same boat, got a little sleep, but this is awful, and I'm a new customer, they should be treating new customers extra good, but i guess not, welcome to AT&T!
I was having the same problem, I was a new coustomer switching from verizon. Started activation and got the first email at 923pm, and email telling me it would take longer at 936.....I waited and just when I was ready to give up hope and go to sleep I got an email at 338am that my number transfer was not avilable....which *****, but I decided oh well and bit the bullet and resubitmed my activation for a brand new number and it worked instantally. I know that didnt seem to be the trick erlier, but maybe theyre finally catching up with the new activations?
I starting the activation process at about 8:00 PM in NYC, and couldn't wait any longer, so I went to bed. I could barely sleep, and woke up at 4:30 AM. Finally, I saw the long awaited activation email in my inbox, and I gotta tell you, it was worth the wait!
8 hours and waiting. The instructions are not coming on my itunes. All I have been able to do is sync music, pictures. i cannot activate my ATT account. The phones says that ATT is waiting to activate phone and that it might take awhile.
Pete, i know that's what they said, but we know that AT&T is a bunch of fridging liars. I spent a good hour on the phone with an Apple rep, and used him as my middle man while he spoke with AT&T, cause i couldn't stand the crap they were telling me. Finally we found out where the problem was, but all i can do is wait until my # transfer either goes through or gets rejected. And honestly, I wish it would just get rejected so my wife and I both could start using our phones as opposed to waiting for another 24 hrs after the first one is activated. I think Apple has done a great job, except for their selection of carriers, I would much rather have more minutes and fave5 than rollover and less minutes. The 200 included texts are cool, but i think that is to prepare us for the addition of iChat sms.
I'm also in NYC, but for me the activation was a breeze. It took me 6 minutes to transfer my number from my old phone (I've been a Cingular/AT&T customer since December).
Though I did everything at 3 in the morning. Maybe the servers earlier were busy because of so many people trying to activate their phones ...
7 hours, 10 minutes. Absolutely delightful. I have been with Sprint for 8 years, and the iPhone is a compelling enough reason to change providers. I stand in line for 2 hours, spend $700 for the phone, car charger, and misc accessories, and now I have been waiting for 7 hours, 10 minutes for this "useless brick" to activate. Most unpleasant. Is this the kind of service we should come to accept from AT&T and Apple?
Nightmare, indeed! I've been waiting 11+ hours now. I got the phone after a somewhat reasonable one-hour wait at the Albany, NY store, then spent 4+ hours talking to AT&T and Apple trying to get the thing activated.
First problem: the activation email was sent to my old .Mac address, which I no longer had access to because I let my .Mac subscription expire years ago. I still use my .Mac email address as my iTunes account login and to post on the forums here, so when prompted for my AppleID when activating I put that address in. Silly me. Trying to explain that to an AT&T service rep from Canada was tons o' fun.
First solution: I got drunk and desperate enough to re-subscribe to .Mac, costing me an additional $99.
Second problem: I finally got an email at my old-but-now-new .Mac account saying that my existing AT&T rate plan is "incompatible" with the iPhone. So, another call to AT&T. It seems that it's not a simple matter of adding $20/month for iPhone service to your existing AT&T rate plan. I currently pay $29.99/month for 350 minutes on a rate plan which I've had for 3+ years but which is no longer an option for new AT&T customers. So now I have to pay $39.99/month for 450 minutes (AT&T's cheapest plan), plus the additional $20/month for iPhone service.
Second solution: accepting (for now) that I'll be paying $10/month extra for those additional 100 minutes, which works out to $0.10/minute for minutes I don't need or want. I'll work on this "incompatibility problem" with AT&T billing later.
Third problem: I awoke this morning to find that (a) my iPhone still hasn't been activated and (b) that my old phone is now inactivated. I can't even call anyone to complain now since I don't have a land-line.
Total cost of ownership thus far: $650 for the phone (includes NY state sales tax), $99 for .Mac to escape the whirlwind of AT&T versus Apple blame, $240 over two years for my new "compatible" AT&T rate plan, and $480 over two years for iPhone data service. $1500 and counting for a new phone, a phone which isn't even working at the moment.