iPhone Activation Problems Plaguing Countless New iPhone Owners

Submitted by Chad Shmukler on

UPDATE - July 11th, 2008: If you're looking for information on activation issues plaguing iPhone 3G owners, visit the following link: Not Again: iPhone 3G Release Plagued by Activation Problems.

Does the following sound familiar: you rushed home with your new iPhone, plugged it into your computer, loaded up iTunes, and started zipping through the activation process. After selecting a plan, perhaps setting up an iTunes account, and agreeing to a few sets of terms - you were just about ready to use your iPhone. Then, it happened. "It", in this case, refers to the "your iPhone activation requires additional time to complete" message that seemingly countless iPhone customers have received.

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Subsequently, users who receive the wait message receive an email from Apple's iTunes store which states the following: "AT&T is now processing your activation. You will receive an email confirmation once your activation is complete."

There are mixed indications from AT&T about what is causing the delays. AT&T representatives have suggested individual account issues, overwhelming activation volumes, and delays related to porting numbers from other networks. Though most customers who have actually gotten to speak with AT&T customer service (hold times are over an hour in most cases) report being told they can expect a 2-6 hour wait, some have reported being told they may not have their iPhones activated for 24-72 hours.

Most customers who are in the activation waiting period have also already had their existing phone's service disabled by AT&T, further increasing the frustration involved in waiting.

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It's worth mentioning that the iPhone is, in a sense, useless without activating it. Short of being able to make emergency calls, there's little one can do with their new iPhone except play with the unlock slider on the "Activate iPhone" screen. And folks, despite those who might feel like it is, your iPhone not being activated is NOT an emergency - so please resist the urge to call 9-1-1 and complain to them. Besides, they can't help.

For those of you that have contacted iPhoneFAQ looking for answers to these activation issues, check back to this post, we'll update information here as it becomes available.

(Updated - June 30th, 11:20am EDT) AT&T customer service has indicated that pre-existing AT&T customers waiting for activation with their previous phone already disconnected can remove the SIM card from the iPhone, place it in their other phone, and use that for calls while waiting for thieir iPhone activation email. According to AT&T, doing such will not interrupt or affect the waiting activation.

Disclaimer: we're not supporting this information from AT&T or suggesting you do anything but wait. However, for those of you who may need to place urgent calls, this may be an option to exercise.

(Updated - June 30th, 11:08pm EDT) At this point we've been lucky enough to get the two iPhones we've been struggling with getting activated actually up and running. Unfortunately, there isn't one particular solution we can suggest to any of you. Both are live now as a result of one thing and one thing only:Â persistence.

Each phone took over 24 hours and 10 calls to AT&T to get activated. On almost every call, the AT&T representative on the other end identified some culprit or another holding up the process. We're confident, at least with these two particular phones, that without interaction with the AT&T staff, activation would not have completed.

Be sure to do the following:Â get your order number (even if you didn't get this in email, a rep should be able to give it to you), ask about "holds" on your account, verify IMEI and SIM card numbers, make sure nothing on the account is "awaiting verification". Keep checking your activation status and speaking directly with iPhone activation support.

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Comments

Mark replied on

Hehe, I told some of the reps about this site as I called. Some of them seem interested in what had been tried and the various problems people were having.
I think seeing the various issues and the solutions may have helped them in the end, I hope it did anyway.

I would like to thank the AT&T reps for sticking through it with us and handling our frustrations with calm. Never once did I receive anything but professionalism from the reps even when I got a little testy that one time I had been on the phone for 5 hours and was being transferred back to a number I had already been to.

iAMAZED replied on

Wow... It was hell getting it up and running... But thanks to this BLOG site, Jamie & Darryl at AT&T, AND JUST PLAIN OL' PATIENCE... it's up and running and it's AMAZING. Thanks to all at AT&T for working overtime, being super polite and professional, and to the stock market today for making me enough money to buy 40 more iPhones. Here's to selling 12 million of these things... OH YEAH, congrats to T-Mobile for getting the iPhone deal for Europe!

iAMAZED replied on

Please be patient... It is worth it!

iAMAZED replied on

PLEASE!

Aaron Copes replied on

I have to say I feel for all of you. My boss ran out Sunday and bought three of these things. He hadn't decided on what plan to use for his and his wife's and just had me activate the third for his daughter.

Everything seemed to go smooth until I saw the phone number that they had assigned. For some reason no one at AT&T can explain, we got a North Carolina number while we are in Clearwater, Florida. I even had a CSR read back all of the information and everything in our address was correct.

