Oh, how very similar this story sounds to my own plight with the iPhone. I got an error when I activated my iPhone saying that "your activation requires additional time to complete." I'm an existing cingular/AT&T customer who was simply going to upgrade my account to the iPhone compatible account. I use this phone for work also, and of course my old sim card was rendered useless as it was deactivated in anticipation of my iPhone being activated. Now I have no cell phone that works at all. I call AT&T now 5 hours after my attempted activation, and the guy tells me that "It's busy and he has no idea why my phone hasn't been activated yet." Then he transfers me to technical support where I wait on hold for virtually 30-45 minutes until I get so fed up I just hang up. If I were on the 44th floor of a building, I'd be tempted to drop the damn thing too if I knew it would hit someone from AT&T. Here's to hoping others have had better luck than I have.Thanks,Jason CMiami, FL

If it makes you feel any better Jim... I am having the same problems in the West coast. Leave it up to AT&T to be the weaker link on a good experience. Sigh

Well I set mine up about 8:00 CST and had absolutely no problems. They said it may take up to 6 hours for the phone to finish activating and recieve calls (though it would make calls immediately) but it actually took about 5 seconds. My old phone deactivated right away as well and I'm delighted with the phone. Rock on Apple!!

I purchased mine at 6 pm EDT. I went home and the activation process said my account was not usable with iPhone. An AT&T supervisor couldn't resolve the situation after 2 hours, many holds, and many calls to other departments. That ended up with a promised a call back for Monday before 4pm.

I went back to the AT&T store as advised by the AT&T store and they got on the phone to another AT&T division. After 20 minutes of holding, no offers of alternatives to the process, and feeling sorry for the AT&T rep who wanted to go home. I left. I could wait on hold at home.

About 1230 am, while still on hold, the activation process changed to tease me and feign working only to give me a message that my activation will take longer and I'll get emailed when the phone is active.

8 AM my old sim is deactivated, there was no email, and my iPhone still demanded activation. After a 1.5 hour hold for an AT&T rep who quickly blamed Apple, the rep wanted to transfer me to Apple and assured me the Apple rep would not dream of blaming AT&T. I convince her to wait with me. We held for about 1.5 hours for an Apple Rep who immediately blamed AT&T. Once confronted by the AT&T rep he transferd me to a 2nd level person. At the 4h 19m mark the AT&T rep cut off the call with no warning (I recorded all legally).

Sigh It sucks to be an early adopter.

No wonder there is a restocking fee.

The one benefit is I do have about 6 hours of nifty AT&T hold music and swell hold messages recorded. May be next year when my iPhone is activated I'll load 'em in my ipod.

update at 3:04pm EDT I got an email that gave me an order number and advised another email was forthcoming. Oh Goody, I'm holding my breath. I hope I don't suffocate in the interim.

Too funny. You strike me as the kind of guy that tells everyone else to suck it up until it happens to you and then the sky is falling.

As an update, I recieved the same email telling me AT&T is working on it and what my order number is at 10:38 pm last night and 1:36 am this morning. iTunes tells me it still needs more time to complete my activation.

The title of this story shouldn't be "iPhone Activition Disasters" it really should be *Removed by Moderator * It took me exactly 15 minutes online and a 10 minute wait for a confirmaiton email, and I bought mine on the west coast. Now I know why I had to wait, *Removed by Moderator * on the east coast who didn't think or plan ahead was hogging all the AT&T resources.

Edited by MPHEnterprises - Keep the Tone of Your Post Neutral