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OMG, mine just worked. I called the normal 877-419-4500 #. Gave her my activation ID (preparing for another disappointed phone call). She did some stuff, and I got the email while I was on the phone with her. She said she had to go through my account and add different options to do the activation. Normal rep. Either they've figured out the problem or she was just smart and we've been dealing with dumb reps all day.

By the way, it took 22 hours. 8 of those I was without a cell because Verizon had already been ported.

The rep I got at that number is transferring me to Activations. Couldn't do anything. Or didn't know anything.
 
can somebody please paste the activation linke without the personal information, so we can try putting in our own personal info to activate.

This will not work- the URL also has what I am guessing is encrypted versions of your iTunes login and password, so it can associate the iPhone with your account.

Sorry....
 
Update. I have decent credit, I live on the east coast, purchased my iphone in an apple store and attempted to activate it at 11:50pm on Friday. (port from verizon)

Got the 24 hour notice in the email and could not activate it after multiple attempts.

I did NOT call apple / att or verizon. At 4pm today I got an email saying it went through - I went through itunes and the phone is active.

I decided not to dwell on it, went to fix up my old Honda Aero 125, and that let time slip by enough to find out my phone was finally on.

Good luck to the rest of you.
 
Okay, here is the deal with my account. Your mileage may vary. I am an existing AT&T customer. The activation was being held up because I had features on my account that could not be deleted for whatever reason. Voicemail, data, etc. Those things needed to be removed in order to add something called MMV2, which is the package for the iPhone. The rep was never able to delete the old stuf, but she said she could go ahead and activate the phone anyway, which is what she is doing hopefully. She was very helpful, although it took a long time to get to this point. Hope this helps someone. Just got the activation complete email:

Congratulations, AT&T has successfully activated your iPhone service.


If you have not done so already, please connect your iPhone to your computer now to complete this activation (or click here if your iPhone is already connected).
 
I called that number too just now, and they finally got me activated! It was the 5th time I had spoken to someone in the last 20 hours.

Worked for me too. Thanks. After 23h, half of them spent on the phone with either AT&T or Apple, each side blaming the other, punched in the number we'd gotten in e-mail last night into the number above, got sent to a rep who said snidely our plan was wrong (this after countless AT&T reps said our plan was fine).
She was about to transfer me out again, but I vented for a few minutes about it, and within 5 minutes we were activated and playing with the phone.

Thanks to this forum thread, it was quite helpful.
 
Already activated?

Porting a number over from Sprint, to join a preexisting AT&T account.

Was told last night and again this morning that it's been successfully activated. Nobody can tell me why I haven't received the e-mail yet.

It shows up on my AT&T account, I have successfully worked to convert the rate plan to a family plan, but no magic e-mail.

8:46pm eastern: activation timed out
2:39pm eastern: "we are currently processing your order" e-mail

And now? Nothing. My old phone still works for incoming/outgoing calls.

Anybody been through a similar process with any success?
 
It appears my first problem, after 16 hours and many phone calls, was related to being on an old "blue" plan from prior to the ATT/Cingular merger. I got the plan thing fixed by going to the Cingular store that I purchased the phone at. Within an hour I got an email that my plan was not compatible with iphone. So I called, several times and found the problem to be that I had a government discount associated with my plan. I called back to my local store to fix this as the 800 number said they couldn't do it. After fixing that, I am now on hold with a woman that seems to be making some progress. 18 hours in and no iphone. I hope to someday actually be able to utilize my $600 device. Thank you ATT for thinking of such a comprehensive system. 18 hours in at this point. Thanks to so many for posting so many tips, helped me get ahead of the ATT folks that have no clue.
 
I called that number too just now, and they finally got me activated! It was the 5th time I had spoken to someone in the last 20 hours.

