I have finally placed an order for 2 Apple iPhone 4s — one for me and one for my wife!

This means jumping from Sprint over to AT&T — I’d been with Sprint for over 10 years and have hesitated changing carriers because of the *great* discount I was receiving on my Sprint bill.  And to make a long story short, the value in having a cell phone bill as low as it was for 2-lines of service made it really tough to justify any switch, in spite of my desire/insistence that we get iPhones.

My “pestering” has finally paid off!  Well, that and we finally have a discount option that comes close to the one we were getting with Sprint. With that said, a discounted 2 new lines of service with AT&T is STILL DOUBLE what I was paying for 2 lines of service and a grandfathered unlimited 2G(?) data plan.

Anywho… my wife was willing to make the jump (THANKS, Ash!).

But I don’t have the phone yet — it seems that there are obstacles in the way and the order processing has taken a turn for the worse.

Let me tell you about it (boring details if you care to read on…).

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Monday, July 5, 2010

I attempted to place an order online for 2 lines of new service w/ 2 iPhones and finally had to order them via telephone:

• After two attempts to figure out how to port 2 numbers online (it only let me fill in info to port 1 number) I gave up.
• I called in to place my order over the phone.
• I corrected and reverified an error upon the rep’s verification of my information.
• Order was placed!

Now, before the order can be finalized, all I had to do was wait for an email confirmation with a Terms & Conditions (T&C) document which I reply to:

• The email would arrive in 24-48 hours.
• I am to review my order and the read the T&C.
• Reply to email with “I have read and agree to the service agreement” and include the 2 numbers to be ported.

Wednesday, July, 7, 2010

I received the T&C email at about 11am. I read and replied as instructed…… 6 hours later, I received a return email:

We cannot process your order until proper acceptance of the Terms and Conditions, as instructed, has been received. It appears that 1 of the 10 digit iPhone wireless numbers is incorrect &/or missing. Please verify & respond with the phrase “I have read and agree to the service agreement” along with the 10-digit iPhone mobile telephone numbers that were provided to you when you placed your order over the phone. If you have any questions regarding your order please call Sales Support Group at 800-866-1514.

I promptly called the number provided. I spoke with a rep that tried to figure things out for me – the problem ended up being that the information I had already corrected when placing the initial order was still wrong!

While on the phone, I tweeted (1, 2) that I was having issues with my AT&T order. Ultimately, the rep could not help me and his suggestion was that I cancel the order by not confirming the T&C and place a new one.

Not acceptable.

As I was wrapping up with the rep on the phone, I had received a tweet from Alex, one of the AT&T social media customer service “tweeples.” He saw my “tweetplaint” and he offered to help.  I asked him to call… and he did!

I explained my situation on my commute home, he apologized for the error/inconvenience, said he would investigate, and that he’d call me back when he knew more.

After I got home, had dinner and put the kids to bed, Alex called back at 8:30pm and he had conferenced in an order manager that, in a nutshell, said that I should accept the T&C with the INCORRECT information just so the order would get processed. No need to correct any information at this time as it would basically reinitiate the order process, which we want to avoid. Once I receive my phones, I could do the number porting thing and make any corrections at that time.

OK. I can do that. So I did… but the email bounced-back (twice!) with a “Delivery Status Notification (Failure)” message.

DOH!

Alex was still on the phone with me and he asked me to copy him on my reply and that he’d forward it on my behalf.

I appreciate Alex and his dedication to me as a customer — great example of good customer service!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Alex followed up with me via a direct message on Twitter.  He informed me that my confirmation was indeed received and processed (whatever that means) and that I should receive confirmation once my credit card is charged.

Monday, July 12, 2010 (at the time of this post)

I waited until the afternoon to check on things, but I had not seen any activity. I checked my credit card… nada. I check email… nada.  I checked Twitter to see if Alex had anything… nada.

I went online to the AT&T website to use their form to track my order…… and there was no record of my order, *GASP*!

I called (around 3pm) to inquire of my order status… first to see if my order still existed, and second, to see where it all was in the process.  The rep had a difficult time finding my order in the system initially… which worried me. But once he got in and explained my situation, he was great — he was very active, adept, and efficient at tracking people/teams down to investigate and try to figure out what my order status is. He noticed that there was no activity on my order since Thursday the 8th…

He was so good that it boiled down to the rep taking the initiative to get the incorrect information changed and push my order up to get along in the confirmation process.

After all that, the rep apologized and offered to give me a small credit on my order, and then proceeded to tell me what I should expect……. “in 24-48 hours…”

NOOOOOOooooooooo!!! In effect, my order turned into a NEW order because of the changes he made, and now I’ll have to accept the T&C agreement as before! I griped to him about the absurdity of this whole situation and my frustration. He apologized some more and offered me a little credit on my order, and then we ended the call.

………………

The timing was such that Alex tweeted me back to some questions I had asked earlier just as I ended with the phone rep.   I replied back to Alex asking him to call me.  He called and I explained to him what had just happened.

He assured me that my order was indeed processed — on the 8th(?) — and that there was no need to do anything further but wait. Apparently, once iPhone 4 orders have been accepted, NO ONE knows, nor can find out, where an order is in the fulfillment process — the orders are fulfilled whenever, in the order that the system spits ‘em out.

I asked him, “Could it be possible for an order to be accepted and in process and then yanked back to be modified?”

Alex said he wasn’t sure but not likely. Still, he said he will investigate and see what he can find out about my order. Thus, I wait.

Soooo…. 1 week later…. I am uncertain as to where my iPhone 4s are and when I’ll get ‘em.  All I know for certain is that this is really frustrating — one person gets it wrong… one person recommends canceling and starting over… one person says proceed with incorrect info… one person says order has been processed… one person says no activity on order…

Nope. haven’t got ‘em yet. But I can’t wait……. I can’t wait for the order to actually arrive. I can’t wait for this debacle to be over. I can’t wait to play with my new toy.

Ideally, it would have been great to receive them BEFORE or BY Thursday morning (I go  on vacation). I suppose that’s a little to much to ask at this point in the game?