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By Steve Ragan Jul 2, 2007, 15:55 GMT
AT&T suffers wrath of bloggers over activation issues
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Older Talkback
Not all 'business accounts' are controlled by your company.... my company told me that I could get a discount on my existing Cingular (now AT&T) account if I told Cingular I who I worked for, so I did. Now my account is considered a 'business account'. My company has no say so over my account. I'm not sure if this will some day bit me, but I've added 2 phones to the account without any issues.
Back to AT&T... I've been calling them weekly for 2 months to solve a problem where they charge me for some mobile to mobile calls (CHECK YOUR BILL). I've submitted several tickets and am still waiting for 1) my RollOver minutes back and 2) to correct the problem.
Good luck with AT&T. The funny thing is that I had Cingular for 5 years without any problems. Was it only a name change, or are we now blessed with the incompetance of the old AT&T Wireless?
Two days without an activated telephone? The agony!
You materialistic nerds need to get a job, a girlfriend or a life. And not necessarily in that order too.
--
The time stamp on my receipt says 12:39PM on 6/30/07.
My activation notice came at 1:03PM on 6/30/07.
The twenty-four minutes included my driving home, unpacking it and updating to iTunes 7.3.
ATT and Apple rock!
Quit whining
why is it such a hassle to add the iphone to a business plan and see easy with a personal plan? why isnt the iphone available to business users? is that atts doing or apples?
To Mr. Berkstein,
Oh please!!
Given that SIM cards have worked interchangeably on unlocked handsets for quite sometime - how is someone supposed to know they can't use an iPhone with a business account? Your work gives you some basic cheap POS phone with no bluetooth, voice dialing or ability to synch address books. You buy an unlocked upgraded more feature rich phone to use instead. Why would the company care? You've bought the phone, you've spent the money, they come out ahead since you've ponied up and the phone they bought goes unused.
I've worked for companies where I got a 'business account' for cell usage, but it consisted of me getting a corporate rate for minutes and me submitting them for reimbursement. Buying the phone and paying the bill was my responsibility.
I would never have known about the issue if I hadn't read about it this weekend. And frankly I don't care what model cell phone my employees use. And I certainly don't fault them for wanting a phone that better meets their needs. I'm more interested in results than bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake.
How do they do it? ATT and Apple, that is... They sell gazillions of this little device and manage to get probably more than 99% of them up and running within minutes. Yet, there are a vocal few idiots who whine about their experiences being 'horrific'. These muttonheads don't know horrific from cole slaw. Horrific would be something much more painful than having your newest overpriced, over-hyped, Apple toy sitting idly by for a few hours.
Sheeesh. Horrific, indeed. Whiners.
One slight modification to my previous comment.
If the hitch is not the handset itself but the service plan - then a delay in switching plans (for activation purposes) makes a bit more sense. Since the iPhone requires a different service plan, I can see requiring a corporate manager approval to change the account.
For business accounts that are personal (i.e. sole proprietor), or business accounts where the phone holder is billed (vs the company) there shouldn't be a delay.
But in those cases a status message of 'this a business account requiring special approval' should have been the message displayed rather than just a failed activation.
I have been a customer of Cingular(att) for almost 2 years I have 2 company accounts with wireless 10 phone lines.
I went to the apple store in San Antonio TX they had iphones then is was informed that business customer could not have a iphone. ATT wants me to establish another account. I was told that they were not going to allow comercial customers to have Iphones.
My company was good enough to bill me for the 10 phone lines for two years, now they want me to personally sign up for another personal account. After cingular(ATT) has overbilled my company month in and month out for two year to the point of I would not ever consider opening another account.
It is sad that apple has tied their boat a company like ATT.
'You materialistic nerds need to get a job, a girlfriend or a life. And not necessarily in that order too.'
Why is the feeling that a product or system should work as advertised the sign of being a 'materialistic nerd?'
I hope the next time you order food in a restaurant the server farts in your face, and then when you complain people tell you not to be such an uptight prissy-pants.
I mean, you ordered food -- what were you expecting, respect?
'Yet, there are a vocal few idiots who whine about their experiences being 'horrific'. These muttonheads don't know horrific from cole slaw...'
Well, on one hand you're correct - the iPhone activation process isn't horrific, and as the article and others (including me) have said, it seems to have worked for most people.
But for people who have problems, it's not the actual problem that's the problem (if that makes sense) - it's that it can be very difficult and time consuming (average time on hold per call - 1 hour) just to figure out why your phone isn't getting activated, and then you have to go through actually getting the problem fixed -- which to read some posts online doesn't guarantee that you won't have another problem and have to start all over again.
Maybe you have unlimited time and patience to figure things like that out. I find I'd rather do almost anything than spend the day playing 'find the one individual in the universe who can get my [cable/phone/internet] running again.'
I think I'm now finding the criticism of those of us unhappy with this experience more grating than the actual experience. I think the worst is when it's people who don't have a problem, who can't understand why someone with a problem would be unhappy about their problem, and thus it must point to some moral or constitutional or mental failure on the part of the person with the problem.
any business user and their company is dumb found if they're with AT&T for business communication. worse comibinaion when u add an apple product for business...sprint/verizon is the best n only choice.
