Like many, I had nothing but trouble activating my iPhone with AT&T. I was porting a number over from T-Mobile and adding to an existing AT&T account in my name. The problem was the porting, the email indicating the reason for the delay wasn’t very clear that I would have to wait 6 hours before using my iPhone, because until it is activated it is basically a brick. After 4 hours of waiting for it to activate, I called AT&T and Apple, and while Apple support was great, (other than not being able to help me) AT&T support didn’t have a clue what was going on. After two calls to each number I figured I had to wait it out and exactly 6 hours later I received an email indicating my number wouldn’t port. So being impatient, I tried to request a new number at which time the activation process indicated that I didn’t pass the credit check, which really bothered me considering I have been an AT&T customer in good standing so long they changed their name and back again. So I activated it as a goPhone till I was able to make a trip to the AT&T store.
When I got to the store I had to wait behind a few others with the same problems, the employees were very nice and helpful — especially considering the fact that since I bought my iPhone at the Apple store they didn’t credit for the activation. They told me that my number had ported over already and that my credit check was successful according to their system. So they called the porting department to verify everything was in order. Since I’d already activated as a goPhone they gave me a new SIM card and instructed me to activate again, but this time choose to use an existing AT&T number. Lucky for me, this time it worked.
The bottom line is that AT&T activated system wasn’t working and was reporting incorrect information. If you are having the same problem call AT&T and ask them to check the status of your port, if everything is ok, then try again.
I’m not sure what Apple could have done to make this any easier, but it seems that AT&T dropped the ball, the least they could do is give you a demo mode instead of denying you from playing while you wait.