Quick question for those who bought at AT&T Store

[Hecklerdanny]

I've got a question for those of you who purchased your iPhone's at an AT&T store. Do they set them up and register/activate them for you there in the store or do you get to take them home unopened and do it from iTunes? I know when you get one from an Apple store you have no choice but to do it on iTunes, but I don't know if it's the same way for AT&T...I don't want the kids who work there messing around with it...They'll probably drop it or get their Snickers fingers on it...

When buying right at AT&T, do you still get to take it home and activate it yourself using iTunes?

 

[wheezy]

It took the sales guy longer to get my iPhone from the back than it did for me to check out, I still did all the activating at home. He did want my phone number as I was already with ATT, but that wasn't for activation or anything; not really sure what it was for, maybe just to get all my info for their DB.

Having already been on ATT, the activation was SO fast and seamless. within 2 minutes my contacts, calendars, and email accounts were synced and the phone was ready.

 

[Kevin83165]

I already had service from cingular (long before AT&T) all I did was activate my phone through iTunes. It was really simple and straightforward. Just asked me questions and then I was off to the races.

 

[Maynerd]

Anyone know what the porting number process is like?

 

[skwoytek]

Anyone know what the porting number process is like?

It was simple and done through iTunes as well.

Just don't cancel your previous phone contract or you could lose your number.

I ported two numbers from Verizon. Each was cancelled automatically - I was sent the final charges and early termination bill.

 

[avaloncourt]

Anyone know what the porting number process is like?

Generally it's pretty painless. You should have a number ported in an hour or slightly longer. These days it's an automated background process unless something goes wrong. Generally that happens if the name/address the carrier you're changing to doesn't match with the original carrier. That throws up red flags and the process comes to a stop because the factors don't match between the sides and the previous carrier puts the brakes on the change.

As swyotek said, the act of porting cancels your old account. I found Verizon's response interesting. I had stopped shortly after the porting to pay off my final bill and cancellation penalty. The Verizon rep couldn't seem to bring anything up and couldn't seem to care less that I ported away from Verizon. He told me to try again another time. I did eventually get my final bill but a bit later I also got a card in the mail asking me to come back and offering me a free Blackberry if I returned. I thought that was a pretty interesting perk since they never give away subsidized Blackberries in the stores.

 

[thepandamancan]

Anyone know what the porting number process is like?

I had a pretty painful process. They tell you it can take up to 24 hours and that's exactly how long it took for me and my friend. I ported my number from T-Mobile and it took a couple hours for me to finally be able to make an outgoing call. I was able to receive calls within an hour of the activation. I was unable to send text messages till the next day. The weirdest part of this all was that I was unable to receive text messages or calls from T-Mobile users for a week. All of a sudden my iPhone says I had a bunch of missed calls and a ton of text messages and they were all from the T-Mobile users I had missed.

 

[kuebby]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3)

That's not normal. Like the above poster porting my number took about 30-45 minutes and was all done automatically in the background.

 

[mingenyx]

the AT&T here you dont need to pay credit card, you can pay cash.

I also asked him he said you could just go in and buy it then activate it at home.

 

[silbeej]

Tell them you are buying it for someone else, as a gift, and they give it to you, and you are on your way.

 

[ViPa]

i work at att..we're actually not allowed to open up the iphone in the store..we put them in sealed bags..even when i bought mine i had to put it in the bag and open it outside of the store..all activations are done at home..the store may give you a number and set your account up but the actual activation is done at home

 

[avaloncourt]

i work at att..we're actually not allowed to open up the iphone in the store..we put them in sealed bags..even when i bought mine i had to put it in the bag and open it outside of the store..all activations are done at home..the store may give you a number and set your account up but the actual activation is done at home

And here I thought the girl that sold me mine was kidding when she told me that. Go figure. She mentioned even the special bag to put it in had to be scanned.

 

[Hecklerdanny]

i work at att..we're actually not allowed to open up the iphone in the store..we put them in sealed bags..even when i bought mine i had to put it in the bag and open it outside of the store..all activations are done at home..the store may give you a number and set your account up but the actual activation is done at home

Thanks for this info! Great to get it right from the source!

By the way, don't take offense to me saying that I don't want the kids that work there dropping it or getting their Snickers fingers on it...I was only kidding...Although it DOES always drive me nuts when I get a new work phone and they always open it up and man-handle it before handing it to me to take...

Thanks a lot for the information!

 

[ViPa]

Thanks for this info! Great to get it right from the source!

By the way, don't take offense to me saying that I don't want the kids that work there dropping it or getting their Snickers fingers on it...I was only kidding...Although it DOES always drive me nuts when I get a new work phone and they always open it up and man-handle it before handing it to me to take...

Thanks a lot for the information!

haha, its funny because we open up so many phones everyday that it almost becomes second nature..but i definitely understand what your saying..people bring in expensive phones and we take them apart in seconds..im sure they get worried..i know i would loll

and about the special bag that we have to scan..this is also true..each iphone requires an iphone bag which also needs to be "sold" with the transaction


on another note, theres a lot of fraud surrounding the iphone, ie. unlocking and selling..thats why att reps urge you to activate new numbers in the store..its the only way we can possibly ensure that the iphones we sell get activated..i receive tons of email talking about how to avoid potential customers who wish to purchase several iphones and distribute them overseas, i know that may sound unfair..but think of it this way: why would an at&t store want to sell an iphone to someone that they KNOW isnt going to activate with their service? at&t reps receive no commission nor credit when these kinds of customers walk through the door..we basically spend an hour explaining how the phone works and its features to someone who is not even going to use it under at&t..its kind of frustrating..but hey, id probably do the same thing if i was on another carrier

 

[brandoncarr]

I bought my iPhone at the Apple store, and went to AT&T to activate it, and they wouldn't. So, I went back to the Apple store, and activated it on one of the iMacs there. They didn't mind.