Should we really be surprised? I don't know about AT&T now, but back before AT&T bought SBC, SBC had the worst customer service of any company I have ever experienced. A call to customer service would always turn into a 30 minute or longer ordeal, being passed through no less than two or three people, and known of them would have a clue what's going on. So if AT&T didn't change that when they bought SBC then they acquired some terrible customer service. Hopefully that did something about it though. Of course I wouldn't know, because I switched services long ago.
Like lambs to the slaughter.... lol.. the rest of us just sit and laugh to ourselves at the fuss being made over something so silly. Anyone with common sense would know that if At&t is involved, the product is doomed, no matter how good it is.
Dear Anyone With An iPhone,
If you can find the time between waxing your Beatle and humping the Mac guy to donate a little money to charity, all us poor people and the sick people without insurance and the homeless people would really appreciate it. I know you get a yuppie buzz from 'contributing' to important causes like I dunno... making Target the #1 retailer in the US, but us poor, starving, ill, and homeless folks also think you could possibly get even greater satisfaction from volunteering in a soup kitchen or taking in a foster child or spending the $600.00 you just wasted on a phone that will kamakazi in a year on something like rent for one of the poor saps that probably works for you.
Thanks a lot,
America
Don,
I am an ATT 'business' customer simply because ATT gives anyone working at my company a slight discount for a bill that is completely in my own name for a phone that belongs to me. I did not know this discount made me a 'business' customer until an earlier sim card failure required repair. So not all 'business' customers should have expected to need 'approval' to buy a new phone.
it sucks and blows at the same time. Whatever name it has,. Cingular or at&t the customer services/ services SUCKS! I happily paid my $250 to kill my contract,.,. worse waste of consumer time than dressing up as a burrito at Chipotle.
Go to school. get a Job. try not to be a burden to society. lame
Dear Sweet Child of Mine,
Why are you so angry? Why are you so greedy and fat? Why are so many of your brothers and sisters fat and greedy while other children starve and can find no protection from the heat and the cold? Why is it that you're so angry? Is it because you know that it's a farce to spend so much money on a telephone? Is it the dependance on the telephone that has made you this way? Why don't you have any compassion for anyone other than yourself? Is it just that your generation is self centered or is it just you? How hard would it be to put others before yourself for once? Wouldn't feeding a family for 3 months be more satisfying than owning a status symbol phone?
Just wondering,
America
My activation on Friday went smooth-as-silk. Droped it in the cradle, iTunes launched with a dialogue to either change phones on an existing account or create a new account. I had an existing account with a Motorola 220MPX Microsoft Mobile 'smartphone' (more accurately 'self-aware,' in that is chose to never work). I was prompted for my ATT/Cingular account login/password, the phone number I wanted to upgrade and plan options (the simplest and least expensive was thoughtfully preset as the default), clicked 'go' and a progress bar appeared stating up to 3 minutes may be required, but had success within 45 seconds.
I have heard repeated tales about people trying to activate through Verizon (Verizon doesn't offer iPhone), trying to get Florida area codes for their billing address in Maine (against FCC rules), and trying to change phones or add data plans for business numbers for which they do not have administrative rights over as an employee. Anybody who has ever had any exposure to working a technical helpdesk will attest that there will always be a minority of the population who are completely clueless, completely unreasonable, or both when it comes to any technical process- regardless of how overwhelmingly user-friendly it may be to the rest of the known universe.
Don't listen to people more messed up that you are. The iPhone rocks. If you are technophobic, this is your phone. It does everything a smart-phone claims to, but everything works incredibly well. There's nobody more customer-focused than Apple- why they want to control the activation process- and they will make sure you get up and running ASAP. If the request is beyond the ordinary, it may take longer, but you will never read a comment about somebody who didn't get help and is now delighted!
SomebodyJul 2nd, 2007 - 17:11:30
A year ago I had no problems porting my phone number from Cingular to T-Mobile (I left Cingular because I moved to Chicago and their coverage there is terrible), so I got the iPhone, back to AT&T. Guess what? They said they can't port my phone because it's 'out of market' (from out of Chicago), why didn't I have this problem when I switched? So I have to call do a lot of tricky things to get in the 'market area' like give them an old address as my actual address, just so they would approve switching my number's area code. They did, but they have to ship me a NEW sim card by mail, which will take 5-7 business days. Considering there's a Holiday in the middle of this week, it'd be two to three weeks since I get that SIM card and port my number. This is stuff I expect from Microsoft, not from Apple, so there you go Apple, thanks for partnering with AT&T.
P.S. AT&T coverage in Chicago remains awful. I can hardly get a signal inside a building, and it's the only service that has that problem.
Hello Somebody,
Just wanted to let you know. I work for AT&T. Go to a retail store in Chicago and get a new SIM card. This will fix your issue. I had a person come into the store that was having issues with their activation, we changed the SIM. Everything works now
Here in Australia we have 2 main telcos and their customer service and prices are so bad that I cant imagine that they will be able to anything other than poison the iphone experience. I no longer own a mobile phone and am a whole lot happier and richer for it.
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