Finally connected

I woke up this morning and my iPhone was connected to the O2 network; on the 12th day of owning the device.

I discovered later that Carphone Warehouse tried to add a £7.50 text bolt-on onto my order that I never asked for. That just puts the icing on a particularly shitty cake for me.

iPhone…O2…blah…etc

Not connected yet. 11 days and counting since owning the phone. The Carphone Warehouse store I bought the iPhone from said today that O2 have now definitely set things in motion on their computer systems. Apparently they tried twice before but their systems came up with “fail” during those attempts. This time there was a “success” message. Why I had to come into the store to get them to try a third time I don’t know.

Apparently it’s not just me experiencing these connection problems; that Carphone Warehouse and O2 have now formed a specialised department dedicated towards getting all remaining customers connected to the O2 network.

Anyway, just before leaving the store I was told 24 hours and I’ll be connected. Sometime tuesday 22nd then I’ll be able to enjoy the full iPhone experience.

I don’t doubt it’ll happen for a second.

8 days and counting

My iPhone is still not connected.

Thursday and friday mainly consisted of talking to Carphone Warehouse’s customer support. On thursday a helpful staff member told me he would persue the matter himself and ring me back on friday (to spare me the typical half hour wait I’ve experienced each day waiting on customer support helplines). He did, and during that conversation he said that he’d talked to O2 and the next course of action I should be taking would be to return to the store I purchased the phone from and tell them to treat me as a brand-new customer. O2 couldn’t enable my phone and Carphone Warehouse couldn’t do anything about it either. He was helpful and I even spoke to his line manager to tell him that I thought he helped me, but it turned out the information he’d been told was incorrect.

I visited the Carphone Warehouse store friday morning. I turned up at the store’s opening time, 9:30am. At 9:50am I had to leave to get to work and the store still hadn’t opened, so friday was a complete non-event.

This morning (saturday). I spoke to the polite and apologetic store manager (who I don’t believe is at fault for all this and tried to help me). First thing he pointed out was that he (and other CPW managers I assume) had been sent an email saying that some iPhone customers still hasn’t been connected (I’m special!) and were advised to return to store and be treated as brand new customers (i.e. given new mobile numbers). The email then said to NOT do this; that they (O2 I assume) were working at connecting all customers still. He then pointed out that my notes said that I’d been sent an email advising that I’d be connected within 72 hours, which was sent friday. I don’t recall receiving this email.

So; I’ve gotta wait and see if I get connected by the end of tomorrow (sunday). If I don’t then I’ve got to return to the store again, although I’ve seemingly got to remain in-store due to the data protection act and store employees not being able to persue matters otherwise.

I’ve got to write up a factual complaint to Carphone Warehouse’s complaints department. Helpfully, there’s no link on their website regarding complaints.

I’m not angry anymore; more numb with disbelief.

It continues…

O2 didn’t ring me back by midday or 1pm as they promised last night to explain what I needed to do to get my iPhone activated. I had to ring them. When I got through I was told that I now have to contact/ring up/revisit Carphone Warehouse and make sure they’ve activated or passed on my details correctly. So O2 are washing their hands of me for the time being it seems, even though it was supposedly their systems which crashed for everyone on friday.

This is running parallel to email queries I’m getting bounced back to me from O2 saying that all I need to do is connect to the latest version of iTunes now.

If I’d known there’d be so many problems there’s no way on earth I would’ve either bought an iPhone or tried to deal with Carphone Warehouse or O2. When is a normal person supposed to find the time during the week in order to revisit stores and try and get people to correct their own mistakes? This seriously takes the piss.

Roll on tomorrow, when I’m sure there’ll be plenty more tales of woe to blog about.

UPDATE: O2 gave me Carphone Warehouse’s helpline which they said to ring as they’re the ones who can sort the problem out. I rang the number (0870 111 7200) and the automated service says that it doesn’t recognise my mobile number or account, and to type in my O2 mobile number…which I don’t obviously have as they haven’t connected me yet. So I had to just hang up. After ringing the Carphone Warehouse store, it turns out the manager’s off today and sorting this isn’t something they can do over the phone for me; I need to come down to the store for data protection reasons. I asked if they could do the checking before I go round there later today in order that I’m not wasting my time later on, but the assistant told me that the person who he’d be speaking to on the other end of the line would require I was in the store at that time. So, I’m going round there later today it seems.

