When 2 parties shift the ball back and forth and you are in the middle, guess who is hurting?
After spending countless hours with nice and lesser nice people from AT&T, T-Mobile and iPhone Support, I now FINALLY can receive phone calls on my new phone.
It’s amazing that when something is showing on a computer that people believe it more than when somebody tells them a physical fact they can test and see for themselves.
Problem began that when my phone activated a hiccup in the AT&T system did not send me the Activation Successful email but the Mobile Phone Number has been successfully transfered message.
Which, of course (as else where would the agony be?) hadn’t taken place.
Info had stated that after activation it could take a little while to fully port the number, so I was patient at first. Like, the first 2 days.
Then I gave a call and after everyone at the AT&T center and the special installed iPhone support center assured me all is fine and I just need to wait a little longer and their computer shows that all is fine on their end and complete, I first waited but then began biting harder.
It is plain amazing how difficult it is to get a representative of a company to understand that activating a phone and fully transferring a number is NOT the same, even though each customer had been made aware of this fact via the iTunes interface when buying the iPhone and the received mail after activation of the phone.
Assuming that the AT&T people KNOW the difference, I constantly talked from that viewpoint, telling them the phone had been activated but the number not fully ported. And I went through hoops and loops, with THEM thinking my phone had not been activated and is broken and whatnot. Or that I am dumb and it’s working just fine, as their records indicated that the process had been completed a few days ago.
I probably grew a hole bunch of gray hair these hours while on hold or trying to get a competent person on the phone which doesn’t just cut me off with the repeating, “our records show that…”.
As AT&T obviously couldn’t help further, I called T-Mobile and after several hoops there, I finally got connected to their Transfer Center. The lady there told me that yes, on the 29th they got the request for release of the number and on the same day they released it and they are still waiting for the port activation from AT&T and that this will then cancel me out of the T-Mobile network. She was so kind to give me a direct phone number and said that if there are any questions at AT&T they could call this number.
So back to AT&T it was. Last night then, after 90 minutes on hold and going in circles and 2 times being disconnected by mistake – ugh, trying to mute the phone after 30 minutes being on hold because my cats are going crazy over the tinny music and voices coming out of the speaker, but hitting the phone “off” button instead, now THAT is agony – after all this I am now really upset and give up for the evening.
This morning, comfortably installed on the couch with my breakfast tea and my powerbook, I faced the task of calling AT&T again. This time I got connected to a GUY… just after the fact that last night I had marveled why only girls do this phone service and why I never, never, get a guy on the phone when calling customer service at least 15 times over the past 5 days.
By now wise, I only said “phone works, I can make calls but I can not receive calls, still goes to the old network” – and, wonders over wonders, the guy understood me. NO arguing that their records show, no nothing but, “I will transfer you to our Porting Department”.
Hold wasn’t too bad then and the lady there, even though going quite mechanical through the basic steps at first – from getting my number and name and last 4 digits of my social security number and then reading my plan to me as if I wouldn’t know my own plan – well, she could SEE what the problem was and told me they never received the release of my number and still waiting for that. I insisted it had been released on the 29th.
After being on hold on and off while she was checking things and doing stuff on her end – thank god without annoying music holds, just blank nothingness – she re-submitted the request for release; within minutes received the release and then was able to activate the porting, all right there and then while I was with her on the phone. To complete the cycle I had to turn on my old phone – bye bye Motorola V330, I had liked you – and then shut it off right away again. Then I had to power off my iPhone and power it up again. After all of that, while on the home phone with her, she called my cell number and… my iPhone FINALLY came alive and received the call. Port complete!
The gist? I’ve spent about 5 hours on the phone to solve the problem. The lady at the AT&T Porting Department insisted that they had not received the release of my phone number, and because, “… after 2 days the request expires she had to re-submit a request” (well, even IF so, some red flag should raise to inform the customer or to track down the problem or SOMETHING, but things definitely should NOT stay in limbo if the request truly did expire on their end). T-Mobile on the other hand said their records show that they released it on the 29th. And AT&T Customer Support had insisted over days that, “… on their end all looks fine and is complete (and either that I just need to wait a bit longer or it’s an iPhone problem)”.
The conclusion?
Except for the fact that my iPhone now finally FULLY works, I, at this point, don’t care :-)
MOVING my Twitter account over to _marlyse as I feel marlysecomte is too long. Please follow @_marlyse if you want to keep in touch. This was 2 hours ago
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5 days of agony finally resulted in a fully working iPhone.
