While some sit in raptured bliss, others await activation

"28. We got a message from AT&T about an hour ago saying that the "Activation Center" had closed. According to him, the center is only open 9 to 9 MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY! AHHHH!

"

anyone verify this? is it true as far as being closed till 9am?

OK here we go again. During the day I spent my lunch break taking the time to go to the ATT kiosk at the mall that I work in to have another credit check run. I some how my name was entered into the computer wrong.(Not sure how that happened, I gave the girl my drivers license and I know that it is spelled correctly on it)

Anyway I was given an automated number to dial to accept the terms on the account and activate the telephone. I called that number at 3:00pm. It is now well past 10:00 and guess what? Still no service. I spoke with someone this evening that told me that the magic word of the day is "tier 2 activation support"

So now I am on the phone once again with activation support (877) 800-3701. The message told of a 20 minute hold time. It is is now 38 and counting. Look at me not being surprised.

ATT shareholders should be looking for their CEO's head on a silver platter, as this situation was completely avoidable! I have talked a friend that still work at on of the offices in Florida as a procurement manager. According to what he has said, there are a number of critical database servers that are overloaded on a good day, let alone a day when they are going to handling over 3 million activations. Every time he asks about updating this hardware with newer more robust hardware he is told that is not necessary. What was management thinking? Were they just looking to prop up the balance sheet to mack shareholders have just until the merger with Bellsouth is complete?????

@71: You are somewhat correct, I believe. I've been chatting with AT&T all weekend. Nearing 6 hours on wait time + talk time combined. My problems might've been solved quicker had I spoke with the folks at the porting office from the beginning. I found out on the 3rd day of this ordeal that my port request (from T-Mobile) wasn't even in AT&T's system at all. This is largely an oversight on AT&T and the activation software in iTunes. In AT&T's defense however, I have dealt with very competent and genuinely nice people over the past 3 days.

Overall, I was not happy with my 40 minute wait times, talking with at least 9 different agents and this entire rigamarole.

The problem is that the old companies are taking their sweet little time releasing the number that you want to keep. The problem isnt with AT&T, its that the other companies do not give a damn about giving consumers convenience as they leave...

First of all there is a correction to the time line in my last post. The date should read June 29 and not the the 28th as stated above.

More importantly though after 34 hours of being given a run around and nonsense about all of the reasons that my shiny new iPhone is not working, it all comes down to the fact that as much as ATT would like to have everyone believing that this is an automated process, it seems that this is one of the most manual processes I have see or heard of.

My phone is currently not activated because my credit check is sitting on someone's desk waiting to be approved or denied.

I found this out from someone in manual activations.

Now I have to wait until someone from the credit group can go an look at the information at 9:00.

I am sorry, at what point is someone from ATT going to stand up and take responsibility fro what is happening. Why aren't all departments being staffed until the bulk of the problems are resoloved ???????

I don't know, I have been waiting since 8:36pm on the 28th for my phone to be activated. I am getting a new number for a new account.

At the time that I purchased my phone, there were a number of my friends in the store that purchased phones as well. As a group, we seemed to have just about every possible activation type covered.

I was getting a new phone with a new account and a new number.

Another guy I work with was getting his number from another ATT phone transfered to his new iPhone.

Then there were the rest of the gang that were getting numbers ported from various carriers.

We also had one other person in the group with really lousy credit who figured that he was going to get nailed with a huge deposit.

Of the entire group we are all still waiting for our phones to be activated.

I have now been waiting longer to get my phone activated then I had to wait in line to purchase it!

This is just unbelievable.

for those of you with two iPhones or access to a fresh AT&T sim card try this. it worked for me.

first: make sure all of your accounts are in line:
billing zip code must match what you enter in itunes
no discounts applied to the account from any time
if you are an original AT&T wireless subscriber, abandon ship for the new orange account. your account history means nothing to AT&T. If you can, cancel your account and open a new one.
make sure you have no past due balance.
and finally make sure your account has no features that prevent you from iphone activation via itunes such as being apart of a shared plan with another user who might be linked to a business account.
for now, it is best to just sign up for the individual account and change over to a family plan later after all of this dies down.


i'd give it a while to make it through all of the AT&T computer systems as the itunes activation will fail if any of these things are out of wack.

once all of this is done, swap the sim card from one iPhone to the other.
i didnt bother turning them off or closing itunes or restarting my mac, i just swaped them and put them both back on the docks and they both started going through the activation again. it took about 3-5 minutes and now - yes the iPhone is no longer an iBrick.

It's been 27 hours and still no service, after multiple phone calls. Most recently (2 hours ago) I was told the systems for converting numbers over was overloaded, and it would be 24 to 48 more hours. And I was the first in line at my store, waiting 10 hours for the privilege of buying a $600 paperweight.

This is completely unacceptable, and I will return the paperweight if it is not activated by 6pm Monday.

And I'll be selling my AAPL first thing Monday morning.

This entire episode is both apple and at&t dropping the ball, dont even try and tell me that they did not anticipate this, the other vendors like verizon and tmobile are blocking or slow tracking the transfer requests, there is noting in this for them so they are just trying to make it hard for the people who want to move on to a different vendor, had AT7T done this in house it would have been much easier, just more work for them. Apple and AT&T have been punked by the other guys.

NEWSFLASH: After deciding to call AT&T (877-800-3701) again... the help desk agent activated me by hand; it took 10 minutes hold + 10 minutes of her pushing buttons. While I still await number transfer, I got an email while on the phone:

Congratulations, AT&T is now transferring your existing mobile number to this iPhone.

Your iPhone may now make outgoing calls but will be unable to receive calls on your existing mobile number until the transfer is complete.

You will receive an email confirmation once your mobile number transfer is complete. If you have not done so already, please connect your iPhone to your computer now to complete this activation (or click here if your iPhone is already connected).

[she told me to turn OFF the phone and wait a minute, since she had "one more button" to press to activate the phone. Here goes... iTunes up... powering phone on...]

[it's working!]

[off to sync-ville!]