UPDATE: Now I Can Use My iPhone!

Mr. Jobs,

I know you may not be the right person to write this letter to, but I know you and the people of your organization care more about my satisfaction that the folks at AT&T. Please let me tell you my people and I hope you can forward this to the right person who can actually resolve my problem. I bought an iPhone from the Apple store in Jacksonville, Florida the first day it was available. I went home, installed the newest version of iTunes and began to activate my iPhone. That was now almost 48 hours ago and I still do not have service of any kind of my iPhone. I have talked to three different representatives at AT&T and I can say they have no idea about the iPhone. Their lack of training has made my experience awful…

Each person has said everything on my account is fine and they told me to wait. The first time I called was 6 hours into the process and they said my iPhone would just need more time and everything was okay. After 24 hours I called up because my iPhone was locked and I could not do anything. The person I talked to said everything was okay on my account. She did not know what to do, telling me several times she had to look at her guide and she even told me that there is no one there who could help her. That is great, AT&T did not have a single employee who could assist in the activation process. She just told me she did not know what to do, but would hit the activation button on my account. She did and now I have access to the main menu and can at least use Wi-Fi. I called earlier today and I could not even wait in the phone queue line, I had to leave a voicemail to AT&T that was NEVER returned. It has now been almost 48 hours and I am still on hold with AT&T and they will probably tell me to continue waiting. My old phone still works to make and receive calls, it is like nothing has happened and I never even activated my iPhone.

I am very upset at how AT&T has handled this, but I see it as partly Apple’s fault. If Apple picked AT&T to be an exclusive carrier for 5 years, you should have followed up on the process. If you want to make a radical change to the activation process, following up with your talent is just as important as execution. I know you are a great manager and leader in your industry, and certainly you know the ins and outs of business, but why are you letting AT&T hurt your image. You have the power. You guys need to tell AT&T how it is, and how dissatisfied customers are at their process. It hurts your image to because we are using iTunes to activate the iPhone.

I’m sorry I wrote so much, but I believe it is very important to hear my opinion, as I am very frustrated at AT&T and Apple. Right now I am feeling extreme remorse for buying your product and switching to AT&T.

If you know someone who can simply make me happy and Activate my iPhone, please pass this on.

Thank You,

Anthony

[account and personal information redacted]

News reports indicate Anthony is not alone in having iPhone activation issues, though the number of affected users is relatively small.

Still, perhaps AT&T and Apple thought the activation program was so easy and perfect that they didn’t bother training their reps in how to handle calls like Anthony’s.

What Apple & At&T should’ve done is had an elite iPhone customer service/tech support squad to deal with these issues. If a customer called up AT&T with an issue, they would get immediately forwarded to this team.

Even if it was server and system overload on AT&T’s end, at least someone who could say, “yeah, a bajillion people are trying to sign up at once and there’s some problems, we’re really sorry, please wait, here”s some free iTunes downloads.”

(Photo: karo.lina)

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