When 2 parties shift the ball back and forth and you are in the middle, guess who is hurting?
After spending countless hours with nice and lesser nice people from AT&T, T-Mobile and iPhone Support, I now FINALLY can receive phone calls on my new phone.
It’s amazing that when something is showing on a computer that people believe it more than when somebody tells them a physical fact they can test and see for themselves.
Problem began that when my phone activated a hiccup in the AT&T system did not send me the Activation Successful email but the Mobile Phone Number has been successfully transfered message.
Which, of course (as else where would the agony be?) hadn’t taken place.
Info had stated that after activation it could take a little while to fully port the number, so I was patient at first. Like, the first 2 days.
Then I gave a call and after everyone at the AT&T center and the special installed iPhone support center assured me all is fine and I just need to wait a little longer and their computer shows that all is fine on their end and complete, I first waited but then began biting harder.
It is plain amazing how difficult it is to get a representative of a company to understand that activating a phone and fully transferring a number is NOT the same, even though each customer had been made aware of this fact via the iTunes interface when buying the iPhone and the received mail after activation of the phone.
Assuming that the AT&T people KNOW the difference, I constantly talked from that viewpoint, telling them the phone had been activated but the number not fully ported. And I went through hoops and loops, with THEM thinking my phone had not been activated and is broken and whatnot. Or that I am dumb and it’s working just fine, as their records indicated that the process had been completed a few days ago.
I probably grew a hole bunch of gray hair these hours while on hold or trying to get a competent person on the phone which doesn’t just cut me off with the repeating, “our records show that…”.
As AT&T obviously couldn’t help further, I called T-Mobile and after several hoops there, I finally got connected to their Transfer Center. The lady there told me that yes, on the 29th they got the request for release of the number and on the same day they released it and they are still waiting for the port activation from AT&T and that this will then cancel me out of the T-Mobile network. She was so kind to give me a direct phone number and said that if there are any questions at AT&T they could call this number.
So back to AT&T it was. Last night then, after 90 minutes on hold and going in circles and 2 times being disconnected by mistake – ugh, trying to mute the phone after 30 minutes being on hold because my cats are going crazy over the tinny music and voices coming out of the speaker, but hitting the phone “off” button instead, now THAT is agony – after all this I am now really upset and give up for the evening.
This morning, comfortably installed on the couch with my breakfast tea and my powerbook, I faced the task of calling AT&T again. This time I got connected to a GUY… just after the fact that last night I had marveled why only girls do this phone service and why I never, never, get a guy on the phone when calling customer service at least 15 times over the past 5 days.
By now wise, I only said “phone works, I can make calls but I can not receive calls, still goes to the old network” – and, wonders over wonders, the guy understood me. NO arguing that their records show, no nothing but, “I will transfer you to our Porting Department”.
Hold wasn’t too bad then and the lady there, even though going quite mechanical through the basic steps at first – from getting my number and name and last 4 digits of my social security number and then reading my plan to me as if I wouldn’t know my own plan – well, she could SEE what the problem was and told me they never received the release of my number and still waiting for that. I insisted it had been released on the 29th.
After being on hold on and off while she was checking things and doing stuff on her end – thank god without annoying music holds, just blank nothingness – she re-submitted the request for release; within minutes received the release and then was able to activate the porting, all right there and then while I was with her on the phone. To complete the cycle I had to turn on my old phone – bye bye Motorola V330, I had liked you – and then shut it off right away again. Then I had to power off my iPhone and power it up again. After all of that, while on the home phone with her, she called my cell number and… my iPhone FINALLY came alive and received the call. Port complete!
The gist? I’ve spent about 5 hours on the phone to solve the problem. The lady at the AT&T Porting Department insisted that they had not received the release of my phone number, and because, “… after 2 days the request expires she had to re-submit a request” (well, even IF so, some red flag should raise to inform the customer or to track down the problem or SOMETHING, but things definitely should NOT stay in limbo if the request truly did expire on their end). T-Mobile on the other hand said their records show that they released it on the 29th. And AT&T Customer Support had insisted over days that, “… on their end all looks fine and is complete (and either that I just need to wait a bit longer or it’s an iPhone problem)”.
The conclusion?
Except for the fact that my iPhone now finally FULLY works, I, at this point, don’t care :-)
Technorati Tags:
iPhone, T-Mobile, AT&T, customer service