Double the Activations, Double the Fun! An iPhone Cautionary Tale

Yes, do be careful when moving numbers between carriers. I had major issues when switching our home number from the local telco to newly available phone service from our cable company. The cable company had bad data in their system saying our home was wired and ready to go. This was not the case and when the tech showed up, there was nothing he could do. After multiple assurances our service would not be interrupted, sure enough, first thing Monday morning our phone went out.

After 2 days of phone calls (about 10 and about an equal number of hours on hold), the two companies continued to point the finger at each other saying the other company had the number provisioned and they could not do so. At one point, they were talking about cancelling my service and reinstating it to the tune of almost a hundred dollars in fees. Fianlly, I call our local government agency set up to help resolve cable disputes (yes, in addition to the astounding prices these companies must also rely on our tax dollars to fund an independent agency to help sort out WTF is going on) I got someone from the cable company to actually call the phone company and get it straightened. 6 more weeks, two more "missed" appointments by the cable companies (seems their truck broke down... twice) and two appointment when they actually showed up to do something and we had working service.

And what did I get for the trouble? An offer of a 39.99 dollar discount on my first bill. Then to add salt to the wounds, they started the clock ticking for our 12 month special pricing from the original date and esentially gave us only 10.5 months of the deal, at another cost of nearly $100.

So don't let this happen to you, especially if porting a number from another provider. At least in the OPs case, both numbers were with the same company.

As if this weren't enough, the montly cost wound up being $15 more per month than they quoted me (another round of phone calls) and soaked up most of the $22 dollar per month I figured we would save over our old set of plans (seperate sat/phone/dsl) so I saved a whopping $84 at the expense of probably 24 hours of my time and two near infarctions.

I must say though, one the cell phone front we have had Cingular for several years, and besides their former high price on unlimited data (which thankfully they reduced from 80/month to 20/month for the iPhone introduction) they have been a decent and helpful company to work with.

I had the same problem as Roger, where they were charging me per-usage fees for my data plan (in addition to the $20 that was supposed to give me unlimited data!). Imaging my surprise when I logged onto AT&T's site and saw a bill for over $800! After finally getting the CSR to understand that I wasn't calling about or interested in unlimited TEXT messages, she resolved the problem and my bill is back to normal. =) Happy endings all around...

Thanks dude. I am in exactly the same shoes as you, I ported my T-Mobile number after I activated my iPhone!

Buck, if he did get the original activation fee waived as well, it was done so at the discretion of the rep. In customer service, it's fairly common (among the better companies) to offer discounts or to waive some fees if the customer has had a bad experience. In this case, the CSR decided that this discount would offset the hassle of having to call in for a problem that was not the customer's fault.

It isn't something to rely on, but I've personally had luck in the past when problems occur by telling the rep that the particular problem has resulted in me not getting the level of service I'm paying for - and then I ask what the company can do to make up for this. In the case of my cable company, I received a 50% discount for a month because of a hardware failure that resulted in daily outages for a week or so.

What?! Don't you Americans pay the following charges?

$6.95 Monthly System Access Fee
$0.50 911 surcharge
$6.00 Voicemail
$6.00 Call Display

You say that's all included in your iPhone plan?

Wow, Apple sure is going to have a hard nut to crack to bring the iPhone to Canada...

Thanks for all the good information. The only thing holding me back from purchasing is my need to use as a wireless modem on my macbook pro intel laptop. Any info on this yet? Thanks! Joe

If AT&T does any funny account shenanigans for you and you somehow end up with having had two accounts for even a minute--be sure to demand that they send you a zero balance invoice for any accounts that they close/delete or otherwise modify. Also be sure to demand that they provide you with a letter stating that the account has been closed. They somehow inadvertantly created 2 spurious accounts for me over the years--which had all been closed since they never "really" existed. I've had calls from collection agencies about both of these closed accounts, and having AT&T resolve the problems long after anyone had any clue as to why those accounts ever existed in the first place proved nightmarish and almost had an impact on my credit history. Just a heads up.

Ok, for starters when you establish service with any provider your first bill is always going to be higher. With AT&T the reason being is that it is a combination of the following:

- Your monthly voice plan, so ie: $39.99 (depends on how many min. you signed up for)
- Any additional features ($20 for iPhone)
- Your activation fee of $36
- You will also be pro rated for your first months bill. Basically they take your monthly service, plus your features, add them up and devide them by the amount of days in the month. After that, they carge you that per day cost until the first day of the assigned bill cycle.
- Lastly you will also be charged your govt. fees and wireless taxes.

After all is said and done, that is going to be your first bill. On average, an activation on a new plan of $39.99 with the iPhone + data plan will cost the owner any where between $110 - $160. After that you are looking your plan + features + taxes, taxes are going to average about 11%.

Now, back to the post above. Regarding the interaction that happened, it appears that when you called up, the rep who you spoke with origionally to port over your number a) did not understand what you wanted to do or b) was after the sale of a new activation. Because lets face it, if the rep. just ported over your old number and replaced the temp one with your previous number, he gets paid nothing. But if he were to sign you up for a new activation on a second line (ie: your ported number) then he would make comission on that sale.

i had a similar issue but my voicemail was cancelled and scheduled to turn on the following month .. all had to do with calling ATT .. symptoms were that my wife and i had calls that did not go to voicemail while the phone was in data mode, resulting in alot of jealous friends thinking the iPhone was not all that great .. i think they are just looking for excuses to hate it but oh well. was fixed with a 611 call.

Actually, you should be careful anytime you are talking about "taking" another number to an account, esp when Data is involved. I have T-Mobile and several years ago (when it first came out) I had gotten a pair of Sidekick2. (Would Plural be Sidekick2s?) I already had an account with T-Mobile, and had one for several years beforehand. My Partner also had an account at T-Mobile, but we found we were paying WAY too much money for separate accounts and decided when we upgraded devices to take his number and add it to my account, thus creating a "family" account. Unfortunately, there were some hiccups when trying to activate his device. they moved his voice number to his device (since they just transplanted the SIM chip), but then tried adding a 3rd Line for his data instead of it being a combined line. (which is what SHOULD be happening: voice and data sharing the same line since you can't surf the same time you are on a voice call.) Yes, when I called, not only did T-Mobile remove the line, refund all the fees, but also gave me an EXTRA credit on my account for the inconvenience. Took minimal explanation, they just saw the error and fixed it. Part of why I'm a loyal T-Mobile customer with a BlackBerry and as of right now, no plans to move from T-Mobile. (Since I also need more of the SmartPhone functions like I have in the BlackBerry that the iPhone doesn't offer.)