Monthly Archives: October 2011

siri, make my phone work

Screen_shot_2011-10-15_at_1

notice the beta.

i’m an unabashed apple fanboy, but i’m not cultish about it. i’ve tried to stay generally normal with my use of apple products, but tonight took me into tiring, terrifying, and frustrating territory.

my iphone 4s was coming today, and i was pretty excited about that. i can’t wait to try out the new camera. the at&t rep i spoke to also couldn’t wait to check that out. he’ll make an appearance in a bit, but first i needed to get phone in hand — difficult since i missed my delivery.

no problem, since UPS told me my phone would be available to pick up between 8 and 9:30 this evening. super — i’ll just swing by and pick it up. apparently, they told hundreds of other people the same thing because the line was ridiculously long. i didn’t get into the car to drive home until 10:30 after getting on line a little after 8. but it was one of those situations where once you’re in it, you might as well tough it out. as terrible as it was for me, at least i wasn’t that guy who came to pick up a package from a family member and stumbled into the mass of the iphone faithful. 

when i got home, i tried to activate my phone, and i knew that since i was going to actually activate it on my line instead of the one i ordered it on (my mom’s number on my account), there might be a hiccup or two. that at&t rep who was excited about the camera said it’d be no problem — the fact that i hadn’t already activated it was a great start. except when things didn’t go smoothly and it refused to activate on my line, he decided we should call apple. except by WE calling apple, he meant that he would dial and then jump off the line. super.

apple: there’s nothing i can do. this is an at&t thing.

two hours after that, i still don’t have a working phone. another at&t rep couldn’t make anything happen either, so it looks like i’m off to the local retail store to make this happen tomorrow morning. to top it off, the phone that WAS working on my line doesn’t anymore. so much for live-tweeting my phone activation.

wish me luck.