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iPhone Activation Issues

Misery loves company?

The only thing comforting about the Activation Hell I'm living is that we're keeping each other company. I'm now on a quest to set the record for longest activation in AT&T history. I'm going to bed hoping for better results on day four. Read about my saga at:

http://retromaccast.blogspot.com/
 
All right, so has anyone gone with the prepaid option?

I did and now anytime i use the internet or anything it says something like.. " Your last transaction cost $.05 USD, you have $36.83 Remaining" and gives the amount of minutes left.. weird. I thought it was all unlimited..
 
soooo now its 7 hrs and i still have no cellular/edge service... i just got off the phone (3701) and the lady said she tried re-sending the activation twice and now i just have to wait... (same old story)


what a bunch of hoops you gotta jump just to use an upgraded device?? att has ruin any credibility i had from the 8 or 9 years ive been using mobile phones


I JUST WANT EVERYTHING TO WORK LIKE IT SHOULD!!!!


anyone else still having cellular/edge service problems?
 
Your kidding me!

Finally got my phone number ported and ready to use the phone and the speaker does not work. 72 Hours and still not resolved. I had to deal with the ATT store and Apple to determine who was going to switch the phone. No one wants to do it as they say it is the other parties problem.


I am about ready to forget the whole deal. This sucks!!!
 
Finally, after 48+ hours it's active...

But it seems to not want to go out to the internet. It's picking up my wifi, (apple express) but it declares I don't have edge, and will not go out to any internet site.

I'm clueless, anyone have an idea?

win
 
Finally

okay. i am FINALLY activated as of 8 PM tonight. that's a total of 40 HOURS! stick with it, because the f***er is totally worth it.

i'm now syncing. good luck to all and thanks for all the support!
 
Turn off your old phones!!!!

After 40 hours I finally got someone that told me to make sure that my phone with T-Mobile is completely off. And after 30 minutes, I finally got the magical email from iTunesStore. Please give this a try!!!

Congratulations, AT&T has successfully transferred your existing mobile number.

Your iPhone mobile number is:

###-###-####
 
an ATT rep told me that you can't use any SIM card. You need a card that was made for the iphone or some jumbo like that. but it seems from this thread that people just went to the att store and got any new sim card. does anyone know anything about this. the rep told me that i would have to go to the apple store to get a special iphone sim card. which is the truth?
 
zhensun said:
an ATT rep told me that you can't use any SIM card. You need a card that was made for the iphone or some jumbo like that. but it seems from this thread that people just went to the att store and got any new sim card. does anyone know anything about this. the rep told me that i would have to go to the apple store to get a special iphone sim card. which is the truth?
Click to expand...

Mine activated w/o problem with a new SIM the guy handed me from a stack he had beside his workstation. CLEARLY was not any "special" iPhone SIM card. Go to AT&T and get the card and try it yourself.
 
40+ hours for me as a former BLUE PLAN member...3701 number worked...got a CS rep who needed to add some feature to my plan and now it's up and running!

BLUE PLAN members who were forced to change their plans, anyone get a good deal?
 
Been almost 8 hours: no activation number, no iPhone number, no confirmation email. Called various Apple/AT&T numbers but each told me there is a bottleneck and they didn't expect this much volume.

Just want the thing to activate.
 
mmccaskill said:
Been almost 8 hours: no activation number, no iPhone number, no confirmation email. Called various Apple/AT&T numbers but each told me there is a bottleneck and they didn't expect this much volume.

Just want the thing to activate.
Click to expand...

Do u have to pay the restock fee if you cannot get it activated?
 
Threw the towel in at 44 hours today.

5 hours later while showing off the iBrick it started picking up a signal. Don't know how or what did it but it works.

My last phone call was 877-777-4189 and the tech guy told me if your iTunes billing address was different than the ATT billing address you could have problems. Mine was just that. I had a PO Box on the iTunes for my credit card but physical address with ATT. I changed it within iTunes but didn't see an immediate response so gave up.

It works now.
 
My Experience

I am sure that one more person explaining their experience is a drag, but here goes.

I began the activation of my phone on June 28th at 8:23 PM with a port of a number from Verizon. After 12 hours I began the calling cycle that everyone here is talking about. There are several problems with the "solutions" everyone is posting. The first seems to be that the 3701 number doesn't actually get you to someone who works at AT&T. You get to a hired phone bank employed to handle the extra call volume from the iPhone launch. To speak with an AT&T rep call the activation number, 2500. They are the people who can actually look at the processing of your account. The Port number (its here in the forum somewhere) can tell you if your number has been ported. Call them to and have them put in another request, but know that your current phone services will be deactivated before your iPhone is activated.

I spoke at length with an Activation specialist who explained that there have been several glitches in the system between the automated process begun by iTunes and the computers that activate the wireless line at AT&T. The real issue is that there isn't one glitch but dozens compounded by incredible volume. I would call and check on your activation status using the 3701 number option 3, but if they say there is a problem do not wait to be transferred since the person that answers the phone will only be able to help you if your account is missing some information or something. If your activation has been caught up in a glitch the Activation number is the only one that brought me results.

My problem was that iTunes/Apple put an incomplete code down for my choice of plan and the AT&T techs could not go in and delete the errornious code and add a the correct code. For me the correct type of plan is coded as mmv1.

What I found out was that if there is a miscode in your plan, no matter if everything else is ok, the phone cannot be activated. The activation tech I spoke with was working 12 hours shifts and they were assigning tons of techs to work on the bugs as they are identified.

Believe it or not the 3701 people actually gave me the number to Apple care to call and get my problem fixed thats how untrained they are.

