Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise 434
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.
Never saw it coming! (Score:3, Insightful)
Never saw it coming.
Especially since AT&T, a company known for shitty service, was given launch rights.
Re:Never saw it coming! (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Badly chosen launch date (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:A bit of perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2, Insightful)
Link Please.
i don't think "vast" is the right adjective (Score:5, Insightful)
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:The Engadget Poll (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A bit of perspective. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then why did 50% of them report problems?
Something doesn't add up right. Anytime I've purchased a phone, it worked when I left the store. I didn't need to do anything else.
Last time I checked, Microsoft got hit with a fine over half a BILLION dollars for bundling their media player. If I want to watch something with the Quicktime codec, Apple bundles iTunes into the Quicktime download, and forces people to download iTunes if you want to activate their phone. And apparently, if you have a 64-bit OS, you need to change your OS as well.
How exactly is that an improvement?
What was the number? Some 38% are still unresolved. Clearly this is a huge improvement over walking out of the store with a working phone.
I will never understand this site. People blast Microsoft all day long for forcing people to do things in proprietary ways, and then give Apple a free pass for the same tactics.
Objective, reasonable human beings should be able to call out what they see.
Activation of the iPhone is unnecessarily proprietary, and a hassle. And quite frankly I run Win x64, and Gentoo x64 at home. If an Apple representative told me I needed to format my computer and install another OS for their phone, I'd be flat-out irate. But again, this is a huge improvement in your eyes.
Simple answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we hate all cell carriers. We expect to hate the cell carrier.
After activation is complete though, we don't really have to talk to the cell-phone carrier. Then we just have the phone experience, which is great. That's when cell service may start to arise as an issue, but we've also been trained to accept that as a fact of life.
One thing Apple did well right off the bat is to not have to have us activate at the store, already a better expereince for most people despite the problems some are having. I myself am porting a T-Mobile number - while the number itself is not yet ported (and may take days more as T-Mobile apparently ports pay-as-you-go numbers by hand) the actual activation of my phone worked just fine, and I was abe to make calls and otherwise use the device almost instantly - it's only incoming calls and SMS I can't get just yet.
Frankly I expect a lot of issues to vanish Monday, when the regular people get to work instead of the poor weekend shift.
Re:A bit of perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:And? (Score:2, Insightful)
ZOMG! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I still don't get it why people want this iPhon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iPhone = gayPhone (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to click on every PS3 story and complain about it, but then I realised that I was just being a complete wanker, and stopped.
So, how the fuck do you get moderated up, how many stupid people really hate iphone stories, but still feel the need to click on the link, and read all the comments to the end. What a bunch of retards.
Re:Never saw it coming! (Score:5, Insightful)
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! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Link to resolution of problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never saw it coming! (Score:4, Insightful)
I played with the iPhone and it is a very cool phone. Just like the iPod, the iPhone interface is extremely intuitive. My only complaint was that I found the onscreen keyboard hard to use. Without any sort of tactile feedback, such as what I get with my current QWERTY keyed phone, I found that I had a lot of mistyped letters on the screen. That would probably be a deal breaker for me, personally.
I really want the iPhone to succeed because it is a cool product with a lot of cool new ideas. The more the iPhone succeeds the better the market on the whole will get, as more and more competitors start including many of the iPhone's features. But I just can't help but wonder if the iPhone will ever be able to live up to its own hype.
*Note: while I refuse to give Cingular any more of my money after the way they treated me before, like a good little geek I did have to play with the demo phones in the store. If the next version of the iPhone is released on a cross-carrier basis and it's a little more reasonably priced, I would probably consider it.
Re:i don't think "vast" is the right adjective (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the publicity. The iPhone was hyped up a lot more than treos. Heck, most people have never heard of the treo, but everyone seems to know about the iPhone. The end result is that more people end up wanting them, but since they have decided not to get it for one reason or another, they're mad at you for getting one. See, in their mind, you're ensuring that they will never get one. Since you're helping the iPhone to be successful by buying it, Apple has no motivation to change the iPhone to cater to their wishes (lower price, different network, dev kit). Since you didn't hold out like they did for the same reasons, they feel like you're retarded/dumb/etc, when in reality you just don't care about the same things they do.
I hate to admit that the reason why I understand that motivation so well is because I've suffered from it. I don't particularly care about the iPhone but there have been plenty of products that I *really* wanted to fail because they were really good but contained a serious deal-breaker for me. I voted with my wallet and got really frustrated when others didn't. Or rather, they did, but they didn't care about the issue that was important to me. Now, I was smart enough to understand what it was that I was feeling and why, and thus I didn't lash out at those people, but the irrational anger was there.
That's what you get... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Never saw it coming! (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly, they also chose to go with CMDA, which basically limits them to ATT or T-Mobile, but just about every other phone in the US market seems to be able to produce both a GSM and CMDA version, so why couldn't the iPhone? Producing a couple models of the iPhone that could were sold contract-independent, were sold in the Apple store and would work with all the major US carriers would have been a step towards revolutionizing the cellphone industry. As it is now, Apple's just produced more of the same with a pretty and intuitive UI.
Nifty, not revolutionary.
Re:i don't think "vast" is the right adjective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Never saw it coming! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a f*cking lunatic. A six hundred dollar brick you have to haggle over for 14 hours, before it will do anything? That's insane. I'm sorry, but I'd attach the receipt to the damn thing and throw it back through a store window, but that's just me.