…. And we had an entertaining time getting it. Due to last night’s experience, we made the decision to go the the Rogers store and wait outside at 8:30 AM. The logic being is that we’d be one of the first in line when the store opened at 10AM which meant that we could leverage the fact that very few people would be activating iPhones. Thus we would avoid the possibility that Rogers activation system would crash under the load of activations.
We got there just after 8:30 and there was nobody in line. It was raining which made it less than fun to say the least, but my wife had me drop her off in front of the store and then sent me to get coffee and bagels at the local Tim Horton’s. She also needed me to get gas as well as she was going out of town later that day. After doing that I came back just after 9 and she was still the only person in line.
So far, so good.
About 9:30, a Rogers employee (in fact, the one who turned us away the night before) came up and asked us if we drove or walked over. When we said that we drove he told us to wait in our car and when the store opened, we’d be first in line regardless of who was out front at that time. Now that is good customer service which was refreshing given the way they handled things yesterday. So we did that and returned to the front of the store just before 10AM. When the store opened, we were ushered to the front of the line and within 2 minutes my wife was receiving her iPhone 5. Another 10 minutes, they were able to swap the SIM cards (as the iPhone 5 uses a MicroSIM as opposed to the regular SIM that her Palm Centro used) and within a minute of that, voice services were live. Data services appeared about 10 minutes later. The only thing they were not able to do was change her plan to a data package with at least 1GB of data. For that we would have to call the Rogers call center. We found that to be weird as a Rogers store that is able to do a SIM card swap in their system should be able to do plan changes as well. It seemed like going to a car dealer to buy a new car, but being sent to a tire shop to get wheels. It didn’t make sense. But at least we were further ahead than yesterday.
We returned home and called Rogers. In fact we had to call them twice as the first time around, the menu options were so confusing that we went to the wrong place. Once we pushed the right buttons to get us to the right place, we waited for 5 minutes to get a live human on the phone. Not a big deal as we’ve been on hold with Rogers for as long as 15 minutes just waiting for someone to pick up the phone. The agent that greeted us seemed pleasant enough and did his best to work with my wife to find her the best deal. That turned out to be a plan with 6GB of data and better evening and weekend options. The cost was just short of $80 a month. I advised her to go for it as I believe that it’s wise to start with more data than you need and then scale back once you get a sense of what your data usage will be like in a typical month. One thing that I will note is that he tried to upsell her to a second iPhone for me or a tablet or a Rocket Stick and he was a tad bit aggressive about it. I do get that these guys are likely on commission and they have to try to get you to buy as much as possible. But it was a real turn off for us and they really need to tone it down a bit. In any case, after being put on hold and several text messages later, we had the plan changed.
So at least now my wife has an iPhone 5 and as I type this she’s off on her overnight trip. I’ve already set up her e-mail and set her up on the iCloud. Meanwhile I’m working to move her contacts and calendar items over to it via the iCloud which is proving to be a challenge.
Stay tuned for that part of the story.
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This entry was posted on September 22, 2012 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags iPhone 5, Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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My Wife Has An iPhone 5…..
…. And we had an entertaining time getting it. Due to last night’s experience, we made the decision to go the the Rogers store and wait outside at 8:30 AM. The logic being is that we’d be one of the first in line when the store opened at 10AM which meant that we could leverage the fact that very few people would be activating iPhones. Thus we would avoid the possibility that Rogers activation system would crash under the load of activations.
We got there just after 8:30 and there was nobody in line. It was raining which made it less than fun to say the least, but my wife had me drop her off in front of the store and then sent me to get coffee and bagels at the local Tim Horton’s. She also needed me to get gas as well as she was going out of town later that day. After doing that I came back just after 9 and she was still the only person in line.
So far, so good.
About 9:30, a Rogers employee (in fact, the one who turned us away the night before) came up and asked us if we drove or walked over. When we said that we drove he told us to wait in our car and when the store opened, we’d be first in line regardless of who was out front at that time. Now that is good customer service which was refreshing given the way they handled things yesterday. So we did that and returned to the front of the store just before 10AM. When the store opened, we were ushered to the front of the line and within 2 minutes my wife was receiving her iPhone 5. Another 10 minutes, they were able to swap the SIM cards (as the iPhone 5 uses a MicroSIM as opposed to the regular SIM that her Palm Centro used) and within a minute of that, voice services were live. Data services appeared about 10 minutes later. The only thing they were not able to do was change her plan to a data package with at least 1GB of data. For that we would have to call the Rogers call center. We found that to be weird as a Rogers store that is able to do a SIM card swap in their system should be able to do plan changes as well. It seemed like going to a car dealer to buy a new car, but being sent to a tire shop to get wheels. It didn’t make sense. But at least we were further ahead than yesterday.
We returned home and called Rogers. In fact we had to call them twice as the first time around, the menu options were so confusing that we went to the wrong place. Once we pushed the right buttons to get us to the right place, we waited for 5 minutes to get a live human on the phone. Not a big deal as we’ve been on hold with Rogers for as long as 15 minutes just waiting for someone to pick up the phone. The agent that greeted us seemed pleasant enough and did his best to work with my wife to find her the best deal. That turned out to be a plan with 6GB of data and better evening and weekend options. The cost was just short of $80 a month. I advised her to go for it as I believe that it’s wise to start with more data than you need and then scale back once you get a sense of what your data usage will be like in a typical month. One thing that I will note is that he tried to upsell her to a second iPhone for me or a tablet or a Rocket Stick and he was a tad bit aggressive about it. I do get that these guys are likely on commission and they have to try to get you to buy as much as possible. But it was a real turn off for us and they really need to tone it down a bit. In any case, after being put on hold and several text messages later, we had the plan changed.
So at least now my wife has an iPhone 5 and as I type this she’s off on her overnight trip. I’ve already set up her e-mail and set her up on the iCloud. Meanwhile I’m working to move her contacts and calendar items over to it via the iCloud which is proving to be a challenge.
Stay tuned for that part of the story.
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This entry was posted on September 22, 2012 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags iPhone 5, Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.