Went to the local Apple Store to get a couple of 3Gs for me and my wife this morning. Our Anniversary is this week. This year we're both getting something we can use.
Plenty of stock available, no problems. But I had to approach a clerk who was not involved with any customer and
ask for help in the purchase. "Do you have a ticket?" he asked. Nope, had that dismissed a couple of weeks ago, didn't even have to pay court costs!
He said I was lucky but I still needed to wait in line at the checkout and get a 3G 'ticket' before he could start the purchase process!
OK, not many in line, shouldn't take long. So, I gets my tickets and the fellow is called back to set me up. He gets my phone numbers, drivers license and last four digits of my SS#. I already knew our 6 year old phones were 'eligible' for upgrading and the $200 price. I could see the phones getting into my sweaty hands shortly!
"Uh, do you have a business plan with AT&T?" Not that I know of. But searching the last bill we got I notice that there is an "Access Discount" on both our numbers.
What is that about? At any rate, the clerk says I'll have to go to an AT&T store to buy the phones.
Not wanting to drive another 10 miles to AT&T, I asked if there was a number I might call to straighten this thing out. "Sure, dial 611." When back to my car, dialed the number and was rather quickly connected to a real person. She said, sure enough, I(we) were shown in their records as having some kind of 'business discount.' Why, from whom and since when she didn't know. But as long as the $20 a month discount was on my record, I was not even eligible to buy an iPhone! At least she gave me the phone numbers of a couple of AT&T stores where I could get the discount removed. I could then return to the store and pick up and activate the phones.
I, again, decided to let my fingers do the walking. A gent at the first AT&T store said they were getting a lot of these kinds of calls. He said he could remove of the discount but I should wait at least 20 minutes for the 'system' to get updated. OK, glad I'm not on a schedule. So it's back inside the Store to wait and play with the iPhones some more...
After waiting what seemed more like 40 minutes, I approached the check out waving my oh so special 'tickets' to resume the process. They finally found someone who knew how to handle these tricky purchases and we were off and running, again. Dispensed all the same info as before, clerk calls the secret AT&T number and...they
still say I've got a disqualifying discount! Do not pass GO, do not drop $200 and report to the nearest AT&T store for further instructions immediately!
The Apple clerk did some more calling and found another AT&T agent who said he would take care of it by writing up a "change notice" to the 'system.' He said I should get a text message in 40 minutes to an hour. Since I'd already pretty well memorized every shelf in the Store, I decided to go home and wait.
Now I've got the magic text message and am about to leave for the Store, again. Any bets about success? I'm certainly not going to hold my breath.
I'm just glad they got all the bugs in the activation process worked out.
