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iPhone Activation Issues

877-419-4500

She said that she "Deactivated, then Reactivated the Sim Card". She was trying it just for the heck of it, but as soon as she did, I got my email. She has dispatched an email to all of her coworkers regarding this. Her name is Marti and I reached her by calling the 877-419-4500 number. So if you call that number, you may get it activated due to the fact that she mass-emailed her coworkers about it.
Click to expand...
Ok, THAT is the ATT number to call - the other one (877-800-3701) is completely useless! The people at the 4500 number actually know what's going on... here's what I learned:

- Rep said she cannot deactivate the sim card, that would only make things worse.

- Do NOT to remove the iphone from cradle or in iTunes. Leave everything on and keep it connected. Otherwise, any reconnections will only delay the process further by 3-4 hours :eek:

- Ignore any ATT rep who tells you to call Apple - this is NOT an Apple problem! It's all ATT (heh, no kidding) ;)

She then admitted that ATT was completely unprepared to handle all the new activations. She said that they were "hoping" things would go smooth, but they all had doubts about it.

She also told me that if your old sim is deactivated and if you have NO service for over 24 hours on both phones, then you are eligible for a service credit

FINALLY, I got someone who actually knew WTF was going on!

The sad part is, she said everything is good to go with my account info, it's just a matter of waiting now... again.

btw, I heard the other reps on the phone in the background... everyone is calling in about iphone activation issues... unreal how bad they F'ed this up
 
any former BLUE members get theirs working? We all got the "your plan isn't compatible with iphone" message and then were sent to the migration dept. upon a phone call where they manually activated the phone and made us change our plans.

But now we're stuck when we try to activate through itunes it just sits there with the old message of waiting for an email, however I already have my order # email and all that. We're activated, just stuck cause I think itunes wasn't prepared to handle a manual activation as such?

I'm on hold waiting to speak to the "synch dept" from AT&T.
?

Anyone with the old blue plan have any luck?
 
this is the worst experience i've ever had with any company... i just got off the phone with 2 different people from 2 different numbers... the first on put me on hold to connect to another department.. came back and said that they were not answering their phones and i could call them at my convenience

the 2 numbers he gave me were
1800myiphon (called this and it told me to call back during normal business hours)
18778003701 (called this and said they were experiencing high volume of calls and to call back later)

i can't f'in believe how much of a nightmare this has become - how hard is it to f'in activate a NEW phone???

i then called the 1-877-419-4500 - the guy said everything on my account looked fine and it is just a waiting game... he told me to hang on for another 24-48 hrs!!!! WTF????
 
the 2 numbers he gave me were
1800myiphon (called this and it told me to call back during normal business hours)
Click to expand...
I was told this is the wrong info by a good ATT rep... she said this is not an Apple problem and any rep telling you this is wrong, Apple can do nothing about it. This is an ATT problem, be persistent and do NOT undock your iPhone or restart iTunes... let everything sit and keep it on
 
This may be a really dumb question but...

I bought the phone at the Apple store and didn't open until I got home. Is there a chance that they needed to have placed a SIM card in the phone but didn't?

Or did these phones come with pre-installed SIM cards?
 
Phone is activated. I replaced the SIM card and restarted the activation process, but I re-registered an iTunes account that matched all the data with the cellular account perfectly. Got to the "This could take three minutes" screen, and within 30 seconds, the phone was active. Hope this helps.
 
23 hours still not activated!

Cadence said:
any former BLUE members get theirs working? We all got the "your plan isn't compatible with iphone" message and then were sent to the migration dept. upon a phone call where they manually activated the phone and made us change our plans.

But now we're stuck when we try to activate through itunes it just sits there with the old message of waiting for an email, however I already have my order # email and all that. We're activated, just stuck cause I think itunes wasn't prepared to handle a manual activation as such?

I'm on hold waiting to speak to the "synch dept" from AT&T.
?

Anyone with the old blue plan have any luck?
Click to expand...


i started the process last night and i checked again this morning. nothing. i called them and the changed my plan into a regular cingular plan then to a iplan. the slvr did not shut off untill they made that change. hopefully that is a good sign that things are moving foward. let me know if any blue members get activated
 
Just hung up the phone (landline!) with a friend who bought two iPhones this afternoon (Saturday). He activated a family plan and the first phone took about 1.5 hours to activate but was dead beyond that. Gets a yield symbol. He activated the second phone on the new family account within minutes.

