How about those thousands of people that stood in line, many camping out, to get their Apple iPhones. On a whim I went by an ATT store, remotely located in a small community, and there were at least 300 people waiting. I went into the Trader Joes.
A bit later, I headed to the mall. After getting my own errands done, I decided to check the Apple Store. At 7:40, I walked right into the store and bought an 8GB version. Then bought a second one for my son. No line, no waiting. A store employee told me they had estimated 400 people were waiting and they serviced them all by 7:00. This was a bit too funny for me; just walking right in and buying one.
In the store, there were lots of people looking and playing with the phone, but not many buying. I did notice that I didn’t see a single phone go through the register without at least one accessory. I did get a holster/case for the son as my experience tells me his devices need all the protection they can get.
His activation went reasonably well, but there was a glitch. iTunes had trouble communicating with the ATT servers and actually gave us a message indicating failure with no instructions on how to proceed. I planned to just restart so unpluggedthe iPhone from the USB port. Lo and behold, the message on the iPhone display said it was activated!
Despite the error message in iTunes, everything was fine. We went through the rest of the setup and he bagan using the phone, happy as a clam.
I then proceeded to activate my own phone. That didn’t go as well. After a terminable 10 minute wait in iTunes (at 12:15 am), I got an ATT message that my business account was not compatible with the activation process and it gave me a toll-free number to call. I called the number and had a 20 minute wait. The first thing the customer service person told me was the Apple iPhone was not for business users (funny, Apple doesn’t say that). A polite discussion ensued during which the person said she couldn’t help me. I ave her my account information, and I am the account holder, but she asked be for an “account password”. I never put such a restriction on the account and call ATT almost weekly to make various changes and new orders.
Another 10 minutes later she finally tells me I need to contact a different toll-free number. But, they only work Mon-Fri from 8:00 to 5:30! I have a $600 device and can’t use it.
My limited experience using my son’t phone is pretty positive, and it seems Apple has done their usualy terrific job. But I believe they have seriously underestimated how ATT can really mess this up and turn the experience negative. Many people who have this experience are likely to equally blame both companies.
Apple has a lot on the line with this iPhone foray into the mobile telecommunications market. They are heavily reliant on carriers for the user experience and, by extension, is puting their reputation on the line and at the mercy of these customer-unfriendly organizations. Bad experiences with ATT or their service could turn a customer off of Apple altogether. Only time will tell if Apple has made a good decision in taking this path to market.
