Today's $100 winner is Casualty! We're giving away $100 per day from now until I leave for Comic-Con on July 20th. To participate in the raffle, all you need to do is vote on five submissions while logged in. Every day I run a raffle script based on activity from the previous day, and a winner is declared!
So last year I surprised April with an iPhone for her birthday and she used it so much to browse the web that I ended up getting one for myself! It was really handy because for the first time ever, I was able to check email and do NG administration on the go.
With the new 3G iPhone coming out just in time for April's birthday this year, I decided it was time to upgrade. I wanted to surprise her again, but soon learned the new iPhones were "bricked", meaning they had to be activated in the store to prevent people from hacking them to work with carriers other than AT&T.
I decided it would be worth a shot to show up with April's photo ID and previous iPhone and try to switch her over. Tim and I showed up at the King of Prussia Mall at 7:30am on Friday. The line was long, but things started off smoothly enough at 8am when the Apple store opened. That is, until they started experiencing network problems as a result people activating phones and upgrading their software across the country. The line grinded to a crawl and we ended up waiting for FIVE HOURS.
Our Apple rep was very friendly and helpful, but she was absolutely unable to sell me a phone for April without April being present to sign her name on the AT&T contract. I tried to explore all the different possibilities: could I move April to a family plan and assume responsibility for the commitment? Not without her there. Could I pay for her phone and come back that night to pick it up? Nope. Even with an ID that showed we share the same last name and address, there was nothing I could do.
I went ahead and upgraded my own phone, but due to the network issues, they weren't able to activate it. So my old phone was officially dead and the new one wasn't working yet. It wasn't completely hopeless, though; they gave me a trouble ticket that I could use to re-enter the store without waiting in line. While they couldn't guarantee they would still have the phone in stock, I could at least get in quick if I came back later with April.
We came back to the mall that night and the looong line was still there. I presented my ticket to walk right in (man that must have pissed off the people in line) and we got to work with getting April her phone. Our new rep was also very friendly and helpful, but encountered a new obstacle when he tried to enter April into the system. Apparently she was under a corporate discount through her work, and in those instances the Apple store was not allowed to issue her an iPhone. She would have to buy one directly from an AT&T store, and those all sold out that morning.
Side story - some disgruntled shoppers showed up at the Apple store around 10:30am. They had waited in line at the AT&T store for hours, but despite the number of people in line, the AT&T employees didn't tell them how many phones were in stock. They didn't get turned away until the last phone sold.
So anyway, the computer wasn't letting us through, so April called AT&T directly and waited on hold (high call volume, of course) to speak to someone. When a rep finally answered, April asked to have her corporate discount removed from her phone plan. The rep responded, "We were doing that earlier, but were told to stop, so I'm not allowed to do that anymore." April explained that it was her right to disable the discount, but the rep still wouldn't do it, so April asked for his manager.
After waiting on hold again, the manager arrived to explain that due to a problem with the system, removing the discount WOULD NOT allow her to validate through the Apple store, due to an issue with the data not updating in real-time. April asked that AT&T remove the discount anyway, to which the manager responded, "Do you acknowledge that I told you that you will still not be able to buy the iPhone at the Apple store after we remove the discount?" and April responded "Yes."
As soon as April was off the phone, our Apple rep tried running her through one more time and... IT WORKED! Apparently something must have gotten fixed over the course of the day, or we were really lucky. I was finally "allowed" to buy April an iPhone for her birthday, but there was one more catch: I wasn't allowed to buy it for her! She had to put it on her own credit card. Talk about killing the romance! Part of the success of the iPod and even the original iPhone was that they make the perfect gift. The new iPhone has proven to be the most difficult thing to buy, ever.
The really frustrating part, of course, was that there was no one to really blame, other than that corporate discount issue, which is something Apple and AT&T should have solved beforehand. I understand WHY they need to sell you the phone plan before giving you the phone, and I understand why you need to be there to sign the contract personally. It just sucks, really really bad.
There have been other various connectivity issues over the weekend, but I'll chalk it up to growing pains for Apple and AT&T. I'll let everyone know if things DON'T smoothen out over the next week, though. :)
BTW - If anyone out there is NG land has been tinkering with serious iPhone application development, drop me a PM or email!
Today's community highlights:
Mike made an interesting post about _xscale and _yscale.
Zekey shares an AIM convo on gamer culture and the fan response to Diablo III.
MaestroRage ponders his instrument library.
YungJazz contemplates whether it's better to start from scratch or "stay the course." It's the same questions I've grappled with on Pico 2 for almost a decade now.