I've been reading various responses to the iPhone 3G activation issues. These range from "my phone is a brick," "the store won't sell any that aren't activated," to "the line barely moves." I had a different experience yesterday morning out here in California.
I went to the smaller local Apple store in the Stanford Shopping Center. The line started at 5 AM (mall rules) and my friend and I got there at 7 AM. We were around the 100th in line. Around 9 AM the Apple employees started to alert people that if they had a business discount on their phone they needed to call AT&T and get it removed. So I called and in 5 minutes I got the PLU number removed from my account. I got into the store at 9:45 AM, and quickly bought my 8 GB. The employee helping me told me that the activation system was having problems so they'd send me home with my phone to try there.
It didn't fully work at home, though I did manage to get the phone activated, but not syncing. So I had a working phone with no personal data on it for the day. Once I got home from work around 6:30 PM I tried again and it worked with no delays.
The store line was moving slowly, but the employees here managed it well. They also dealt with the activation issues a lot better than many other stories I've heard. I will say that I didn't expect to wait quite that long in line, and I'm surprised about the PLU issue. The AT&T website certainly wasn't clear about that fact, but I'll just re-associate the number Monday at work.
