ATT Credit Check 'No Hit' - resulting in $500 deposit required per iPhone

Success! Amazingly, ATT called me back late last night. The last CSR that I had spoken to had received an email from the 'Credit Analyst' he had spoken to during my call. The C.A. had apparently taken it upon herself to look further into the problem and had somehow reset my credit approval request. He vaguely described how she had cleared or deleted a bunch of information and tried pulling my credit report again - and it worked. He then talked me through the activation of my first iPhone, which went smoothly this time. This was such a huge relief!

Some observations from my many interactions with ATT yesterday:
* Absolutely none of the CSRs and in-store reps that I spoke to (at least 10) understood that it is possible to activate the iPhone entirely through iTunes without any pre-approval code, phone calls, or visits to an ATT store. I was amazed at this because the streamlined (no-human-interaction-required) activation process had been one of the big boasts coming up to launch day. In every case, they insisted that pre-approval was required, no matter how good a person's credit is. They are totally wrong on this of course. A person with good credit should be able to go through activation without any pre-approval code.
* Continuity across conversations with CSRs is often broken. On a couple of occasions, I would be passed to some other department and they would have no idea whom I'd just spoken to, so I'd have to tell me whole story over again. If you've been given an account or 'BAN' number, make sure that the reps you talk to make notes against that account before passing you on.

By the way - I did in fact visit an ATT store twice yesterday. On the first visit, they said that the retail systems in the Boston area were all down and that they could not process my credit check. They advised me to go home and call ATT to get the pre-approval credit check code over the phone (this is possible apparently). It was during this call that I was first told that I'd been approved but only with a $500 deposit per phone. At this point they refused to explain why. It was only later after many, many calls and a lot of escalation - "can I please speak with a supervisor" that I finally learned about the 'no hit' problem. The ATT CSR's will never allow a customer to speak directly with someone in their credit department. They advised me to go back into an ATT store and they would be able to explain there. When I visited the same store the second time - they were able to see my $500 deposit 'approval' - but absolutely refused to give any explanation, nor to contact the ATT credit check department. I was incredulous - "you're asking me to give you a $1000 deposit (for 2 iPhones) without any explanation why?". It was a brick wall. I went home and tried calling again. After about two hours worth of repeated escalation and a couple of mysteriously dropped calls, I gave up. ATT had told me that the final word was - either pay the $1000 dollar deposit - or return the phones. It was about an hour later that I got a call from ATT to tell me that they had resolved the problem (see my other message in this thread).