What the heck...you can't activate an iPhone on Christmas day?

[HXGuy]

Bought my wife an iPhone 4 yesterday and it was a surprise so the guy didn't activate it in store (so that her current iPhone would still work until today). He said to call "the number" and use the UCID on the box to activate it.

He didn't give me a number to call...but I searched online for the AT&T activation number, called it, and it said they are not answering calls today due to a circumstance that is out of their control.

And yes, I did connect it to iTunes and go through all that but it says "No Service" on the phone and her old phone is still functioning.

 

[Dr McKay]

They're probably getting a tonne of phones bring activated today.

 

[JASApplications]

because Christmas Day and Boxing are the 2 busiest days of the year for activation.

 

[kdarling]

They're not only getting heavily loaded, but there's also reportedly a bug in the iTunes app store:

Updates not showing first time

Easy to get around, though.

 

[Jeremy81]

You may be able to activate it at att.com/activations

 

[Gordon Gekko]

There is always the option to wait until tomorrow as well.

 

[MonkeyET]

When I bought my iPhones the person told me that they would be activated once I connected them to iTunes. This worked like a charm. I didn't have to call or anything. When they rung up the phones and scanned the serial numbers (or whatever they actually did) the phones were good to go. The phones were never even opened at the store!

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Your best bet is to just connect it to iTunes (which you've already done) let it walk you through the activation process, and then wait. Maybe reboot the phone too.

Also, does her old phone work? If so, then yeah, the activation isn't happening yet...

 

[TonyC28]

It took me a loooooong time on hold but I finally got AT&T to activate over the phone. The guy said they were swamped with new iPhone activations today

 

[bryanc28]

Bought my wife an iPhone 4 yesterday and it was a surprise so the guy didn't activate it in store (so that her current iPhone would still work until today). He said to call "the number" and use the UCID on the box to activate it.

He didn't give me a number to call...but I searched online for the AT&T activation number, called it, and it said they are not answering calls today due to a circumstance that is out of their control.

And yes, I did connect it to iTunes and go through all that but it says "No Service" on the phone and her old phone is still functioning.

This is what happened to me 2 years ago with my 3G. I politely asked if they would waive the activation fee because of this and they did. So maybe you guys can use this to your advantage.

 

[Eso]

Easy to get around, though.

How do you get around it without clicking the "download all updates" button. All my updates have disappeared, but since two of them are buggy releases, I don't want to download them along with the stable ones.

 

[HXGuy]

This is ridiculous...phone still says "Waiting for activation" over 24 hours later. What the hell, I thought this was supposed to be pretty easy to activate an iPhone.