After months of hype and our own iPhone Love Parade AKA last Friday night, the first iPhonian complaints are starting to hit our tips box. First up, Mike:
Hello and good afternoon, I just thought you might find it interesting that on the day after one of their biggest product releases Apple has decided to make unavailable their entire technical support department. I was wondering why they chose to debut the phone on a Friday at 6:00pm. It seems painfully obviously to me now.
I am having all kinds of problems with my Iphone (mostly with activation, details below) and tried to call Apple technical support to at leaset get the thing to some sort of usable state. As you know the phone is totally worthless without activation. This sting of all this would be a little less painful if I could at least use the Ipod part of the device. When I called, the automated message informed me that “no technicians were available at this time” and to call back later. No, please hold for an available technician….. no, please leave a message and one of our technicians will get back with you……just, call back later (AKA: we have your money now go F yourself). This is my first ever purchase of an Apple product and I could not be more dissatisfied. It just blows me away that they have been planning this for so long, were fully aware of the response they were going to get and were still totally unprepared to handle the situation. Below I have listed my experience with AT&T’s “Customer Care”. Just to give you the full affect of my excellent Iphone experience. I now am the proud owner of a $640.93 brick (not including all the costs associated with the service). Awesome…….enjoy the read.
This is an excerpt of a complaint I have filed with the BBB againt AT&T:
I purchased the new Apple Iphone and tried to activate my service with AT&T via their online software. All the documentation and videos about the activation part of the service led me to believe that it was fast and simple. This was a very large part of the reason I made the decision to change my service. After going through the online steps for activation I was notified via e-mail that it would take some time to move my existing phone number from Sprint over to AT&T and at that time I would be able to activate the phone. It is important to note that none of the features of the Iphone will work at all until the activation is complete. It is completly useless until your activate the product. After several hours (basically overnight) AT&T ported over my existing phone number from Sprint to the AT&T system but would/could not activate the phone. So now my old phone service no longer works and my new phone service does not work either. I contacted “Customer Care” to get the problem rectified. After approx 1.5 hours on the phone they told me they could not get my service activated. Neither of my phones would now not work for inbound or outbound calls. I was frustrated by this but thought that if they would refund the activation fee I could overlook the inconvenience because it was the weekend and my customers were not likely to call me. As a result of this inconvenience I asked them to refund me the $39.00 (approx) activation fee since they failed to activate my service and now I was without a phone. The Customer Care Manager told me I had not been charged yet but that when I got charged it would be impossible to refund the money for the activation. I asked him if they would be able to credit my account the amount of the activation fee since they had failed to activate my phone in a timely manner and that I would be without a phone for almost a whole day. He told me that many people were having this problem and that they were not able to refund the fee for anyone. I explained to the Customer Service Manager that it would be possible to refund the activation fee (it is always possible to refund money) but that they were choosing (a conscience choice) not to do it. There is a very big difference between not being able to do something and not wanting to do something. He then repeated they could not refund the activation fee ignoring what I had said. I then asked who else I could talk to about getting a refund or credit and he told me there was no one else I could talk to. I then asked him who I needed to call to file a complaint. He told me there was no other number to call to file a complaint. He was basically telling me that there was no action I could take to turn this negative experience into a more posive experience. After several minutes of trying to get some kind of information from him I realized that I had no other action except to file a complaint with the BBB. I tried to settle my issue with AT&T directly but they were uncooperative, hence I am here filing this complaint.
Consumer’s Desired Resolution:
I am asking that the activation fee of $39.00 (approx) be refunded or not charged to my account.