a phone and he had to wait 1,5 day before his sim was activated. Even then, during the normal days of selling phones it took some time. Just a new sim and new number. Those that have problems, i can understand it...but you can never prepare for such a massive activation and porting of numbers. I hope Apple and AT&T will tell later during the week how many they sold and activated.

I hope both companies learn from this so that the launch in Europe and elsewhere would go smoother. Atleast you guys have an iPhone, although with activation problems. Am from Belgium, and we, together with the rest of Europe are still praying that it would come soon over here. Hell they even have no partner yet. There are 5 months left, no deal. It's becoming obvious that if work on visual voicemail needs to start an who knows what else is needed for the iPhone to work over here, that time is becoming extremely short. Best guess, early spring 2008.

So, to those with problems, don't loose it. In a few days...after playing with it, it will all be a fading memory and you'll be happy.
 
Just called AT&T again. This guy seemed more helpful than the last and looked up my account. Apparently there were errors when trying to push the activation through automatically, so someone is supposed to call me back in around 2 hours.
 
I'd be enjoying my phone (which AT&T says is activated) if I could just get this ****ing Web ID code to unlock my damn phone.

-mark
 
i'm waiting 16 hours so far, and i have an att&t account. Called multiple times, MULTIPLE, spoke to both at&t reps and apple tech support, they said everything is fine and their is nothing that can be done except wait.

What a complete joke, don't create the hype if you're not prepared to live up to it!
 
has anyone successfully activated the iphone when porting from verizon??

yeah, i did, i got the email this morning, in total it took about 10 hours, then the email came. the only bad news is that i can only make calls out, and those calls out are from my old verizon number, but calls coming in go to my old phone, im sure its no big deal(they said this may happen) but just so you know there is hope for you verizon people, mine is all good now.
 
I just called AT&T again and the rep I spoke to this time seemed more knowledgeable. She asked me for the ICCID and IMEI numbers and then said she changed my plan from my old, legacy "blue system" account over to one of the new iPhone plans. She then said it would take anywhere from 2 - 4 hours to get the activation email and that everything should be okay now.

At this point I don't have faith that it will happen without additional intervention on my part, but we'll see.

..Al

EDIT: My old phone now says "Inactive SIM", only a few minutes after the call. Progress! Now, of course, I am without a cell phone!!
 
Well, the lady who said she was removing the FAN number just added an additional line to my account, separate from the three familytalk lines, and the one line I wanted to upgrade.

This is bad--I don't want to have to pay for an additional line.
 
Well, on with Apple again, let's see if they ass rape me again and cry that it is AT&T's fault, even though AT&T shows the phone to be active.

-mark
 
well, i found out the deal with my phone: when the visual voicemail was added something went wrong and threw the whole thing into error. something about the system not correctly recognizing that i had an iphone. so the girl on the phone took my imei and serial number to manually push things through. turns out the sim needs to be replaced (i read about this this morning) and then things will be ok. i still won't have my number ported until tonight so i can't receive calls on the phone, but i can make them and everything will work as well, so it's a start.

this kind of sucks, but i'm not overly impatient and i can understand that even with a good amount of planning and upgrading, the system was going to get blown up yesterday so, we shouldn't be all the pissed, but we can certainly be upset.

hope this works for me and hope everyone else gets there's up and running too.
 
ATT said everything is fine on their end

now APPLE is the hold up according to them.

My plan is changed, my device is now the iphone.

But I still have not gotten that magical email!
 
Here's my personal anecdote:

I stood in line from 12 pm till about 625, when I got my iPhone, yesterday. I came home, went through the syncing process, got the wonderful "Your Activation Requires Additional Time To Complete" message at about 7:20 last night. I've been waiting for my effing number to transfer from Verizon since then.

My stepmom bought my dad an iPhone this morning for his birthday. She walked in and out of the 5th Avenue store in 5 minutes. She came home. We activated his phone in all of 15 minutes. His number transferred from Nextel/Sprint, and he has a fully working iPhone. It showed me how easy and painless the iTunes activation process could be, since I did it all for him. But here I have my non-activated iPhone next to me.

I want to strangle someone.
 
Started my activation last night at 7:22pm and finally completed today at 11am. So about 16 hours give or take. That is not good. I hope everyone else has better luck then me.
 
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