At least you all have their brand new beautiful iphones… check this experience at the magnificent 5th Avenue store in New York City and their “LOVELY” so-called GENIUSES…
ISo as a lot of other people I embarked on the quest to get a new iphone. Well Since I live in Harlem (in NYC) I went to this store thinking there will be less people than at the Apple Flagship store. I was right. 5 minutes lining when an AT&T rep came out of the store and announced that they did not have 16GB BLACK Iphones available.
|
|  |
Across the street is the subway station so I decided not to waste any more time and go to the Apple Store. Jump on the subway. Got there. 3 blocks of line. Not bad. The lines was moving fast. When I finally reached the front door Apple had the first problem with the activation of the phones. It took them 1 hour to fix the problem. and they had to slow down the amount of people because the system kept crashing. SO to cover 1 block of the line it took 2.5hs.
Finally I got to the store. Downstairs. ANOTHER LINE. 20 mins later ZACH was taking care of my upgrade. Since the get go he was having problems with his processing unit and had to restarted it like 3 times. He finally scanned the 4 codes on the box. Since I was upgrading my original iphone the process went fast… or I thought it was going to be. After I finally opted for the unlimited SMS plan and accepted all the terms and conditions ZACH pressed the submit activate button and the whole hell broke loose. Zach’s UPC (or whatever the name of those evil machines is) returned an error code.
Also from the get go he explained to me he was JUST hired so he kept asking other people how to, what does it mean, and so so about the UPC behavior.
So he took me to the back of the store were the Genius Bar (genius? give me a brake!) is located. According to them the activation needed some confirmations from AT&T and a final manual activation if the error was cleared from AT&T. The person MANAGING the area and organizing the line for the area took my name and cell number and asked Zach to SUSPEND the activation and transaction and print the receipt so they could give the error codes to AT&T for them to verify them and just overwrite their system to activate the phone.
After waiting for another 40 minutes and after witnessing how a couple of Apple Stores Reps totally ignored the line of people waiting and cut the line just for their costumers to be taking care of I spoke again to Zach and to the SO-CALLED organizer of the section and they decided to help me right away.
It was Nicki who took the case. Nicki asked Zach for the receipt of the transaction and I saw him going totally pale about that. He explained to Nicki (I don’t know what or if the color of the shirt the reps wear have something to do with the position they have but I guess that DARK BLUE means Supervisor) which was directing the whole thing to solve the problem, that they other rep told him to SUSPEND the case and that nothing was printed when he did that.
She then told him: YOU SHOULDN’T SUSPEND THE TRANSACTION! Now we don’t have the error codes to let the AT&T people know what is going on. Of course all this was happening without them knowing that I was listening to the whole sh**. Nicki finally asked me to go with her to one of the apple stations to try to solve the problem.
She contacted AT&T and explained the situation. And also let them know that because of a glitch on their system the printer didn’t print the receipt with the error codes. Then she argued for like 20 minutes with the AT&T rep. repiting over and over that it seemed I was not elegible for upgrade. I think I told her about 10 times I WAS ELIGIBLE and also pulled my AT&T account where clearly stated I was indeed eligible for effing upgrade.
While she waited for the AT&T rep to get back to the line, she explained to me that the system failed while processing the activation and now if she tried to activate it the UPC will not allow her since the system took the phone as ACTIVATED already. When I told her: WHAT ABOUT GRABBING A NEW PHONE and process the activation and upgrade again with a brand new phone she proceeded to explain to me some NON SENSE that I could easily translate into: JUST IN CASE WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE ANOTHER PHONE VOID and have one less to sell. or two. So by now it was 2pm (6 hours waiting 2 hours trying to solve the problem) and she came and told me about my next possibility: To be on the safe side you should go to an AT&T Store. The UPC is not seeing your upgradable status (how did she know if she didn’t try to process it again I have no clue). I know you are eligible for upgrade but the UPC is not seeing it and there is nothing we can do about it.
I though I was going to loose it and tear her soul apart.
AFter complaining for about 30 mins. an AT&T rep showed up and try to solve the problem. Well it is not exactly what she did. She just tried to convince me to go to an AT&T Store.
I asked them again: WHAT ABOUT TRYING WITH A NEW PHONE? again the same answer. This time a little more honest: We can’t figure if it was an Apple problem or an AT&T problem so, if we process another phone and it bounce again we will have 2 phone to return to the factory…
I think I did keep my coolness up until that moment when 1 FU**ING came out of my mouth. ON TOP OF ALL THE FRUSTRATION I HAD TO HEAR THAT I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SWEAR! Thank god she was not reading my mind because she wouldn’t be happy if she could hear I was thinking about all her family. The ones alive and the ones dead too..
3PM and I was still there trying to figure it out what to do. They contacted 2 AT&T stores and they asked to hold a phone for me. They said they needed to find out if that was possible. Nicki and Shea (The AT&T REP) asked me to wait for a couple more minutes… I did.
After 20 mins. no one was there anymore. I looked for Nicki… GONE… I looked for Shea… GONE…
Totally frustrated jumped on a taxi cab to the 42 AT&T Store. I got there. Half a block line. Not bad. when I was 10 people to go into the store… THEY HAD A PROBLEM AND THEY COULDN’T SALE MORE IPHONES because their credit card system was down and it was not going to be solved until tomorrow.
GREAT!
I got back home after going to the AT&T store on 34st. to the one on 14th St. Nobody seems to have anymore iphones.
So I asked if they are going to have tomorrow, even knowing that they answer was yes because the AT&T rep at Apple store told me that YES THEY HAVE but they are only allowed to sell a certain amount each day. WELL it seems that the AT&T stores are doing their own business because they are saying the will not have more phones until next week and offered me to get into a waiting list for $30 (non refundable of course) that can take about 3 to 5 business days. But once they get the phone I will get mine…
And here I am… writing all this trying to vent and let all the frustration go…
Hope all of you get your phones soon and do not have to go through all this kind of crap.
Best!