Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise

Thomas Hawk writes "Unfortunately it appears that some activations of Apple's new iPhone have gone badly. After waiting in line 36 hours I'm still unable to activate my phone. I'm documenting the AT&T circus call by call on my blog. I've had my hold calls dropped, been patched into other users unable to activate their phone instead of AT&T customer service reps, been told that my wife must get a new phone and that the family plan can't work for me. I've been told that the problem is that I'm not putting a new chip into my iPhone in the slot on the left side of my phone when no slot there exists. PR Blogger Steve Rubel has also been documenting his problems on his Twitterstream. According to an unscientific poll being conducted by Engadget about half of the people who bought iPhones have had activation trouble with about 38% of problems still unresolved." Even the folks at MacWorld weren't immune to these issues.

A bit of perspective.

Keep in mind that AT&T is turning on more cell phone accounts at once than anyone has ever done in the history of the cell phone industry. iPhone sales have either hit a million units already, or they will by the end of the coming week. If they perform at 99.9%, that's still going to be a thousand people running into problems.

Everyone I know who's gotten one so far had it activated in a couple of minutes. The real story here is how smoothly it's going overall.

-jcr

Re:A bit of perspective.

It isn't like they are a new company or haven't done this before.

When other new huge phones launch, there is often a flurry of activations, and I do believe AT&T has been in the phone business a while.

Let's be honest here. The problem is that this is new in how they're handling activation. Because Apple has a such a large say in this whole process, it suddenly becomes less clear who is responsible for what. You introduce new policies, procedures and hardware at once, you're going to get SNAFUs.

This isn't being a hater, but simply being objective. Apple has done some things rather well, and others not so well. For a company that does claim to have things "just work", they made the activation process more complicated than it needs to be.

Just activate in-store like any other cell phone.

That is having it "just work".

Re:A bit of perspective.

When other new huge phones launch, there is often a flurry of activations, and I do believe AT&T has been in the phone business a while.

Yeah, but this was a phone launch like no other. I'm not just being the fanboi here. I've never seen a line outside a cellular phone store for anything. (Well, to get tech support at lunch time, maybe...) Cell providers just aren't prepared to handle this kind of burst buying.

Case in point, I got my iPhone at an AT&T store. For each person who bought a phone they sat us down, asked us a few questions, got our payment info, etc. Took about 10 minutes, and they had maybe five sales guys processing customers. From when the line started moving (I was #34 in line) it took about an hour before I was driving away. For contrast, my friends who bought at an Apple store were out in half the time, and there were more customers there than at the AT&T store I went to.

Bottom line, Apple knows how to handle hype generated high volume sales. (They know how to create hype, natch...) The public's never gotten so excited about a cell phone before, so cell providers are unaccustomed to the phenomena. Hopefully they'll learn...

Re:A bit of perspective.

"Just activate in-store like any other cell phone."

You think people are having problems now? A Piper Jay analyst said Apple has probably sold a half-million phones this weekend. I waited in line, then once inside the store, paid and had my phone in two minutes. Went to an WiFi-enabled restaurant nearby and was activated in three more, while I had some coffee.

So given that, the Apple store I went to processed an entire line of 200 people in an hour and a half, and I'd saw a quarter of those at least bought two phones.

Now. Picture a half-million people standing in line and having store employees REQUIRED to do all activations, transfers, credit checks, purchases, and all the other garbage usually associated with buying a phone, and now taking 10, 15, or even 20-minutes with each one. Now THAT would have been a disaster.

The Engadget Poll

The Poll that Engadget had about the service problems was fairly badly put together. The only way to be able to see results is to vote first. For for all the people that don't even have iPhones, they had to choose 1 of the 3 options before they could see the results. Since there was no "I Don't have an iPhone" options, it severally screwed with the results.

Re:The Engadget Poll

Not only that, but the respondents are self-selecting (why would the "happy middle," who have no stake in spreading their tales of joy, even respond to the poll? While a higher percentage of early adopters probably read Engadget, it's still a small minority of the market. How about the benefit of iPhone haters claiming problems just to stir the pot?) and don't have to "prove" that they even have an iPhone. It's basically the same as asking, "what's your opinion about Windows Vista after purchase?" without taking any further steps.

