I received my new iphone 3GS on Friday afternoon, just as promised, despite the AT&T website waiting until the last possible minute to post tracking information.  I had ordered in on June 10, from the AT&T website, as I had run my contract on my first-gen iphone, and figured the 3g speed and additional bells and whistles probably justified the upgrade.

 AT&T fumbled the ball horribly… When I received the phone, I followed all included instructions to activate it.  I received the nebulous and certainly-not-encouraging message “Awaiting Activation.  This may take a while.”  The first time I saw that, I thought the phrasing was pretty funny… it lost its comical appeal by the following morning.  I ran a few google searches, and saw that many others were having the same problems, and that some were receiving messages that it may take up to 48 hrs to resolve.  The only online advice was to keep cycling the power, so I tried that several times, to no avail.  It didn’t inconvenience me so much, actually, as my other iphone was still live, and I had a 2 hr drive ahead of me, with dinner plans at the other end, so I was doomed to wait until Saturday to play with my new toy, in any case.

On Saturday morning, I saw another post that indicated someone had called AT&T 10 times, and that they finally got their’s activated, and that they believed it would not have ever been successfully activated had they not jumped through the customer-support hurdles.  I thought I’d give it a shot, and see if I got lucky.  On my first call to AT&T, I was definitely NOT lucky.  The automated system first routed me to Apple, who, after a relatively short wait, politely advised me that this was an AT&T issue, and that I’d need to call back and talk to them to get it resolved.  I dutifully jumped back into the automated system, and landed at a call center somewhere in the US, where an unpleasant customer rep advised me that they couldn’t help, and that I needed to call Apple.  When I explained that I was looking at hundreds of posts online, and that what she was telling me was inconsistent with what ANYONE else was hearing, she slightly revised her response and said they had recieved an email that morning telling them that anyone with activation problems was supposed to go to an Apple or AT&T store to get it resolved.  I asked to speak with her supervisor, and, after a longer hold, was put on with her assistant supervisor.  I explained that the direction I was being given was inconsistent with everything I was seeing anywhere else, and that I believed what she was telling me was inaccurate.  She elaborated that there is an AT&T team that can resolve the activation issues, but that they will not take calls directly from customers, that they will only take calls from reps within the Apple or AT&T stores.  That’s probably about the time that I started getting really annoyed.  I explained that it wasn’t convenient for me to go to an Apple store or AT& T store, and that I wanted her to help me solve my problem directly.  She responded by saying that she would be happy to locate the nearest Apple or AT&T store, if I’d give her my address.  I got her name (which I left on a post-it, so I’m not including here), and hung up.

I figured I’d give it one more try before heading out to breakfast, so I dialed back in to AT&T, and was almost immediately answered by a delightful, competent rep, presumably from another call center.  (Probably the one that the assistant manager above had mentioned, and said she couldn’t transfer me to…)  She said my issue was simple to fix, that it was well known, and that it resulted from the fact that, because I had ordered online, something about my acceptance of the terms and conditions in connection with my plan change didn’t route through their system and trigger activation of my new SIM.  She activated my SIM (which deactivated my prior SIM, causing us to be disconnected and momentarily sending me into cardiac arrest), and called me back to make sure everything was working properly.  She apologized for my experience up to that point, accepted my gushing gratitude gracefully, and went on, hopefully, to help other customers having the same problem.

OK – all of that having been said… the phone is very cool.  I picked up a “moshi” case for it at Microcenter, which is really low-profile and doesn’t make the nice and slim phone too bulky.  I’m not seeing the huge battery life gains I had hoped for, but that may just be my perception, at this point.  I’ll post pics and vids soon in case anyone’s interested in the improved camera quality.