Gather round children and I will tell you a tale...all about two giant retailers who have joined hands to ruin the days of a few million people.
I was gently roused from a pleasant dream at 7 am this morning by an alarm on my old phone (Samsung Blackjack). This alarm signified the much anticipated event of the day...the release of Apples iPhone 3G. So I tumbled out of bed and into the shower, getting out of the house by 7:30 and on the road. My plan was to make it to the AT&T store shortly before 8 am, get in line, purchase an iPhone, and be back at work at 9 am filled with glee. Unfortunately the powers that be (in this case AT&T and Apple) had not planned sufficiently to make this a possibility. My morning has gone as follows:
7:55 am - Arrived at AT&T Store in Jamestown, NY
8:10 am - Doors open and the first customers are allowed in (they can handle 5 at a time).
8:30 am - Still waiting on those first 5 customers...how long does it take to buy a phone???
8:45 am - The AT&T Rep outside brings us water bottles...fails to quench our eternal thirst for new iPhone
9:00 am - So far 3 customers have successfully purchased iPhones, and the rest of us are starting to get impatient
9:10 am - Hoorah! I am finally allowed to enter the store. I assume that my transaction will take less time because I am not porting from Verizon, or drawing a blank on my account number, or curious about rate plans or contract specifics...let the buying begin
9:25 am - After 20 minutes of fuddling around I am somewhat closer to owning an iPhone
The AT&T rep who is assisting me has to ask her manager every time she presses a button because she is afraid that her system will get locked up like most of the other computers in the store. The manager and one of the cashiers are both on a conference call with support trying to figure out why their computers are locking up. It is amazing how easy it is to shut down a fairly well organized sales operation with a few server glitches...
9:30 am - I am sent home with a 'Bricked' iPhone, which has been activated by AT&T but not by Apple yet, which is mostly useless. It seems that the Apple servers have crashed or locked up as millions of customers, new and old, attempt to 'unbrick' their 2.0 firmware.
10:00 am - I arrive at work an hour late and severly frustrated that I have almost nothing to show for it (read: $400 PAPERWEIGHT)
11:30 am - After trying repeatedly to activate my iPhone using two different versions of iTunes I break down and try to call customer support...Apple Support transfers me to AT&T Support where I speak to a real customer service rep and she politely informs me that everyone is having the same problem and that I should "Wait an hour or so"...
1:20 pm - I sit here logging the events of my unsuccessful morning and staring at my (new) unusable iPhone...hopefully this server thing gets worked out soon.
The worst part about this whole fiasco is that not only do many of the customers who waited in line for minutes, hours, days(?) for these new iPhones get sent home with an expensive paperweight, but current iPhone users who attempted to update their firmware this morning are experiencing the same problems. This means that someone who had a working iPhone last night that tried to update it this morning now has no access to their phone, contacts, music, e-mail, wifi web browsing, etc. This is a really dispicable situation and I would have expected more preperation from Apple. I know that demand for these things is huge, but they have to be prepared for that if they are going to ship millions of them all across the world all on the same day. Can I get a hallelujah?
4:00 -- Home from work and I am up and running!!!
non-blurry phonecam pictures to follow...
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