Are we really willing to believe that 13,000 iPhone customers responded to a poll on a tech-nerd website like Engadget? If that's even remotely accurate, that should indicate the high sales rate of the iPhone. But then again, it's similar to the response rate of every other Engadget poll, so it's probably total crap.

For the record, I don't care either way whether or not 38% of customers had activation trouble or not. I don't care whether 100,000 iPhones sold or 2 million did. It's a neat gadget, but my life isn't riding on it.

Badly chosen launch date

Lesson: do not launch product that requires extensive customer service at the beginning of a weekend.

The general observation seems to be that activation from a cold start works OK, but anything that requires "number portability" from a previous account may be troublesome. That's no surprise; number portability is usually a mess, because the carriers don't want you to use that Government-mandated feature.

It's still not clear why activation should require a separate computer. Activation via iTunes might be a nice option if you already use iTunes, but it shouldn't be the main route. After all, the iPhone has its very own Internet connection.

gadgets

The iPhone looks like a great piece of tech, and I might get one someday. But...

It seems like Slashdot has a greater and greater proportion of articles that relate to gadgets (stuff to buy), and fewer and fewer that are about tech developments, science, etc. I'm not bitching about Slashdot, but is it really the case that nerds have become merely watered-down gear-freaks, and no longer employ their mind in the pursuit of knowledge?

Please, oh true nerds, answer my rallying cry!

my experience

Posting this from my iPhone. I had trouble activating at first too. After waiting 10 hours I figured out that the problem was with transfering my old verizon phone number. I asked them to cancel the activation and started again with a new number -- went through immediately.

You cant do anything with the phone until its activated, no ipod, photos, nothing except calling 911. So the wait can be frustrating, and its very hard to get info out of ATT.

ZOMG!

Brand new product fails to have flawless launch. Film at eleven on The No Fucking Kidding News Network.

Re:Never saw it coming!

If you read the other person's problem thingy, it states quite clearly that this is not AT&T's problem, but it is a problem with iTunes and the iPhone.

I would emphasize the "unscientific" aspect

I am aware of the activation problems, especially after seeing this looooong thread [apple.com] on Apple's own forums. However, with regard to the engadget poll, I would be wary of its results-- there are many people who are "haters" of the Apple products, of the iPhone, etc, and I suspect many people who don't own iPhones are responding anyway saying they have activation problems, to skew the poll. My experience has been generally good.. bought 4 phones (I discussed yesterday [slashdot.org]), and three of them activated almost immediately. My primary phone, our biz dev guy's phone, our operations director.. no problem. The fourth, got the notorious "we need more time to complete this activation" (I was porting a second line, after porting my primary line from t-mobile). After about 12 hours, it started receiving texts, and within 24hrs it was ringing at the correct number. I called t-mobile tonight to cancel my service (40hr mark, or so) and they told me the second number has yet to fully release and to call back tomorrow to confirm it released and my service was fully cancelled.

I admit not to have much technical knowhow with respec to the inner workings of this process, but I don't imagine it's entirely any one aspect.. AT&T, Apple, etc. It's probably due to the slowness of every vendor involved (those releasing numbers, etc) and the sheer volume of registrations over the last 72hrs.

Re:I would emphasize the "unscientific" aspect

there are many people who are "haters" of the Apple products, of the iPhone, etc, and I suspect many people who don't own iPhones are responding anyway saying they have activation problems, to skew the poll.

I really don't buy that 'haters' are skewing the poll significantly. It's possible, sure, but... it really comes off as sounding unlikely to me.

That said, there's no way that 33% or more of iPhone customers are having serious activation problems. That would be many, many hundreds of thousands of people. If that were the case, there'd be news stories galore, all over CNN etc. We'd all (not just a few of us) know people who were suffering activation problems.

The OP is certainly correct in this -- it's an unscientific poll that doesn't mean much. Any online poll like that will suffer from selection bias. That bias could be 'haters', but it's much more likely that people having troubles activating are out actively searching for information, and, more likely to find such a poll and, in turn, much more likely to respond to such a poll than people who have the phone perfectly activated and are relaxing and enjoying their phones.

(To the OP, I wanted to see the results and cheerfully answered -- lying -- that I'd had no problems activating my non-existent iPhone. So at least I biased it the other way!)

I'm biased btw, I think the iPhone is nice, but ludicrously overhyped, and anyone who waited a long time in line for it is out to lunch.