He was a new ATT customer and no porting.

I'm up to 26 hours waiting for the phone to work....porting from sprint.
 
Cadence said:
any former BLUE members get theirs working? We all got the "your plan isn't compatible with iphone" message and then were sent to the migration dept. upon a phone call where they manually activated the phone and made us change our plans.

But now we're stuck when we try to activate through itunes it just sits there with the old message of waiting for an email, however I already have my order # email and all that. We're activated, just stuck cause I think itunes wasn't prepared to handle a manual activation as such?

I'm on hold waiting to speak to the "synch dept" from AT&T.
?

Anyone with the old blue plan have any luck?
Click to expand...

i guess i'm on the old 'blue plan' since i retained my old att account before the cingular merger.... but ive had a miserable experience as many of you trying to play with my new toy!!! i received an email saying my rate plan was not compatible with the iphone last night - after another hour or so on hold and talking to many reps they straightened out my account and said i should receive the final confirmation w/in 24hrs - its obviously elapsed that period and they are only telling people to wait another 24-48 hrs... great customer service
 
Cadence said:
any former BLUE members get theirs working? We all got the "your plan isn't compatible with iphone" message and then were sent to the migration dept. upon a phone call where they manually activated the phone and made us change our plans.

But now we're stuck when we try to activate through itunes it just sits there with the old message of waiting for an email, however I already have my order # email and all that. We're activated, just stuck cause I think itunes wasn't prepared to handle a manual activation as such?

I'm on hold waiting to speak to the "synch dept" from AT&T.
?

Anyone with the old blue plan have any luck?
Click to expand...
I'm in the same boat as you--no luck so far. I still haven't even received an order # email! No emails at all since the initial "We are processing your activation" email I got yesterday at 8pm when I first tried to activate my phone.

Just how many "departments" does AT&T have? It's ridiculous, talk about an overbloated bureaucracy--it's no wonder there is so much confusion and so many different answers from customer service reps.

..Al
 
More strange **** is happening!

I called 877-800-3701 and chose option 3 to hear the status of my activation. It reports my phone is activated and should be able to use all it's features. The funny thing is I called that number with my old carrier phone, my old phone still sends/receives calls, and I never gotten the magic activation email. I work in IT, don't they know better never launch anything on a Friday, I don't ****ing believe it.
 
Unsung hero

Oh

Sweet

Jesusphone....

:eek:

So it turns out there IS a difference when you call 877.800.3701

Some call centers are actual ATT employees and others are outsourced people with no power.

Right on the 24th hour, I called and got in touch with some ACTUAL ATT call center people. I spoke to a super helpful woman who was a little hoarse, named Deborah. She totally checked over the entire account, and then got things up and running. She was totally helpful, and knew exactly what she was doing. My own personal iPhone savior. I'm FINALLY up and running.

The thing to do is to call the number and ask if you're speaking with actual AT&T employees. If not, you might as well hang up and try again.

THANKS DEBORAH!
 
Mass Returns

It is over 24 hours now with my iphone. It looks nice but still waiting for that activation. Talked to AT&T twice. Basically they say it is Apple's fault. I am an existing AT&T customer and just was switching over to the iPhone data plan. If this is not solved by Monday morning I am encouraging ALL OF US to return the iPhone to AT&T and demand them not to charge the restock fee. You can't charge somebody $600 for a non-functioning device. OUTRAGEOUS! It is time we unite and have our voices heard. Monday morning there will be lines at the AT&T stores. I bought an iPhone not an iBrick.
 
Former Blue..Still waiting 26hrs

I was just informed that my sim although reflecting in AT&T's account system as being activated, it is not. They tried to send data directly to my sim card and their system response came back that the sim is not active. On the account screen it says everything is Ok yet when they test it with an update the sim is obviously not..

Going to the AT&T store tomorrow to have them replace the sim...

For many former blue who had their iphones manually activated (because we had no other choice) it seems best to go to an AT&T store to demand a new sim.. if that doesn't work, grab the demo and run.....

