::07:16:08::

::: Sent from my iPhone 3G :::

By ~ MacKinzey

Now I know that just about every cool person on the block was waiting for the iPhone to hit stores. Let me tell you our house was no exception to the rule.

Round one started when my dude was one of early risers to make it to a local AT&T store to cop the iPhone. The poor brother made it to the desk and was turned away because he didn't have his drivers license! Poor fella had to spend most of the day singing the “should’ve, could’ve, would'ves”.

Round two came when I got home and just so happened to call the nearest Apple store and found out they had some iPhone’s left. The line wasn’t too bad and amidst all the chaos, the Apple store representatives were able to wrangle all of us into a line that would around the “aisles” of the store. The wait wasn’t too bad as there was always something to play with during our wait, iPods, computers, display iPhone’s. The surprising thing was that they offered us water when we first came in. As it was about 102 degrees at 6:30 pm, I think we all appreciated that our “needs” were taken into consideration. Two hours later, we were met my Jared and he happily set us up with our new I-phones and the AT&T network.

I kid you not, maybe an hour and a half after bringing these things home, My Iphone starts crackling and out go the speakers! Real talk. Well seeing we have to wait until the next day to get it fixed, I went to bed while my dude takes full advantage of our corporate discount and adds it to our plan... Which they warn you about while waiting on line for your phone. The folks at the Apple store made it known that if you want a corporate discount added to your plan you have to go through AT&T wireless for both the phone, the plan and the discount (something they call direct fulfillment). Well our round about way of going things bit us in the butt later.

So the next day we show up to get my phone situated. I am escorted to the front of the line to an Apple genius that basically replaced my brand new phone with another one. I kid you not, right when he was going to hand me my phone, he days " oops we can't complete this transaction, there is a hold". Guess what the hold was? That damn discount! So we get the discounts taken off so we can get 'er dun and walk five minutes down the road to AT&T to get things squared away. Man by the time we get to AT&T, stand in line for less than 5 minutes (because they were sold out of phones), and walk back to the Apple store, we find out that “Oops, sorry guys, we just sold out of phones”.

On our last attempt up get this mess together we drive 20 minutes to another location. Things go smoothly there, or so we thought. I get my phone and another new number (the old number was attached to the other phone and therefore inaccessible), we go over our plan one more time (1400 shared minutes, unlimited data and texts for under 200... sweet I know) and all seems well. Little did know that instead of canceling my old number, they cancel my man's number that we ported over when we bought the phones and joined AT&T. Let me tell you, this was the last straw for both of us! It took about 10 calls to customer service (8 of which we dropped), one technical case ticket that specifically asked for them to re- instate a number that should never have been cancelled and my talking to every rep they would listen to get this number back. After all that it still took almost a day and a half for both of us to get the two functioning phones we paid for. I will hand it to AT&T though; they took care of us (cuz u know they didn't want to hear from me again).

Now that everything is working, I must say that this phone is so worth the money. It simplifies even the most boring life and everything you want is in your hand, email, videos, songs, and Internet! As a matter of fact I am typing this post right from my phone. How pimp is that?!! I must say I now have nothing to complain about... Then again you might want to check back after we get our first bill!

Written by: ~ MacKinzey