One thing I will say is however infuriating it is, you should call and talk to the techs at the activation line since your phone might be some new unidentified glitch and by calling you alert them to the problem. It won't be fun and you might want to sit down and have a beer while you wait, but after waiting 38 hours, I am very happy to have a working phone, and I was able to begin forgetting about yelling at the idiots at Apple Care and the 3701 iPhone support line.

Good Luck
 
Porting by phone

Can any one report on their experience of ordering a new number from att then porting their old mobile number via phone? How long did the porting process take?
 
My original NEW SIM IDEA

UPDATE: i posted some advice earlier to those (including myself) who waited like 40 hours to get the iPhone to work. Activated the sim the iphone came with on friday after i got the unit. waited about 40 hours and then decided to go to the ATT store and get a new sim so i can do the activation process again. BINGO, it worked like a charm within minutes. LIKE IT ORIGINALLY SHOULD HAVE. But i think the problem with my account at least was that i had a discount applied to my original plan that had to be removed but ATT systems could not remove it automatically. SO, everything was up and running until now! Now i do not have any cell service. It says NO SERVICE. IT turns out that the original sim activation finally went through and took service away from my new sim card that activated in minutes.. Also turns out that they cannot put service back onto a sim that service was taken from so all i have to do is get a new sim and everything should be okay. At least i can use the DAMN thing! its sweet! and the edge service is not too bad either.. Shame on ATT.. i think this was an ATT thing, not Apple!
 
48 hours and counting. Finally got to a helpful girl at AT&T who told me my account had a note that I needed a new SIM card. I asked why they couldn't have told me that yesterday and she said it just showed up tonight.

I hope I have the luck that others have had with a new SIM card once I visit the AT&T store tomorrow. *crosses fingers*
 
Hey All,

After wrestling with this damn phone all weekend, I'm throwing in the towel. A damn phone isn't worth it. No matter who I talk to, I can't get it resolved. No one knows what's wrong with the activation, let alone how to resolve it.

All support keeps doing is sending me emails saying "Congratulations, AT&T has successfully transferred your existing mobile number." I'm still unable to send or receive calls, do internet, etc.

I'm taking this awful thing back to the Apple Store. And you better believe I'm not paying any ****ing re-stocking fee because they can't get this piece of **** to work.

I hope you folks have better luck than I. Good luck.
 
jmyhasuk said:
Hey All,

After wrestling with this damn phone all weekend, I'm throwing in the towel. A damn phone isn't worth it. No matter who I talk to, I can't get it resolved. No one knows what's wrong with the activation, let alone how to resolve it.

All support keeps doing is sending me emails saying "Congratulations, AT&T has successfully transferred your existing mobile number." I'm still unable to send or receive calls, do internet, etc.

I'm taking this awful thing back to the Apple Store. And you better believe I'm not paying any ****ing re-stocking fee because they can't get this piece of **** to work.

I hope you folks have better luck than I. Good luck.
Click to expand...

At first I thought this was my post! lol During my last call today, one of the csr's said she couldn't do anything with my account b/c someone 'behind the scenes' was fooling with it. She said it appeared that they were trying to activate it and to give it about an hour or so. I thought yea right and had already made plans to return the phone tomorrow morning. While out with family some 4+ hours later I noticed it started working.

Anyway, I think there are techs (not on the phone) working each individual accounts trying to get everyone up and running. Took me 48 hours to get there myself.

This will definitely be an experience that I won't forgot and I'm sure most here won't either.
 
At long last . . .

I followed many of your advice, and called:
866-801-3600

This appears to be one of the several call centers that the iPhone activation people at AT&T themselves call when they are stumped. The woman was exceedingly understanding of my utter frustration (45 hours and they had deactivated my working blackberry all that time). Unfortunately she didn't handle my account on her system (maybe it's geographical) but she got me to another person equally as nice and useful. That person promptly changed a setting, put me on hold to review it with somebody else, and while I waited for her, the magical, fairy-tale email descended upon my inbox like a unicorn from a fable, and the phone miraculously unlocked via iTunes.

I was actually interviewed by the Wall Street Journal about all this. The story will be in tomorrow's print edition and is already online on their site.

Bottom line is don't wait for it to happen if you've hit that 24+ mark. Not that it won't, as I suspect they are manually auditing all these accounts, but pushing and pushing and calling and calling does, indeed, seem to get results. Anybody at AT&T that tells you 'just wait' or blames it on Apple is clueless and you should not take that answer as legit. On a positive note, it seems as the process has evolved, they are getting better at fixing the problems and are less likely to give that answer.

Or do what my friends told me to do and wait for iPhone 2.0!

(The device is, however, absolutely amazing - worth the wait and hassle? Probably).

Oh and they also credited me a month of my basic services and activation fee.

Good luck. It is unfortunate so many people have had these problems, but the device and services appear to be worth the hype entirely.
 
New SIM Card follow-up

Hi,

I posted earlier about being an existing AT&T with a business discount plan for a BB Pearl and going out to get a new SIM card after waiting until late Sunday for activation. This has been successful... and now I have received two activation messages. In spite of connecting my iPhone to iTunes since, I still have a working phone and a connection to the AT&T network. I haven't experienced what the other poster said about having his cell service cut off and having to pick up a new SIM Card from AT&T the next day. But, now that I've posted this, bad luck will probably come my way ;-). Keeping my fingers just in case.

I would expect that something negative has got to be coming the way of anyone who abandoned a hung activation for a new SIM card... will post again when the other shoe drops.

BTW - iPhone is outstanding. Love this device already.
 
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