As a test any former blue customers who's account is supposedly activated can call the 877 419 4500 number ask them to send an update to the sim to see the response..If its really active then AT&T will be able to tell. At least we can slowly begin to trouble shoot if anything..
 
Great Success!!

I read this trick over on the Apple forums - it worked for me!!
My iphone is finally activated after 20 hours!! :)

Ok, you need an extra SIM card - one from your old deactivated cell phone, or someone elses. In my case, I used my old ATT sim card which had been deactivated.

- Take your iphone out of the cradle, turn it off, remove sim card

- Put the other "spare" SIM card in iPhone

- Put iphone back into cradle, turn it on and launch iTunes

- In iTunes and on the iPhone, you'll get an error message saying that the sim is not valid with the iphone - this is what you want!

- Take out the iPhone, shut it off, and then put back the original SIM that came with iphone

- Put it back in the cradle, it will show up in iTunes

- In my case, I got a "Your iPhone has been activated!" message and my iphone is actually working - wooohooo... about damn time!!


Not sure why this works exactly... almost like iphone and itunes need to be forced to start from scratch or something...

Let me know if it works for you... I waited for 20 hours for activation and this finally worked. Good luck!


UPDATE: I also just received an "Activation Complete" email from ITunes after doing this.
"Congratulations, AT&T has successfully activated your iPhone service."
 
To all my OLD BLUE plan buddies,

The latest I got from them is well...to wait. Again. According to the latest rep she said my plan is still migrating (even though it was done on the phone hours ago) and the status is pending. So I'm not sure if us migrators are just waiting for something to go through the system or we're sitting like ducks cause they havn't set up a proper system to migrate our old accounts for iphone.

BTW, did any of you retain your old blue plan? They forced me to sign up for a new iphone plan but gave me 200 additional mins and 1000 rollover minutes. This is a decrease as I previously had 850 minutes, unlimited n/w starting at 7pm. I now have 650 (450+200) mins, 5,000 nw starting at 9.
 
jbomber said:
Oh

Sweet

Jesusphone....

:eek:

So it turns out there IS a difference when you call 877.800.3701

Some call centers are actual ATT employees and others are outsourced people with no power.

Right on the 24th hour, I called and got in touch with some ACTUAL ATT call center people. I spoke to a super helpful woman who was a little hoarse, named Deborah. She totally checked over the entire account, and then got things up and running. She was totally helpful, and knew exactly what she was doing. My own personal iPhone savior. I'm FINALLY up and running.

The thing to do is to call the number and ask if you're speaking with actual AT&T employees. If not, you might as well hang up and try again.

THANKS DEBORAH!
Click to expand...

Did you have to receive an e-mail with a iTunes link to get it unlocked?
 
NeuronBasher said:
My other iPhone worked essentially instantly after I got the email telling me that I should be able to make outgoing calls, and the port of it's number from Verizon finished up this afternoon, so I'm at a loss.

Anyone else seeing the "No Service" in the corner?
Click to expand...

This is the exact situation that I'm in, except that I don't have another iPhone to verify that it's even possible that it will work. I'm just stuck at No Service. If you find a resolution to this problem, drop me a PM and let me know what you did.
 
Cadence said:
To all my OLD BLUE plan buddies,

The latest I got from them is well...to wait. Again. According to the latest rep she said my plan is still migrating (even though it was done on the phone hours ago) and the status is pending. So I'm not sure if us migrators are just waiting for something to go through the system or we're sitting like ducks cause they havn't set up a proper system to migrate our old accounts for iphone.

BTW, did any of you retain your old blue plan? They forced me to sign up for a new iphone plan but gave me 200 additional mins and 1000 rollover minutes. This is a decrease as I previously had 850 minutes, unlimited n/w starting at 7pm. I now have 650 (450+200) mins, 5,000 nw starting at 9.
Click to expand...

What did it cost you?
 
roblogic said:
First of all, thanks to all here for the info and moral support, it's made my 22 hour iPhone activation adventure bearable.

Folks, it you've received your "order number" email and are still waiting on your activation email, call the 877 800 3701 number, and choose option 3 for a status check. You'll enter your order number and get an automated response. If there's something holding up your activation, you'll be transferred to a live rep who can manually activate your phone.