You couldn’t make this up.

iPhone update

On hold to O2 for 25 minutes…bounced around 4 departments. Finally, it transpires that O2 haven’t got my details through from Carphone Warehouse yet, so are doing a manual activation tomorrow. Someone will ring me beforehand to go through what needs to be done before this; providing that goes ok my phone may be working by 1pm tomorrow apparently.

I inquired about compensation. I was told “you’re not being charged while there’s no service to your phone, but if you want compensation once the handset’s enabled then ring back after that time”. IF I want compensation?!? IF?!? Why wouldn’t I?

It’ll be 5 days since purchase and no “phone” part to my iPhone! It’s just an “i”!

No service…in every respect.

So, it’s Tuesday now and I still don’t have any service from my spanking new iPhone 3G. I tried to ring through to O2′s helpline last night and was on hold for 20 minutes. I gave up in the end.

A support email has been sent to them to which I got an automated reply. If I don’t hear back from them sometime today then I’m marching back into Carphone Warehouse tomorrow morning and ruining someone’s morning.

I won’t actually march…it’ll be more like an angry stroll.

iPhone woes continue

I decided to call O2 yesterday on the chance that they might be able to give me some information on when my iPhone might be activated. The person at the end of the line said that all phones that weren’t activated in-store Friday would definitely be activated by midnight; that they were working through their backlog but everything would be sorted for when I woke up Monday morning.

Monday morning arrived. Guess what?

Another call this morning; they’re now saying this evening sometime. Fingers crossed, but this isn’t a great first impression of a network. I think they’ve concentrated on selling the devices no matter what; ensured they’ve made the initial killing and are then worrying about dealing properly with their new customers.

Lame.

iPhone 3G; the comedown

So, I decided to shell out for one of the new iPhone 3G’s. It’s my birthday soon and I figured I owed it to myself to treat myself; I work hard and life’s been tough recently, so I thought “sod it”.

I didn’t realise it’d be so problematic.

I’ve never owned an iPhone before, but marvelled at my mate Rich’s iPod Touch a few months back, and thought the phone version would be worthwhile. Everything was seemingly going ok; I pre-ordered on monday, got emails and texts on wednesday and thursday that the phone was being delivered, but here I am at 7:25pm friday night still waiting to properly use the thing.

There seems to have been a series of huge cock-ups.

I went to the store I ordered the phone from this morning but my phone wasn’t delivered yet. No biggie, but there were serious queues already in the store and you could tell the staff were already quite stressed. Listening to conversations while waiting, it seemed the staff didn’t exactly know how many phones they had or were expecting that day, and had to tell people in the queue that the safe thing would be to come back another time if they hadn’t pre-ordered the phone.

I booked the day off from work, so went home and started browsing the net for stories on the launch. I then realised that there were others problems. I couldn’t believe it when I read that customers up at the Regent Street Apple Store couldn’t activate their phones as O2 requires Internet Explorer as part of their web-based activation service. In this day and age that’s just shoddy. For a company to have an exclusive contract with Apple here in the UK but build their activation system requiring Internet Explorer (NOT available on a modern Mac without booting Microsoft Windows in some way) is just stupid. Whoever’s responsible high-up within O2 for that should fall on their sword.

Anyway, I kept reading more and more stories of woe throughout the day. What made it worse is that this was largely coupled with articles on how great the new iPhone is and video previews of the app store. How did those reviewers manage to get their phones working without problems?!?

It’s later now on friday night. I’m still getting no joy from the iTunes activation system. I’ll probably switch off and try again tomorrow. My only mobile operator before this was Orange. In my opinion Orange are reliable and mainly professional, if expensive. My initial impressions of O2 aren’t good. I’m hoping once the phone is activated my impression of the company and of the iPhone will improve drastically and it’ll all be worth it.

Here’s until tomorrow then (probably…hopefully). In the meantime, I’m expanding my skillset.