Craig's Musings

Today I tried a really unlikely, impossible to imagine scenario for a wireless operator – a family member (my wife), after seeing my cool new phone and using it, wanted one herself. That would NEVER come up. Edge case. Million to one shot. No one could possibly be expected to plan for that unlikely scenario.

I bought KT an iPhone a week and a half ago, and I finally had time to activate it today (I've been just slammed at work the past bit). I plugged it in and iTunes told me that I can't switch to a family plan throught the software, that I have to call the iPhone activation number. Okay, sure, why not - I call. The polite rep tells me that because I want to add a line, I have to talk to their "add a line" people (even though the number I was told to call was specifically because I wanted to add a line - but whatever). I wait on hold, waiting, waiting, thinking, man - too bad there isn't a machine that could automate repetitive tasks so that people didn't have to sit around waiting while other people did a bunch of repetitive tasks. Some day, maybe. And maybe a man on the moon, too - but I know I'm out there in my thinking. Anyway, I wait on hold, and get the "add a line" person. After explaining that I want to activate my iPhone, she tells me that she can't do iPhone activations. I had to ask - then why did I call the iPhone activation line if you can't do iPhone activations? I get back a very polite "we can't do iPhone activations from here". But I'm told that if I go to a store, that they can do it there.

Like I said, million-to-one scenario - who would have thought that a user might want to add an iPhone to an existing account and turn that existing account from an individual account into a family account? But maybe it will come up a few times, and AT&T will figure out they should support it instead of leaving a p*ssed off customer without a working iPhone. Yeesh.