My wife & I are long-time Cingular/AT&T customers with a family plan. We picked up a pair of iPhones at the Raleigh Apple store last night (in and out in 5 minutes) and have been trying to get them activated since around midnight EST. We had some problems with our account (a corporate account flag, no idea where that came from) that an AT&T rep helped us iron out, at which point we got the "processing activation" email from the iTunes store. Then nothing until about 3:00 this afternoon, when we both received the "order number" emails within minutes of eachother. A couple of hours later, my wife got the final activation email, unlocked her phone, and there was much rejoicing. While I waited. And waited. After about 4 hours, I stumbled across ther 800 3701 number here and gave it a call. Come to find out, AT&T needs additional account information to activate my line. Would've been nice of them to you know, send me an email to that effect, rather then having to call and find out. But whatever. After a few minutes on the phone with the rep, she manually activate my phone and all is well.

So the moral of the story is, if you've gotten your order number, and you've been waiting for hours to get your activation, give 'em a call. They CAN straighten it out.
Click to expand...

We tried that three or four times over the course of today, told the first two times it would be activated in X hours, never was. The last couple of times only got an option of leaving voicemail. Going on 29 hours with nada.
 
I am at my Apple store right now, they are going to try and ring AT&T's bell.

I'll post back on what the results are.

-mark
 
aimfire said:
I read this trick over on the Apple forums - it worked for me!!
My iphone is finally activated after 20 hours!! :)

Ok, you need an extra SIM card - one from your old deactivated cell phone, or someone elses. In my case, I used my old ATT sim card which had been deactivated.

- Take your iphone out of the cradle, turn it off, remove sim card

- Put the other "spare" SIM card in iPhone

- Put iphone back into cradle, turn it on and launch iTunes

- In iTunes and on the iPhone, you'll get an error message saying that the sim is not valid with the iphone - this is what you want!

- Take out the iPhone, shut it off, and then put back the original SIM that came with iphone

- Put it back in the cradle, it will show up in iTunes

- In my case, I got a "Your iPhone has been activated!" message and my iphone is actually working - wooohooo... about damn time!!


Not sure why this works exactly... almost like iphone and itunes need to be forced to start from scratch or something...

Let me know if it works for you... I waited for 20 hours for activation and this finally worked. Good luck!


UPDATE: I also just received an "Activation Complete" email from ITunes after doing this.
"Congratulations, AT&T has successfully activated your iPhone service."
Click to expand...

Think it was just your time - I followed your process, and iTunes still says that my activation requires additional time. :(
 
WORK!!! ... 22 hours. I was on the phone with ATT trying to solve the problem when I decided to eject the iPhone, pull it out of the cradle, and then put it back in... and it worked! I got a message saying "Activating with ATT Now"

Try it. I never got an email from ATT.

Seems all is well now...
 
OziMac said:
Think it was just your time - I followed your process, and iTunes still says that my activation requires additional time. :(
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm in the same boat (old Blue plan) and the SIM card switch didn't work. :(
 
activation cancelled -

here is a good one for you guys - i am on the phone since yesterday at 730 - getting the ole wait for the jesus email which would bring prosperity - so 24 hours later (tonight) i finally get a rep who tells me that the original activation had errors or something because i am porting from verizon - so we confirm everything and everything is correct - so she says - oh it was in an on hold bucket since last night - i said oh really and why did it take 8 reps and 24 hours to finally tell me this - she couldnt obviously explain - so she say ok let me put this through again with a red ticket - everything should be ok now - i hang up - 10 minutes later an email stating my number is non portable and to sign into itunes and establish a new number- WTF - i get back on the phone with them and they say must be on verizons end - so i call verizon ready to raise holy hell - and get the porting center - they tell me they approved the port last night at the exact moment i signed up for att - the vz rep offers to call att with me on the line because he tells me there have been a number of these instances - so we call and boom they are closed - i am now back on hold by myself waiting to talk to the activation center at att - WHAT A JOKE - is this really worth it - i am thinking of just getting an Att number and then porting at a later date once this **** calms down - total bust though - they had 6 months to train these people and they are all clueless - i hope this **** surfaces and someone at apple sees this - i dont see much on the websites about people getting hosed -
 
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