Getting an iPhone had an underlying motivation - T-Mobile, a carrier I've been happy with for years, roams data in California (at least that is what my current phone shouts at me every time I sync my email). Not a big deal before, but now with my role at MacBU, I'll be down in California on a regular basis. Not cool to be roaming data at a gazillion dollars a megabyte. So a switch to AT&T was in my future - the iPhone was the catalyst. It is still a big leap, switching your number. And I think the transfer will cost me, too, because I got a new phone from T-Mobile last year - first one I have ever gotten from them in 6 years of being a customer, but you always get stuck with these two year commitments.
Backstory aside, tonight I was getting ready to head to Redmond Town Center where there are two AT&T stores - I figured I'd be able to get an iPhone there. As I was leaving, I got a call from one of our MacBU PM's (Han-Yi) who was in line at the Apple store. He told me that it looked like they had enough and wanted to know if I wanted one. So I figured it was a great opportunity to divide and conquer - I would stake out the Redmond AT&T stores, Han-Yi would see what he could do at the Apple Store. As I was getting in my car, I realized that I was about to go in the opposite direction from the Apple Store and that would potentially waste a bunch of time (I hate waiting 
), and so I decided to bet on MacBU Mojo and drove straight to the Apple Store. My intuition paid off, there was a smilin' Han-Yi with four, count 'em, four iPhones - he found another MacBUer to go in with him. So then we figure - what the heck? In I go, and about 3 minutes later, out I come with my limit of two 8GB iPhones. Then we cackled off to the parking garage, each with three iPhones, and headed off for our respective weekends.
Fast forward to home. I unbox my iPhone. Ooooooo. It is as beautiful as it looked online. I power up my iPhone. Ahhhhhh. The slider is way cool - you can make emergency calls without activation. I dock my iPhone - everything pops up beautifully on my computer. I go through all the steps to set up an account and I take the big leap to do my number transfer: I push "Activate." I wait... I wait... I wait... and 5 minutes later I get:
Your activation requires additional time to complete.
You will receive an email confirmation sent to xxxx once your activation is complete
It's 45 minutes later and I can't use my brand spankin' new iPhone for anything. I can't sync anything. I can't do anything. It just sits there, staring at me, taunting me, laughing at me.
Talk about a freakin' let down. Hopefully something magic will happen in the coming hours.
I hate waiting.
Comments
That sucks. I'm seriously considering buying one and paying the $175 termination fee just to have the tricked out ipod. We will see.
Posted by: Stefan | June 29, 2007 11:41 PM
Some other providers were anticipating this and locked numbers from transfer. Or perhaps they had locked them months ago as a matter of course.
A quick phone call to a provider whose name shall not be named unlocked numbers for transfer, which then went through.
As for me, I've been with AT&T /cingular since before number portability was possible.
Posted by: vmarks | June 30, 2007 5:27 AM