I called that number after the fifth activation e-mail I've gotten. Got a non-native english speaker who was utterly unhelpful.
 
update on me

23 hours exactly, somewhere around 3 on phone, notthing doing, tried explaining how some have gotten manually pushed, they had no idea, the best # i called was 18774194506, couldnt help but were pretty knwledgable, and nice, they told me to try the sim card thing, didnt do anything. Getting angry, yelled at manager on last call, got activation fee waved and no bill for last 2 days with out it, and now have no cell,

PS told could be another 24 hrs

now on hold again, finally a guy says he sees a reason in conflicting features, FINALLY MAYBE I WILL BE DONE WITH THIS MUSIC AND ONTO MY IPHONE!
 
THE BEAST IS ALIVE!!!

SO something weird happened


I took out the Sim card and I could still use WIFI, is that suppose to be the case?????

no sim card can still use wifi and all features internet based?

It was activated using my old sim , so i took it out and put my new sim in there while it was on and it told me to activate, i run itunes and bam DONE!
 
AT&T Current Customers Old Plan

applehappy is right. I had a similar situation. Old AT&T plan was 400 mins and I had a corp discount on my account. Just called and waited over an hour on hold. The woman was nice and helpful. You can't get mad at these people they're doing their best. Anyhoo, she converted my account to an account that would switch over to apple's plan properly. I returned to itunes and reset the phone. This time it seemed some communication took place, it loaded for 15-20 seconds, but I again received the cursed "additional time to complete" message. Now I'm waiting again. I'm hoping the email comes this time and (I never got one last time around). My account info is already updated on the AT&T wireless website, so hopefully it will come soon. Anyone else in this situation? How long did it take to get the email?
 
Sprint Porting

Got off the phone with somebody at AT&T who was totally checked out. She said (and confirmed with a supervisor) that I need to first release the number from Sprint before I can move forward with activation.

FWIW, Sprint then said that they automatically cancel accounts and release numbers when that is requested from another carrier.

So now I'm back on the line with AT&T.

I am having a great weekend.
 
Got off the phone with somebody at AT&T who was totally checked out. She said (and confirmed with a supervisor) that I need to first release the number from Sprint before I can move forward with activation.

FWIW, Sprint then said that they automatically cancel accounts and release numbers when that is requested from another carrier.

So now I'm back on the line with AT&T.

I am having a great weekend.

I got the same from ATT, I'm porting from Helio which uses sprint's network. I called Helio up to tell them to release my number, but I was told that they don't work weekends, bastards. So I think I won't have my iphone activated until Monday.:mad:
Well I think I gonna go out and try to forget about this!!!
 
Just for kicks... and lack of anything else to do this Saturday afternoon, I have compiled this list of activations based on posts since this noon

Successful Activations (28)
Big-TDI-Guy
Catgofire
DreaminDirector
dusigns
fireworks501
Flowbee
foobarallen
Furgster
gcrowell
hamedatl
Hammer God
Jeffrey903
Jsimon9633
Kinetic
kyber
Lazernet
macanudo
nt5672
Omegamanstyle
pkpkast
plumbingandtech
runplaysleeprun
s1zeRo
Slappy32
SNF Mixer
Stewie
tasslehawf
thecityatnight

And the rest who are trying (62)
///M Power
/dev/toaster
applehappy
AtariAge
avkills
blackbook
boeingair
brackle
Bradley W
chicat
ciscokidd
djbeeker
docal97
eddiewouldcode
eric09
Freakk123
goon315
ichris2
imationx
jbomber
jmacdonagh
jsneedles91
kemer
kop
LoganK
M3Jedi77
magicmoof
mattportner
maveness
maxlee
mickeyd26
milkmanamok
Nagooya
nicoleva
NIHMacAddict
nkkumi01
Oglikn
petsounds
phigment
pulpdoc
PuterSaurus
robhedin
rxden
sabr
scoobierules
sdotbailey
ShellyFM
shk718
ShockerMan4x4
SixSlinger
sixth
SPUY767
SpyderFCS
SteveM8
sumsugar
thejoshu
tortfeasor
tranced25
TurboPGT
uNext
varscsak
Zolk
 
Got off the phone with somebody at AT&T who was totally checked out. She said (and confirmed with a supervisor) that I need to first release the number from Sprint before I can move forward with activation.

