The APPLE MEDIA EVENT of 10/04/2011 - Page 2

There are precious few things I would hold AN HOUR on a phone to get, and a smartphone aint one of 'em...especially one that is almost identical to the iPhone 4 that is widely available now and costs less. 

 

But it's a gift for your fiance, so...there's that.

You're still able to pre-order. Either Apple made a lot of 4s' or the demand is just not as high for this phone like it was for the 4.

Well, I work at home so it was mostly a matter of making the call, putting the phone on speaker mode, and then unmuting it an hour and a half later when it rung to connect me to an agent.  So not really a lot of effort on my part, I was already going to be sitting at my desk for that hour and a half anyway.

An hour and a half is not bad at all. My wife waited in line for about 12 hours to get the iPhone 4. Of course she had the day off of work, and Indianapolis only has 1 freaking Apple store.

 

Living in California, you can't get 5 blocks without passing one.

I hope they weren't counting my order in there.  Despite 5 (FIVE!) calls to AT&T the past week I still was not able to properly order my phone.  I called twice before the pre-order day to try to get them to fix the glitch in the system that was saying I wasn't eligible to order.  I called once on Friday to actually order the phone (I sat on hold for 1 1/2 to actually order the phone).  I received an order number that never seemed to bring up any information.

 

After waiting the prescribed 24 hours from ordering and still seeing no tracking info, I called on Sunday.  The rep I talked to then the order looked weird but it was in the system and should be ok.

 

Today I got an email asking me to confirm the Terms and Conditions. "Sweet," I thought, "it actually went through!"  Sadly, when I tried to click on the link and it told me my email was invalid.  I then called up customer service for the fifth time and explained my issue.  She thought it might be an issue with my email since the prefix for the before the @<domain name>.com was only 2 letters.  After failing with that and 20 more minutes on hold she finally tells me that there was an error with an email I was supposed to get with the order and that it had been canceled.

 

Best part, she says it'll be another 48 hours before I can try to pre-order one and the expected wait time is now going to be 21-28 days.  I told her to call me when it's reverted and I'll figure it out.  Genuinely tempted to end my contract with AT&T and just switch after this whole screwed up situation.  I'd imagine I can get a couple hundred bucks for my Atrix on eBay and that would mostly cover the early termination fee.

Well, a quick spin around looking for the cheapest way to have 2 smartphones and it looks like we're stuck with AT&T.  Since AT&T lets you drop the messaging plan, that saves us like $20 a month.  With the $70, 700 minute plan and two $25 data plans, we're only at $120 per month before taxes.  I think I'm also supposed to be getting a corporate discount of close to 10% (which doesn't look like it's being applied properly).

 

Sigh, US mobile phone operators kind of suck.  Maybe when my contract is up I'll look at pay as you go.

Oh yes, when capitalism is valued over consumer rights, it's kinda a tricky balance. Basically saying, by the US allowing any company to have their way, everyone is trapped due to frequencies allocated and chosen by the company. Thus 3G frequencies vary, and if you were able to take a phone from one carrier to the next, you couldn't use their 3G frequency. Funny thing is, most of the other countries around the world all use a similar system, thus it's easy to go from country to country.

Thing is, if the US was all on the same frequencies, coverage doesn't matter! Now when this happens, all companies equal out, and it then comes to customer satisfaction, aka who can be cheaper!

Now with LTE, we got 17ish different flavors of it. So basically the world decided to finally copy us! So global roaming on unlocked phones will get harder, at least on LTE speeds. 3G? Well only AT&T kept up with that, but if they acquire T-Mobile, or even now, they try not to unlock your phone after you've paid up your commitment! I don't blame AT&T, I blame Washington.

The ballsy move, would to force Verizon and Sprint to the same frequencies of AT&T! Then force mandate global roaming at no extra charge. Basically it becomes 1 network! Then you'll see prices drop.

This is some bizarre sort of zombie-ghost order.  They can't find it, can't cancel it, and can't just let me re-order.  I've now been on the phone another 45 minutes today with AT&T trying to figure this one out.  I only have 45 minutes more before I have to go so hopefully they'll sort it out before then.

Not enough people threaten with a hadoken.

(sorry to hear though)

Wish there was some way to merge this thread into the "Semi Official iPhone Thread" (meh so what if I started it).

Mine has shipped 10/09/11, but the fedex # isn't active yet. Same old same old. I'm all for a thursday arrival.

I guess I could move it over there.  So the saga continues, after maybe 2 hours on the phone with them they could definitively tell me: I shouldn't have been able to order the phone!  And the system new that so although it said it was ordered, that really didn't happen.  Apparently when the new line was added it was added in a way that looks like I bought hardware.  I didn't, I had an unlocked phone and just got a SIM card.   They couldn't verify through their system that I hadn't bought hardware (what crap!).  So what I had to do was go to the AT&T store, get them to verify that I hadn't bought any hardware on my account and then call back and go forward from there.

 

So I went into the AT&T store, explained the situation, they're like, 'Yep, no hardware purchased ... just a SIM card.'  They updated the account and now I'm on hold with AT&T to see if they can actually make the order go through.  At this point I'm just looking to annoy them until they give me the phone.

 

ETA: I think I FINALLY got it ordered.  Unfortunately it had to get re-ordered so who knows when it'll actually show up.  What a bag of crap.  Unfortunately if you want an iPhone (which my girl definitely did) all of the plans in the US kind of suck.  The least horrible of all of them was the AT&T one but man, what a pain in the ass to get that sorted out.

Edited by dontEATnachos - 10/12/11 at 6:37pm