My iPhone 3G Purchasing Experience, Part 1

Before I get into my iPhone 3G purchasing experience, I would like to celebrate a special occasion that I missed a couple of days ago. The blog post about my new ZAZZLE Sports Gear gallery was my 100th post! I started BenMVP.com nearly 5 months ago and my daily visits have climbed from just a handful a day in the beginning to nearly 100/day now. Hopefully that upward trend can continue for the next 100 posts.

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But now, on to my new iPhone 3G. I purchased my iPhone last Monday (July 28th) after some trials and tribulations. Initially this post was going to just document the process from the second I stepped in line to the moment when I made my first call. While I'll still go through the process somewhat, it's turned more into Helpful Hints You Should Know Before Getting Your iPhone 3G. They are hints I wished I would've known prior to purchasing my iPhone 3G that would've made the entire process go a lot smoother.


Helpful Hint #1: AT&T doesn't have any iPhones

Why doesn't the AT&T store have iPhone 3Gs?

I'm a current AT&T customer and I wanted to purchase my iPhone from an AT&T store because I have a Stanford discount applied to my account and I had read all the horror stories about trying to activate the iPhone at an Apple Store with an AT&T discount (more on this a lil' later). But when I went to the Palo Alto AT&T store two Fridays ago (July 25th) they said that they didn't have any iPhone 3Gs and more surprisingly didn't know when they were getting anymore.

I found that very odd. How does the exclusive iPhone cell carrier not know when they will get a new shipment of iPhone 3Gs? Especially when we are forced to have a phone plan this time around. That doesn't seem like good business. This was my first piece of evidence that AT&T and Apple really aren't working together. AT&T does offer its customers the option of doing Direct Fulfillment, which is basically "give us your money now (you bet we're gonna swipe your credit card) and maybe you'll get your iPhone 3G in two to four weeks." And judging from all the complaints about the process, I'm glad that I did not go with that approach.

So in short, don't even waste your time going to an AT&T store, just go to an Apple store. However....


Helpful Hint #2: There are still long lines at the Apple stores, so get a claim ticket

So I figured that two weeks after the initial launch of the iPhone on July 11th that all the iPhone 3G excitement and craziness would have died down. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. After checking out the iPhone 3G availability website the night before, I got up bright and early Saturday morning (7:30AM) to make it to the Stanford Shopping Center Apple store for their early bird 8AM opening. I thought that there might be a few handfuls of people in front of me, and completely expected that I'd be back in bed between 10AM and 11AM. That was definitely not the case.

Yep, there are still long lines waiting for iPhones at Apple stores

I got there right at 8AM and there had to have been at least 60 people in front of me. I mean, I definitely wanted the iPhone 3G, but I'm no Apple fanboy. I didn't want to wait hours upon hours in line like these crazy people. I had initially decided to go to the Stanford Shopping Center Apple store instead of the main downtown Palo Alto store (where apparently Steve Jobs shops) because I figured that everyone would go to that one. But apparently everyone thought the same as me.

Luckily, that Saturday was the first day in which the Apple store was giving out claim tickets to those people waiting in line. They had these cards that were paired with a corresponding iPhone 3G and it guaranteed you the iPhone. With the card I could leave and come back later in the day when the line was (presumably) a lot shorter, provided that it was before 6PM. Like I said, I'm not a fan of waiting in long lines, so once I got my claim ticket, I dipped out.

But before I left, the Apple store attendant told me that I had to remove the Stanford discount that I had on my account or else Apple would not be able to process my iPhone. And apparently the discount removal can take up to 72 hours to be reflected in Apple's system. Didn't make too much sense to me since a lot of AT&T's customers have some sort of discount through their companies and Apple was really trying to target the business market with iPhone 3G. You'd think they would've foreseen such an issue and worked it out ahead of time. Another prime example of Apple and AT&T not working together. But with the motivation of getting my iPhone as quickly as possible, I hit up 611 and got the discount removed.

However, that failed to do the trick because...


Helpful Hint #3: Don't just remove the discount, remove the affiliation too

Now I already knew that having a discount on my account meant that Apple could not process my iPhone, but I was not fully aware of what that meant. When I left the Stanford Shopping Center Apple store, I went over to the Palo Alto store to pick up my boy Sol (who had gotten there at 7AM). He was already in the store by the time I got there around 8:30AM/8:45AM, but I saw that there was only about 8-10 people in the line. So I thought to myself "what the heck? I might as well wait in line, while I wait for him to finish."

And lo and behold, the line kept moving and he was still in there (apparently he was having AT&T account issues). When I was about 3 people from the front, one of the Apple store attendants pulled me into the store to make sure that they'd be able to process my account since I was an existing AT&T customer with a discount (that I had removed like an hour earlier). And surprise surprise, he wasn't able to process my account because the discount was still showing up. Disheartened, I left the store with Sol (who was now grinning ear to ear with his iPhone 3G), planning to come back on Monday when everything should be clear.

On Monday, however, it was the same story. They still couldn't process my iPhone 3G because the discount was showing up on my account (I had even verified at an AT&T store that the discount was removed). So at this point, I'm not really believing the whole "it could take 72 hours for it to be reflected in our system" crap because it would surely take 0.72 seconds for my purchase to show up in both AT&T and Apple's systems.

So I walked out the store and called up AT&T's customer support and was blessed to receive a very helpful representative named John Wallace. I explained the situation to him, and he told me to go back into the store and find the attendant so that he could make things right. They have a 3 minute convo, the attendant pushes a few buttons on his wireless POS device, and voila my iPhone can now be processed. So what happened exactly?

It turned out that while my Stanford discount had been removed, it was actually the Stanford affiliation on the account that was still causing the problem. Once John removed that, everything went through just fine. Oh and by the way it only took a couple of seconds to be reflected in "Apple's systems." Hmmmm...

So two pieces of advice. If you do have a discount on your account, make sure that the customer service rep not only removes the discount, but also removes the affiliation. Secondly, don't buy into the crap that it takes 72 hours for the changes to be reflected in "Apple's systems." Don't leave the store! Call up 611 right there and have them talk to an Apple attendant. Have them work it all out.

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Continue on to My iPhone 3G Purchasing Experience, Part 2 for helpful hints #4 and #5.