I sent the following to sjobs@apple.com:
Mr. Jobs,
I am dissatisfied with my experience of activating my iPhone 3GS. Activation was delayed for four days. Then, iTunes gave me a vague error saying my phone couldn’t be activated without explaining why. Then, I received an e-mail with a phone number to call. I tried calling it numerous times without being connected to a person in a reasonable amount of time. I once waited on hold for about twenty-five minutes. Then, I finally connected with someone, only to be told there was an existing balance on my AT&T account that needed to be paid off first, the one thing that iTunes needed to explain to me, but didn’t. I paid off the balance, and called the phone number again today, but the line was dead!
I tried looking for a phone number to call on the Apple web site, but there is no phone number for iPhone activation trouble. I finally clicked the refund link in the Apple e-mail, and saw a phone number there for general problems. After finally connecting with a human being on this number, they had to put me on hold to figure out how to connect me to someone who could figure this out. The next person didn’t have any of the information that I had entered into iTunes, and I had to recollect my family’s AT&T account information—again—in order to activate the phone, as well as dig into the phone’s settings and pop out the SIM card to read off various numbers. In all, it took nine days to activate my iPhone 3GS.
This experience was frustrating and piss-poor. After owning the first iPhone for two years, and after two iPhone releases, I thought Apple would be capable of working with a partner like AT&T to deliver a quality experience. I am disappointed, and I will not expect the same quality experience for future iPhones that I did for this one.