FWIW, Sprint then said that they automatically cancel accounts and release numbers when that is requested from another carrier.

So now I'm back on the line with AT&T.

I am having a great weekend.

They are telling me the same thing about moving from Alltel.
 
Well I just got up, been sleeping to try and keep my mind off it, phone still does not work, calling the phone number (I kept my existing at&t number) dumps me into voice mail.

Still have the "when hell freezes over message" and have not received any emails.

Tonight or Sunday might entail a trip to the Apple store to kick someone's ass.

I'm glad some of you are finally getting activated. It seems quite odd that they did not expect this much buying and activating, you would have thought they would have the backbone to handle every phone they threw at the market.

-mark
 
it's been over 14 hours... just got off the phone with at&t. CS rep was like it'll take about 24 hours from the start. i was like, wtf?~! why so long? he said that they didn't expect all the activations to come at once like this and their [at&t's] systems are currently overwhelmed... i was like you had SIX MONTHS time and you knew that it would be like this you J**KA$$~! i was like, this is ridiculous! and i hung up. i swear, if it's not done within 24 hours from when i started, someone better hold me back... i really think they should compensate us for this down time and inconvenience. they had MORE than enough time to prepare and train for this. not helping people's opinions/feelings towards at&t either... :mad:
 
This is ridiculous

What a bunch of f*cking d**che bags. 24 hours after launch and we still can't get our d*mn f*cking phone activated. Do not even think about charging me "a one time activation fee". Can we say class action lawsuit.
 
I now past the 23 hr mark :(
And I'm getting tired of calling them and listening to the same bull again and again.
I don't know whose fault this is but on Monday I call Apples customer relations and give them a ear full about this, and maybe send an email to Jobs too, not that he will actually answer me.

I think we all should do so to let them know how unhappy this has made us.
 
After several calls to ATT and 2 to Apple.....

I called 1-877-419-4500 (as someone else posted earlier) and told the person that I was trying to activate my iPhone since yesterday. After she told me to do the obvious (like connecting it to iTunes) she put me on hold to look into the problem.

After about 10 minutes she told me they identified the problem on my account (but didn't specify what it was) and that it would be working within the hour.

I left to go to the grocery store...but 1 minute after I left I got an email saying:

Congratulations, AT&T is now transferring your existing mobile number to this iPhone.

Your iPhone may now make outgoing calls but will be unable to receive calls on your existing mobile number until the transfer is complete.

You will receive an email confirmation once your mobile number transfer is complete. If you have not done so already, please connect your iPhone to your computer now to complete this activation (or click here if your iPhone is already connected).​

I was then able to go into iTunes and it activated the phone and is now syncing.

My iBrick is now a one-way iPhone. :D I don't care about the number port...I'm just glad I can play now!

I think the moral of the story is call every number you get your hands on until it's working. I think if I hadn't called it would still be stuck in limbo.

Good luck,

Lon
 
Update

Just got off the phone with AT&T porting dept. Clarence is insisting that I leave the iPhone connected to the dock attached to the computer with iTunes running before it can be activated. He also said that it will be 24-72(!) hours before it will work.

This is BS. 72 hours? Are they serious, or just trying to curb call-ins?

WTF?

I think I am going to the AT&T store.
 
I've made two phone calls and one trip to the AT&T Store. The people at the store, while completely unhelpful, were pretty cool. They say that Apple has given them no access to be able to switch sim cards and all that. Im pretty sure they knew i didnt believe them, but whatever. They said that the AT&T system had my phone as active, so they won't credit my account if it doesnt turn on for however long. its basically been 23:30 for me, and nothing yet.

I've also made two phone calls to numbers listed here where others appear to have gotten through to someone that has helped, and the apple people say they're backed up, the at&t people say that everything is cool, just to wait.

pretty long wait, IMO.

i love the list of activees/non-activees, should post that on USA Today or sommat.

im going to this party, and taking a non-working iphone with me. i dont want the dog to eat it while im out!


:D
 
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