Now I've been told that we have to take the iPhone to an AT&T Store and have them give us a new SIM and then have them move the account to the new SIM. Incredible. And like someone said, we're paying $36 for this?

Amazing. I still can't believe Jobs went with AT&T. I personally dropped them a long time ago due to their terrible service. Ugh.

BDavis replied on

Well, 5 freaking days later I am finally up and running. I can not even begin to tell you a total of how long I was on hold for. But, I I was on with the 3701 number and they told me to go into a AT&T store and they should be able to help me. So I take the phone into the store and they tell me that according to their computers I am activated. They told me to call the 3701 number. After speaking to someone from the 3701 number about a million times before that I told them to shove it and they could call for me and get back to me. (Surprisingly they did) Anyway I figured I would take everything into a local Apple store, the gentleman took the phone swapped it with a new one swapped SIM cards and I was up and running within 7 minutes. After I leave the store with my up and running iPhone, which was about 2 1/2 hours later (cause that is the closest apples store), AT&T actually held on the line with the 3701 number and told me that they think was a deffective phone to take it to the Apple store. Anyway I figured I would share my grief along with everyone else. I do have to say though after all the bullshit, I still think it was worth the 5 day wait! Good luck to the rest of you!

Wuzer replied on

After another day of pain and suffering, I finally exchanged my iPhone to start completely over. The good news is that I've changed everything I possible know about with my plan to make a smooth activation. So I am sitting here with a brand new iPhone still unopened. Do I try and activate it or just return the phone and save the $600???

iPissed replied on

47 hours, 5 calls to AT&T, 6 hours in hold time, 8 differnt representatives, now their phones are not working or rolling to an "our office is closed" message. Apple is great and they have tried to help, but the "New AT&T" is a piece of crap. The botched their Internet services, they botched thier celluar service, they botched their broadband, and they botched their universal credit card. Guess their ran out of their own customers to screw with so now they are working on Apple. Consider this, if speculation is correct and they sold 500,000 phones for a $36 activation fee each, they just made $18,000,000 on this quality service. Now lets look at the contracts assuming $50 a month they will be taking in $250,000,000 a month in fees. No matter how great the phone, this is crap. I would love to organize a mass return of phones on July 27th and let AT&T know they can not continue down this path.

iPissed replied on

I just got through to another representative and they are now asking for a deposit for the phone. At no point has anyone said anything about this at this point. I have been a happy tmobile customer for 4 years and have three phones with them with no deposit. This is just absurd. When I refused and asked for them to wave the $100 deposit they said there was nothing they could do. I would have to drive to an AT&T office to pay the deposit. I am now boxing up the iPhone and will return it in the morning. After this mess there is no way I am going to give them more money and wait another 48 hours for activation.

I do have to say every rep has been professional and friendly as noted in this thread.

Apple give me a call when you are no longer associated with AT&T.

Twins8 replied on

Try this one:
I made four separate calls to at&t to confirm I could buy an iPhone and replace my Palm Treo with the iPhone, lower my monthly fee and leave the other four phones on the account intact. Each time the answer was "Yes, but it will extend your contract for two years." I drove 40 miles to the store yesterday to buy the phone. I asked the same question and got the same response.
This morning, during activation I am prompted to call at&t which I do only to be told you can't put iPhones on business accounts!!!!

I spend $15,000 year with at&t and this will be the last month I am with at&t. All I got was the customer service sympathy statement from their page 7 CSR manual. No one wanted to helpsolve my problem....but they felt sorry for me.

Wait until my account rep gets the cancellation notice :). I'll tell him I feel his pain.

will replied on

what happpen today with the iphone

will replied on

i gat my working this is so good

let me know if you need any assistant in the activation process

iPissed replied on

Returned the iPhone to Apple Store at about 11:30am. Must have been about 40 people looking at iPhones and when I asked where to return it they all huddled around me asking questions. I made it clear Apple and the phone were great but AT&T sucked and told my story. Also directed folks to this thread. Apple reps were professional, friendly, and helpful as always. One rep knew of the reports and offered to help but there was nothing he could do about AT&T.

All in all, I can't speak highly enough about the Apple and AT&T reps involved. But seems everyones hands were tied at the corporate level.