But I suspect the OP's experience (2 of 4 phones activating perfectly, one almost perfectly, and the fourth within 24 hours) is par for the course. And, frankly, considering what a mess AT&T's systems are, I think that's an impressive achievement for Apple.

If we took a WAG (wild-assed guess), there are almost certainly thousands of people with serious activation problems. There might even be tens of thousands. A hundred thousand? I doubt it, but perhaps possible. Even at the 100k mark, that'd be one in 15 customers. 6.7%. Considering it's mobiles and AT&T involved, that actually sounds very good to me, though painful for those with problems.

Granted, if there are still many thousands of people with serious problems in several days time, that'd be quite bad.

As someone who isn't an iPhone fan, it looks like a pretty decent launch. Though I still shake my head at those waiting in line.

i don't think "vast" is the right adjective

I'm not trying to shift blame at all. I said myself that 25% of the phones I purchased had activation problems. But I don't posit that as evidence that 25% of *ALL* iphones have had activation problems. Look at the replied to my last three comments (which all got modded +5, btw), and you'll find the exact people i'm talking about who may have clicked "my phone is still unactivated!" when they don't even own one. (for the lazy, comments: here [slashdot.org] | here [slashdot.org] | here [slashdot.org])

Replied to those comments, you'll see people who said they would laugh at me/whomever they saw on the street using an iPhone, people calling me stupid/dumb, calling those in lines "emo retards," calling those in line "suckers," etc. Now, most people who choose not to buy an iPhone just do so out of logical choice, and that's the extent of their involvement.. but there most definitely is a vocal minority that feels slighted by Apple.. I really don't know exactly why, but I can say for sure that when I spent $600 a piece on my unlocked Treos (as did many others a few years ago), I don't recall a sizable portion of people calling me retarded/dumb/etc. The fact is a lot of people online have some sort of irrational distaste for the iPhone, and for those that buy it. And I don't believe that 40% of the people who bought the phone so far are still without service (as noted in the poll). I suspect it's in the single digit percentile, which still sucks if you're in that group, but 40% it isn't. I even posted a link to the Apple discussion page that has hundreds if not thousands of relies from people with activation problems.. but Apple is quickly approaching the "million iPhones sold" mark, and I don't imagine that of those million there will be several hundred thousand that take 48+hrs to navigate an activation quagmire. But hey, maybe I'm just lucky in my experiences. Engadget even noted themselves that they've activated 6 iphones without any problems.

Re:i don't think "vast" is the right adjective

You don't have to care about Apple at all to know that 38% of people aren't having problems with activation. Just ask Reuters [reuters.com]. They say 2%, and I trust their sources infinitely more than an Engadget poll with roughly the same number of responses as every other Engadget poll and absolutely no mechanism to restrict responses--two clicks to a vote is an easy target.

Link to resolution of problem

The summary fails to mention one of the (I believe) more informational parts of the story...

http://thomashawk.com/2007/07/hot-donkey-after-36- hours-we-just.html [thomashawk.com]

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Haaaalllleeeeejuuuuuahhhhh!

We just did it. After probably 20 or so phone calls to numerous departments all over Apple and AT&T we finally found the *right* department who can actually activate iPhones with you online, on the spot.

The magic number, and you will want to write this one down, is 877-800-3701. A special shout out and thanks to Scott Francis who left us a comment with the key to getting this whole mess solved. Apparently this is the one place at AT&T where they can actually activate your iPhone with you online. It was about a 20 minute hold and about a 10 minute process but the iPhone is now activated.

Thanks to everyone who spent the last day plus with us on ZooomrTV while we got it activated. It's been a fun ride. Now time to play with the phone and figure it out.

Re:Link to resolution of problem

The summary fails to mention one of the (I believe) more informational parts of the story...

Oops, you quoted the wrong part, from the comments:

you are an idiot. i saw several ppl trying to help you in the zooomr chat and you ignored their suggestions, choosing instead to milk the story. how funny that the solution you eventually was the same as the one they suggested. if you had spent more time trying to solve the problem and less time on a broadcasting ego-trip then maybe you wouldn't have wasted so much of your weekend on hold and could have spent it with the children instead.

Re:Never saw it coming!

