Image Source: Easily Amused Institute
What a difference a year makes. Last year I had a 12.5 hour ordeal – and an especially bad experience at a local AT&T store – before successfully buying an iPhone 3G on its launch day.
Today it took just a touch over 1.5 hours to get hold of my new iPhone 3GS – and that is including one hour and 5 minutes spent waiting for the store doors to open, and we knew in advance they wouldn’t open until 7:00am of course. Once 7:00am hit, we were done, dusted, and walking out after 32 minutes. Bravo AT&T for a much, much better experience than in 2008.
I know there is a lot of AT&T bashing just lately, some of it very justified, but credit where credit is due. They ran a much more polished launch this year, all the way round – from pre-ordering (which we did) to opening two hours early to service those of us who had pre-ordered, to their staff seeming much more clued up and prepared this time round. All the staff we dealt with today were friendly and cool, and seemed to know a lot more about numbers of phones and how things would work than last year. Thanks to all of them at the AT&T outlet at Slaughter and Brodie in Austin.
Here’s a quick recap of our experience this morning:
Up at around 5:15am to get ready quickly and try to get to the AT&T store a little before 6:00am – as we knew the store would open for pre-order customers at 7:00.
Arrived at the store at around 5:55am. Found there were only about 5 people in front of us, and only one of them was a pre-order customer. So we were Number 2 in line.
AT&T manager and staff went up and down the short line (of around 25 people) several times before 7:00am – offering water, explaining how the line would work with pre-order folks only getting in the store at 7:00 etc, and generally being helpful and enthusiastic.
Staff checked details / receipts for pre-order folks before 7:00am to help speed things along once 7:00 hit.
Doors opened at 7:00am sharp and the first 6 pre-order customers were allowed in the store, including us (my wife, daughter, and I).
We got the new iPhone 3GS, a new basic ($5.00) case for my wife to use with my old 3G, swapped my 3G line to the new 3GS, swapped the SIM out of my old V1 into the 3G, worked out new data and text plans within our family plan, tested the 3G and 3GS once numbers were swapped, and walked out of the store at 7:32am.
We arrived back home before 8:00am and set about moving data around and between the old V1 and 3G phones, syncing them and getting my wife set for work with the new, handed down, 3G.
Overall, a really easy, really painless, even pleasant experience – about as different to 2008 as I could possibly imagine.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick, glad you had such a great experience compared to last year. Conversely, my experience last year was as smooth as it could be. Just an hours wait for the store to open and I was home with an activated iPhone 3G for my wife.
This year not trusting AT&T, I just ordered it from the Apple store to be shipped to my home. Apple kept up their bargain and my 3G S was delivered at 11AM but I am still waiting for AT&T's backlogged activation queue!
Doing this for the 3rd time, you'd think they would have learnt their lessons addressing this nightmarish experience. Thank goodness my current phone still works but I can't imagine others without a phone and waiting for this. AT&T's official message says it could take upto 48 hours to activate it!
K – yikes – I'm so sorry to hear that. That sucks, and they should have their act together much better on that score.
fwiw i've been waiting all day with no phone access for AT&T to activate my iPhone. Ack. Love the phone but would have been nice to not have lost my ability to call/be called all day.
Donovan – shite, sorry to hear you're in that boat too. This won't help AT&T relations with Apple I expect.
Did you guys get a special iPhone bag or just a generic apple bag? The first two iPhone generations came in a special iPhone bag. They gave me the generic apple bag for my 3gs. I asked them if they had a special bag for it
No special bag for us either.
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