Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.

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Monday August 04, 2008

Finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone 3G for my wife!

Yeah, I still have a Motorola Razr which sometimes wonder how it survived for more than 2 years now. I'm ready for a change but that's a different story!

Anyway, the process of buying an iPhone was relatively simple - although long wait times (upto 1.5 hrs) were painful. The long wait times are mostly because of limited number of Specialists in the Apple store.

Here is my bulleted story:

After a 1.5 hour long wait in the queue, first outside the store and then inside, we finally met Apple Specialist in the Apple Valley Fair store.
I'm the primary account holder and my wife is secondary. The Specialist was not aware whose SSN last digit numbers are required to lookup the account. So we tried combinations and finally figured it out. After selling 1 million iPhones on the first weekend, I though he'd be aware of that.
Finally we got the dreaded "IRU Account Lookup Error". This error is associated with an AT&T account if there is any kind of corporate discount attached - which is true in my case. At this point, Apple Specialist could not proceed with the sale. Instead he asked me to work with AT&T and get the "IRU error" removed from the account. Read more about this in Apple Tech Support. I liked his analogy of "forced marriage" between Apple & AT&T where only one agrees, wonder which one ;-)
Luckily there was AT&T store in the mall. I went to the store, got the corporate discount detached from the account and then went back to Apple store. I'm told the corporate discount can be attached back to the account after iPhone purchase.
After another 20 minutes wait, finally got the iPhone and luckily everything worked. Even there the receipt was not getting printed so an additional 15 minutes wait.

Overall, had a pleasant experience with Apple and AT&T but not having access to AT&T database does give the feeling of "forced marriage" ;-)

But I like the fact that the phone comes charged for upto 1 day use and ready to use!

Technorati: iphone apple at&t

Posted by Arun Gupta in General | Comments[0]