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iPhone Activation Issues

my tmobile number now forwards to my att.

I am golden.

I went out tonight and used it 4 times

a) check a bookmark (iphone had it)
b) write down the name of a hearburn pill. (iphone notes.)
c) checked if a dvd my friend rec'd was in my netflix que
d) got emails.

I love this thing. It is already a part of my life.
 
progress?

ok... i called at&t for what i hope is the last time.

i spoke with a really tired sounding, really helpful guy who tried to activate my phone. he then told me that, even though t-mobile said they released my existing number, it was ineligible for porting. so, i caved. he sent me an email stating that all i had to do was insert (or reinsert) the iPhone and redo the activation process without asking to port a number.

so, i did that, and received my first email after the initial three minute wait that they will email me when the activation is complete.

the CRS told me that it should not take me the 26 hours i wasted with trying to port and should have it "very soon".

i'm quite happy with this progress, although i did have to compromise a bit. so, people will have to change their phonebook entries for me. that's all.

i might even sleep tonight.

:)?
 
This is so stupid!!!!

It's late, 28 hours late. Before this iphone activated. AT&T sure put one over on us!

This is what I did to finally activate my phone.

We have an AT&T family plan, with 3 phones. My intent was to activate my iphone using my current cell phone number.

I filled in the activation forms in iTunes, and I was told to wait for an email. The email, of course never came. 28 hours and counting.

I spent hours on the phone with AT&T trying to get my phone activated. I wasted a whole day.

It's late on Saturday night. I tried something really odd. I took my wife's sim card out of her phone, a Motorola v551. Then I popped out the sim card from the iphone, and replaced it with my wife's sim card.

Connected to iTunes, and the activation process popped up! So I filled in all the forms, and, and, my iphone activated! With my wife's old sim card in the iphone.

This is so weird. Love to hear from someone else, if the works for you.

And we are trapped for 2 years with AT&T!


Joe Gomolski
 
well i'm going to bed i give up. assuming there is no magic "your iphone has been activated" email in my inbox tomorrow morning, i will go to the att store. by then, it will have been 40 FREAKING HOURS since i first plugged iphone into my macbook. i'd say theres a 20% chance my iphone will magically activate itself.
 
brackle said:
This is for everyone porting from another carrier. Cancel your activation and start over by getting a new number from AT&T. Tomorrow you can call their porting department to get your old number transfered over. My phone is activated now.
Click to expand...

I was instructed to do this earlier today. Now my account has been completely butchered. I am getting two sets of emails referencing different Activation IDs, the original ID now says I am activated, the other one is says it needs more information. At first my second activation attempt even reused my old activation ID, which the customer service rep said he 'never seen before'. The original order was never canceled properly and now my existing Verizon phone has been cut off. If I didn't happen to receive a Blackberry last week from work I would be without a way to even call AT&T support. I had one agent say there is problem at the porting office (which is closed till tomorrow morning), but I am not completely convinced the fact that I have two activation requests for the same phone isn't screwing something up.
 
Update on mine, 25 hours later

It FINALLY activated after 25 hours. I got the emails and plugged it in and its all set and working. I gave up hope at 24 hours and then at 25 it happened! Hopefully everyone else will get set up ASAP. Good luck!
 
Waiting for the past 27 hours

I just got off the phone with AT&T and they told me that my port is scheduled for July 10th... and which by the way puts me on the edge of the 14 day trial thing.. Oh yeah if I chose to return the phone now base don the horrible experience, I would have to pay the re-stocking fee.

This sucks.

The rep mentioned that if they try and cancel my activation request they might screw up things more...

Any suggestions?

Did I say this sucks - this absolutely sucks.
 
My Apple store trip did not help one bit. I am going to go to the ATT store and get a new SIM card, going to bring my laptop also; and I am not going to leave until it starts working.

Man, talk about the biggest pooch screw.

-mark
 
Re: iTunes "harvesting" sign-in error message?

TheSlush said:
During my iPhone activation, on the "iTunes Account" screen where it asks for my account name and password, it won't let me sign in. Instead it gives me this strange red error message: "This person record requires harvesting."