Good luck to all and congrats to those that did not run into problems.

smartblond replied on

up and running for 26 hours and t hen BOOM my phone sliders stopped working I did go to the apple store they were great about getting me another phone.. went to activate it and GUESS what got that freakin email that it needed more time.. it was up in only an hour this time though.. anyway the new phone seems to work fine and apple was great about making it fast and easy

AlsoMad replied on

I also got my iPhone today. I'm replacing a Blackberry Pearl. I have been waiting for 7 hours and AT&T can't get the activation completed. The latest story is that the can't de-activate my Blackberry Plan to activate the iPhone plan... has this happened to anybody???

Tired replied on

good thing i used my amex, so not paying their stupid activation fee......

Anonymous replied on

Try making a cal from your old phone, which will confirm it's deactivation. It sped up the activation process for me. As soon as i tried making a call, it wouldnt work and the iphone activated.

cegrant replied on

For what it's worth.......

My husband and I had existing ATT accounts. We had data packages on both phones. We upgraded to the iPhone.

Upon getting home, my activation was instant. He got the dreaded "wait" message. I called various ATT support numbers (one of which was closed!). Eventually, a nice lady at the business department gave me the correct number:
1 800 419 4500
(They are open until 1am EST, by the way.)

The nice gentleman there, tried a few things, eventually put me on hold, and after five minutes informed me that the tekkies said it was just a backlog, shouldn't be long. Sure enough, about an hour after the original request he was up and rolling.

The phone call did produce one good thing: When iPhone activation added the data package, it did not remove our old data package from our previous phones, so both would've shown up on the bill. The guy at support caught it and fixed it.

So even if you iPhone activation is smooth like buttah, make sure you verify that any superfluous charges have been removed from your account. I'm sure it's easier to do before the bill arrives...

But I love my new iPhone...and now I'm wondering. Is the email tagline "This was sent from my iPhone" the new status symbol?

Anonymous replied on

its been fuckin 3-4 days and i am livid!!!!!

Screw Them!!! replied on

I AM EFFIN Pi$$ed its been 3-4 days and i wish i could ring one of their necks for doing nothing but B-S-in i'm so close to terminating my contract with these a$$holes....

Anonymous replied on

no business accounts?
Has anyone run in to this? My previous post:

I made four separate calls to at&t to confirm I could buy an iPhone and replace my Palm Treo with the iPhone, lower my monthly fee and leave the other four phones on the account intact. Each time the answer was "Yes, but it will extend your contract for two years." I drove 40 miles to the store yesterday to buy the phone. I asked the same question and got the same response.
This morning, during activation I am prompted to call at&t which I do only to be told you can't put iPhones on business accounts!!!!

Anonymous replied on

i've been waiting for like 60 plus hours so since wendesday mourning and still nothing, this is really a bunch of crap i've been patient so far but it is really getting to me now!!!!!

Chelsea replied on

I tried to activate my phone and got through the activation process, then an error popped up saying something like "Cannot complete activation process. No service detected" What does this mean?? Is this basically the same problem?

Ken Bohne replied on

I was the last to buy the 16G iPhone in my town of Denham Springs,Louisiana. I got there at 7:30 am and was out by 10:00 am and have been on iTunes trying to activate it since and have had NO LUCK!!! What they heck! Didn't they expect this? In the mean time I've been buying applications on iTunes. They have some pretty cool ones.

James2 replied on

Longest wait for activation???

I think I might have the world record for the longest wait for activation. I bought mine on 23rd August and am still waiting (3rd September). I bought mine in HK and the activation process in slightly different in that I bought it at an apple reseller and they then fax your contract to Hutchison. Somewhere along the line my info. has gone missing and despite numerous phonecalls to Hutchinson and visits to the Apple store I am still waiting. No one seems to know what has happened to the contract despite it now having been faxed at least two times. The only plus is that iphones in HK are unlocked and I can use my old sim card so I can make phone calls.

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geekzspot.com replied on

New iPhone 3G S not activating??

Try rebooting!

Here's how:

http://geekzspot.blogspot.com/2009/06/iphone-activation.html

KML replied on

I had same problem. Went to Apple store and was told to go see the peeps at AT&T to swap out sim card. After arguing with AT&T rep, having him tell me it's not the sim and that Apple doesn't know what they're talking about and h wasn't going to change it, I talked him into checking in the computer about my account and lo and behold it told him he needed to change sim. AT&T replaced sim card and within minutes iPhone was up and running.

Anonymous replied on

hey everyone i have a problem with my iphone 3g. i restored it and it wont let me activate it. i have tried to pull out the sim card and turn the iphone on and off and nothing seems to work. HELP!

Anonymous replied on

my phone doesn't want to activate, what could i do?

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