My five minute At&t iPhone transaction that expanded to 24 hours now expands to 10 days

I can hardly bear to proceed with this story. Just looking at this picture exhausts and frustrates me. I took it at about 5:00 PM, right after I returned to the At&t store to pick up my iPhone.

Readers will recall that I went there yesterday to pick up the iPhone that Jacob and Lavina had given me for Christmas - in the form of two gift cards. The salesman had told me that the cards were good for the eight gig iPhone, but if I wanted the 16 or 32, I could pay extra. I asked how much more I would have to pay for the 16. He said $100.

I did not want to pay $100 and so chose the 8 gig. The entire transaction was done in five minutes or less. Then the salesman returned one of the gift cards to me and told me it had $48 left on it. This surprised me, and meant that I would only have to spend $52 out of pocket to buy the 16 gig, so I told him that's what I wanted to do.

"Okay," he said. He then got a 16 gig phone for me but, after close to an hour of trying, had to give up and abandon the transaction. He informed me that he had just learned At&t would not put the money originally taken out for the 8 gig phone back into the cards for 24 hours.

More than 24 hours had now passed. I came in, eager to get my phone. This couple was ahead of me, but soon it was my turn.

The lady behind the counter, took my cards, swiped them through the card machine, had me sign and accept, then had me swipe my credit card which was billed another $53. She entered my phone number into the chip that would go into the iPhone.

We waited for a bit, and then she informed me that the transaction could not be completed. It would take At&t ten days to put the money back in the gift cards. I should come back in ten days, she said.

Now, I really wanted to lose my temper, but it was not her fault. It was At&t's fault.

A simple matter of electronic communication and one of the biggest and most sophisticated electronic communications company in the world could not handle it.

So I fought back my temper, but I let the young woman know how extremely disappointed and frustrated I was. In ten days, I told her, I would be in Arizona.

She said I could take the cards with me and get my iPhone down there.

This was not acceptable to me, but it seemed there was nothing I could do about it.

I returned home, spent a bit of time on my computer and then pulled out my phone to give Margie a call. But I could not. The phone was inactive. "Unregistered chip," it said.

So I called the At&t store. A different woman answered the phone. The store would close in 20 minutes, at 7:00 PM, but if I could get there by then they would reactivate the chip - which they had deactivated in their computer when they didn't sell me the 16 gig iPhone.

"I can get there," I told her, "but I also know that somewhere in At&t, there is someone who can solve this problem and you should spend the next 20 minutes trying to find that person. It is not right to do this to a customer."

I got there just before they closed. The original saleswoman reactivated my chip. She told me that she had sent an email to someone higher up to try to get help to solve this problem before I left for Arizona.

I had planned to cook myself a good healthy meal tonight - vegetables and such. But I was so frustrated that I went across the street and down the road from At&t and bought myself a $6 portobello mushroom burger at Carl's Jr., with a strawberry milkshake to wash it down.

Tomorrow night, I will prepare a healthy meal.

Please note: I have broken down today's post into two sections, both because I felt that this segment needs to stand by itself and it was getting kind of long.

The rest of the day will go up at 10:00 AM Alaska time, 2:00 PM East Coast Time, 11:30 PM India time.