But when I log in through the iTunes Store (with no problems) it shows that all my information is complete, accurate, and up-to-date.

So what gives?? Anybody?? :confused:
Click to expand...

jrjazzman said:
I got the same message. I ended up creating a new account.
Click to expand...

Well, I figured out what this harvesting thing means (no thanks to Apple Support, who claimed that they had "never received this complaint before.") It means your account requires additional information that apparently can only be submitted via Apple's website. I logged in at apple.com using my iTunes account name and password. It then asked me for my birthdate and an if-you-forget-your-password question+answer. Filling out this additional information at apple.com apparently is the key to "harvesting your person record." After this, I was able to proceed with the iPhone activation process.

This harvesting error is very cryptic, unclear, and user-unfriendly... very un-Applelike!
 
This worked for me

Just wanted to remind people to try this - it worked for me and wanted to share. And judging by the most recent posts, it seems that iTunes may be part of the problem by not recognizing the activated sims, and you have to force it to read the new info on the sim....

This works ONLY if your *SIM* has already been activated by ATT and your account has been set up - BUT you are still awaiting "iphone activation" after many hours...

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!
Click to expand...
Now I'm also wondering, if you don't have a spare SIM on hand, what would happen if you removed the iphone sim, and turned it on, put back in the cradle (without a sim), and then relaunched iTunes? Assuming that you'd get a simaler error message - then put the iphone sim back in the iphone and back on the cradle, you may be able to get the same results....

It's really looking like iTunes needs to be "reset" and acknowledge an activated SIM card.... Sorry, it's late, so hope this makes sense, lol
 
aimfire said:
Just wanted to remind people to try this - it worked for me and wanted to share. And judging by the most recent posts, it seems that iTunes may be part of the problem by not recognizing the activated sims, and you have to force it to read the new info on the sim....

This works ONLY if your *SIM* has already been activated by ATT and your account has been set up - BUT you are still awaiting "iphone activation" after many hours...


Now I'm also wondering, if you don't have a spare SIM on hand, what would happen if you removed the iphone sim, and turned it on, put back in the cradle (without a sim), and then relaunched iTunes? Assuming that you'd get a simaler error message - then put the iphone sim back in the iphone and back on the cradle, you may be able to get the same results....

It's really looking like iTunes needs to be "reset" and acknowledge an activated SIM card.... Sorry, it's late, so hope this makes sense, lol
Click to expand...

I just tried this... no luck. Although, it might be because itunes pops up an error box and does not even attempt to connect to the network like it usually does. I'm thinking that the itunes servers never get word from your computer that you hooked up an iphone sans sim card. However, I bet in your case, it checked with the itunes servers.

*According to AT&T, I was activated almost 24 hours ago. 38 hours and counting total.*
 
Im with you.

38 ***** hours and NOTHING

this is such a letdown.

none of the numbers ive called have helped me

AT&T store hasnt helped me.

im just sitting here, waiting for what?

:(
 
goon315 said:
Im with you.

38 ***** hours and NOTHING

this is such a letdown.

none of the numbers ive called have helped me

AT&T store hasnt helped me.

im just sitting here, waiting for what?

:(
Click to expand...

Did you try to get a new sim card from at&t and start the process over? I was thinking of trying that. I will open a whole new account. Then, call after the fact and cancel the first account.
 
ok, so after 39 or so hours, and about 50 calls to att asking them to make sure my information is correct, I get the "att has identified a problem with you account" email.....Lady said she's giving it to manual processing and could take up to 6 hours. UGH
 
Now on 22 hours and still no activation. If nothing happens in a few more hours, I'm going to head to an AT&T store and try to get a new SIM.

Being an old "blue" customer, I currently have absolutely no cell phone service. My old SIM is deactivated and my iPhone SIM will not work in my legacy AT&T Wireless device.
 
38+ hours and NO JOY

My last round of interaction with AT&T involved 3 hours on hold. They claim the phone is "activated," yet I never received the activation email, and it is still functionally a brick. Furthermore, my previous (other carrier) service has yet to be disconnected.