I worked for Cingular for quite a while before they merged with AT&T - and for a while afterwards. My jobs ranged from fraud prevention to customer service. My position in fraud prevention was the most interesting, as a large part of the fraud we saw was from cell phone dealers themselves. They'd steal credit card information from one customer, tell the rest of their customers that they could come pay their bills at the store with cash (when they weren't authorized to do that), pocket the cash, and then use the stolen card to pay the bills. When you see 100+ accounts paid with the same credit card, you know something is up. That said, before AT&T moved in, my job was basically to help people. I was in a position where I called people who were using a lot more minutes than their plan offered, and instead of charging them the insane amount they would have paid for going over, I offered to switch them to a plan that would cover their usage. The most extreme example that comes to mind is someone who had used so many minutes over their plan that their next bill would have been well over $2,000 - they were flagged, I called them, and convinced them to switch from the lowest priced plan to the highest priced one, because that meant they would save about $1,800 a month. How's that for customer service? Sure, we could have just stuck that guy with a $2,000 bill, and put his nuts in a vice. But we did the right thing - we looked for customers who would be hurt and spent our time, money, and resources to help them out. Guess what one of the first programs that got cut was when AT&T took over?

Re:Never saw it coming!

Well, they did choose the most predatory monopolist of the cell phone industry, but Verizon said no.

Re:Never saw it coming!

I think all the mobile phone providers are known for shitty service.

I have to disagree. I have had nothing but excellent service from T-Mobile, and I mean truly excellent. Their phone reps are not only friendly and helpful, but WELL TRAINED. They understand the different models, the plans, SIM cards, unlocking, and will help you with anything. I even called T-Mobile once lost in Salt Lake City, looking for a wi-fi hotspot. I read them the name of the street I was on and the rep gave me step-by-step directions, and stayed with me on the phone. It was awesome. I really want an iPhone, but I am loathe to leave T-Mobile for this reason. Hearing stories like this makes me even more reluctant to buy an iPhone. Good customer service is so rare these days. Why didn't apple go with T-Mobile? Or rather, why did they have an exclusive deal with anyone the great thing about gsm is that it is interoperable. AT&T isn't subsidizing the price, or so I hear, so what possible advantage does apple get from the relationship? "Innovative Network features like visual voicemail." Fine, I would be happier with an iPhone without visual voicemail that I could put my T-Mobile SIM into.

Re:Never saw it coming!

I never understood this either. Assuming an iPhone costs $600, why not just sell them in the Apple store and let customers sort their own phone plan out. Yes it might mean some inconvenience setting up stuff like WAP / SMS etc. which are provider specific, but nothing I'm sure some setup software couldn't have sorted. Most GSM phone providers will sell SIM kits, and most really couldn't care what phone you use on their network just so long as you use their network.

All Apple have done by their move is ensure that anyone buying their phone package is locked into a contract that with the phone costs anywhere upwards of $2000 for two years. That represents absolutely terrible value for money. You really would have to be blinded by the hype to buy an iPhone on those terms. It's an utter waste of money especially considering other technical deficiencies such as lack of 3G. Perhaps a firmware update will fix that issue because there's going to be some severe buyers remorse if an updated model appears with that feature.

Re:Never saw it coming!

How many GSM providers are nationwide in the USA? AT&T, T-Mobile, anyone else?

They couldnt' set up a service with Verizon Wireless (an example) because they just don't do GSM technology.

It's unfortunate that AT&T is so clueless on this coming out of the gate. I think the iPhone has mind numbing potential. GSM is the right choice if you consider a world wide market, but not for US market, because GSM is more widely used globally. Economy of scale in units manufactured dictate that they go with GSM for a global market.

If you look at the techcentric nations of the world, the United States is not the leading country. We don't have the digital high speed cellular networks or internet broad band speeds of other nations. I just don't think you can safely market a product of this type to only the USA when we have a global market to consider.

Re:Never saw it coming!

How many GSM providers are national in the USA? ZERO. Not one of them has a network with "home" service where I live or with ANY service in most of the places I spend time other than home and the office. You may find it surprising, but that vast middle part of the country is part of the nation, and it is by and large CDMA-only. It sucks, too. And here's AT&T, whose shitty service doesn't surprise me given that they lie about having the largest digital voice and data network in the country, given that only a CDMA provider with lots of good partnering agreements.

Re:no problem for me

Posting fromm iPhone. :)

how's that lack of tactile feedback workin' out for ya?

Re:no problem for me

how's that lack of tactile feedback workin' out for ya?

It's ffffffuckin' aaawesommmmme!1!