iPhone Activation: Hope You Didn’t Plan to Use Your Phone Today

Well, we hope that all of you happy iPhone owners out there didn’t try to restore your iPhones today, because if you did, you won’t be using it for the next couple of hours.

After restoring my iPhone today (I was advised to do so by a Genius in order to try and fix a faulty battery meter) iTunes was not able to re-activate my phone with AT&T since “iPhone activations are not currently available due to scheduled AT&T system maintenance.”

iphone_activation_unav.jpg

The text continues to explain: “We apologize for the inconvenience this causes. To activate your iPhone, please connect it again after 3pm EST Sunday.”

Excuse me, but are you kidding me? For years we’ve been making fun of Microsoft and its rigorous activation policies for Windows and now we’ve become a victim of it ourselves?

Activation in itself always presents an annoyance, but the least AT&T and Apple could do is to make sure that customers don’t ever need to spend hours without a working phone. Activation should NEVER be down for maintenance. A backup has to be in place. Alternatively, the iTunes store should maybe check BEFORE restoring your iPhone if activation is available or not. Afterwards it really doesn’t help much any more.

Either way, this sucks. Bad Apple. Bad AT&T. You’ve really screwed this one up.

Thank you for cutting me out from the world.

By Philipp | July 15th, 2007 in iPhone

36 Comments

fred flintstoneJuly 15th, 2007 at 06:19

After waiting 2 weeks for my online order to arrive, I went to the local store and bought it, canceled my online order, got home to activate last night and got this message. Why does system maintenance take all of the activation system down for a day?! And iTunes could at least let me set up the phone, sync my data and use it without AT&T service until it’s ready. I have a $600 paperweight until 3PM EST Sunday (assuming AT&T really finishes by then). Very frustrating.

PhilippJuly 15th, 2007 at 12:49

I understand your frustration. It is very aggravating that users need to go through this activation process and we can only hope that a) the reliability of the system will improve and b) the next generation iPhone will be open to all networks, therefore not requiring any activation.

DaleSeptember 16th, 2007 at 09:57

I tried to activate my new iPhone friday night, then it said scheduled AT&T maintenance was being done to the system, and it will be up in one hour. Sat. AM the last email from said the maintenance would be completed by 6:01 monday.
“iPhone activations are unavailable in your service area until 06:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time on Monday, September 17 due to scheduled system maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. “. Philipp said it well; there should aways be a backup. But AT&T is not a ‘normal’ company that has to deal with competitive pressures. Customer Service from AT&T is a joke, how may times can you hear the same ‘We apologize’?

zack curreyOctober 4th, 2007 at 07:14

i got the iphone everything was going great untill it came time to verify my address then i got a message that told me there was an error and i had to start all over. does anyone know what this is about?

RickOctober 20th, 2007 at 17:15

i’ve got this message now… only it says “try again later.” i was only restoring my Phone because it was acting kind of weird.

i’m hoping that since it looks like people aren’t posting a lot on this thread that it’s an issue which gets resolved.

gosh, hope i don’t miss any important phone calls.

CharlieNovember 3rd, 2007 at 23:53

I just got an iPhone, and i’ve been getting this message all day. Except the message merely states “3PM EST” without a day, so who knows what they really mean. Truly infuriating. It’s such a shame that such a nice device has to go through the cesspool of an American telecom provider; those guys need to have a top-down management change.

SharlaNovember 4th, 2007 at 00:50

Hey, Charlie, I’m right there with you. Mine has been telling me 3pm EST Sunday. My husband and I both got new iPhones and are sitting here phone-less and fuming. We kinda wonder if their system crashed and they didn’t want to bother working during the weekend to fix it. Nice. Do you think AT&T is going to credit us for the lost service days??? HA!

Miguel RosasNovember 4th, 2007 at 01:11

Well is now 1:09am on Nov 4 PST and well yes I can not activate my refurbish Iphone. :-(

JessicaNovember 4th, 2007 at 13:23

Same here. We bought my husband an iPhone last night and have been waiting all night for it to be 3PM EST. Finally, we thought it would work, and…it doesn’t. And there’s no one to call, either, due to it being the weekend. Taking it to the ATT store won’t work at all, right? This is complete bull- I am so annoyed right now.

MattNovember 4th, 2007 at 13:32

I am just like Jessica. Bought this iPhone last night and have been waiting for it ever since. The message says 3pm EST, but it still doesn’t work. Not a good start!!!

MattNovember 4th, 2007 at 13:37

And it just started working :)

yeahNovember 4th, 2007 at 17:01

it’s still not working

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