The last bit of counsel was: remove the iPhone from the dock, turn it off, wait 20 minutes, turn it back on, reconnect to iTunes, and you should receive the activation email after 5 minutes.

Needless to say, this absolutely DID NOT WORK.

I am taking the phone in to an AT&T store this afternoon, and I will not leave until I have satisfaction.

What a royal MESS.
 
Just called and canceled my activation. Started over without porting a number, and no text messaging package... Still needs more time to activate. For people that canceled and started over, how long did the activation take without porting?
 
23 hours now. AT&T was no help whatsoever. On hold with Apple now. If this doesn't do it, I'm heading to the AT&T store at noon. I expect I'll have lots of company.
 
Try new or different sim

after 24 hours of waiting, I took the sim form my old phone, put it in the iPhone and started activation process again. Three minutes later (or less), I was up and running:) :)
PS. existing ATT customer
 
So how long on average is it taking people to port over their numbers (for those who are successful that is)? I just received the email with my order number and to wait for the activation email. I am on T-mobile... I should've came here first and read about not porting first and doing that after activation... :(
 
took 40 hours but I'm finally up and running. Had to call ATT and get them to manually push the activation. The girl I was talking to on the phone almost sounded like she was going to start crying when I told her I got the activation email....what a cluster.
 
Former Blue Still waiting 36hrs

Zolk said:
Now on 22 hours and still no activation. If nothing happens in a few more hours, I'm going to head to an AT&T store and try to get a new SIM.

Being an old "blue" customer, I currently have absolutely no cell phone service. My old SIM is deactivated and my iPhone SIM will not work in my legacy AT&T Wireless device.
Click to expand...

I am in the same situation, i'm now on the phone with apple..

All I know is that apple/itunes logs our phones via our sim number. Since our iphones had to be activated manually from AT&T, the auto message, the one that would be sent to apple/itunes to tell them everything is set, was never done.

For former at&t blue customers it appears that both apple and at&t are to blame. They didnt prepare incase of the need for manual activations. :mad:
 
Well, you can now add me to the

FINALLY!!!!!!

category. An hour or so ago I got an email from AT&T stating that, "Your current AT&T rate plan is not compatible with the iPhone." This, after I *know* the plan was changed yesterday at about 1pm since I was an old AT&T "blue" customer. I called the number in the email (877-419-4500) and spoke with someone who said the plan looks fine, but that she was going to transfer me to their technical department to see if they could help.

She first gave me the number she was transferring me to (the 877-800-3701 number), and after about 40 minutes someone finally answered. I was expecting another, "Your plan looks fine, you just need to wait" response, but after putting me on hold twice, she finally found a problem with the account. She said a feature was missing that was preventing the activation from going through. She first asked me to make sure the phone was off, then put me on hold again to fix the account. When she came back a few minutes later she asked me to turn the phone back on and to report what I saw. The "Please activate phone" message. She then asked me to plug the phone into the computer. Upon doing so, the phone activated right away! I could not believe it! She then called the phone to verify that it was working, which indeed it is..

So, after nearly 40 hours, I now have a working iPhone! For those of you who are original "blue" AT&T (pre-Cingular) customers, I suggest calling the 3701 number and asking the rep to make damn sure there are no conflicting options on your plan and that you have everything needed for the iPhone to be properly activated. If so, it would seem they can manually activate the phone and wait on the line to verify that your phone activated. It's definitely hit and miss--of several calls I've made to AT&T, this was the first one where a rep even acknowledged that the phone could be manually activated.

I also immediately received the "Activation Complete!" email once the phone was activated, so the holdup here really does seem to be AT&T and not Apple (at least in my case this is certainly the fact).

I hope everyone who is still waiting is able to get their phone (or phones) activated today. I know how frustrating it is, especially since my old phone had already been deactivated and my new iPhone SIM would not work in the old phone. If you have time I would keep trying the above number until you get a CSR who knows what's going on, barring porting issues from other carriers.. I will keep checking this thread.

..Al
 
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