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My horrible Thunderbolt story

VeryEvilAsh

VeryEvilAsh

Member
Well this blows. As like all of you I've been following this phone for a while now and checking week to week since Valentines day for a release date for this phone. I finally got a call Tuesday (16th) from a Gowireless store asking me if I would like to come in a preorder the TB. If I did so I would get $50 in instant credit bringing the phone to $200. I jumped on the offer and was counting down the minutes to Thursday. So Thursday comes along and I was going to take a long lunch break from my 12 hour shiftwork day to travel across the Del. Memorial to get back to Delaware. I called every hour from 9am til 6pm to see if the phone had arrived and it never did so I never took a lunch. I got off at 6 and finally got a call at 6:30 saying that my phone had come in. I had to pick up my daughter and bring her home to get situated with my wife and finally got to Gowireless at 8pm. Sat there for a half hour while a pimple-faced kid scanned the sim card about 1k times and finally told me I would need to come back tomorrow (18th) because the sim card was defective. He said they would hopefully get one in if not Friday then Monday. I was going to cancel my preorder but every Verizon had sold out of the phone by then. Sorry for the rant but I had to vent. Here's to hopefully getting the phone tonight. It's hard to even get out with a newborn and also working 12 hour days 7 days a week.
 
I would cancel my preorder with them and go somewhere else, what company gets shipments at 6:30?? (I guess if you want to save the $50 you have no choice)
 
If it makes you feel better, i went to my local vz store, and there were about 15-20 people waiting there for the TB, i was playing with the store demo testing out the networks "4G" speed and other tests on the phone, when a vz rep announced that their system was down and they would not be able to activate the TB, he said you could wait but there is no eta for when it would be back up. Too funny... I Hope this makes you feel better, i guess i will stay with my HTC Incredible,
 
Funny thing...if you count your lost wages for the long lunch hour; your two trips out there for gas (and possibly a third); I'd be willing to bet you lost way more than the $50 you are going to save....
 
They have been having trouble because some people meaning corporate store employees are f@#king up the sim cards on activation. Verizon is sending out sim cards to dealers for those cases.
 
oBIGTo said:
They have been having trouble because some people meaning corporate store employees are f@#king up the sim cards on activation. Verizon is sending out sim cards to dealers for those cases.
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Good point- learning curve for VZW (sim cards). They have them already, but not for 4G support and not the mass amount they will now need to set-up, from this point forward.
 
I went to pick my thunderbolt up from the local verizon store and they where having similar problems. Apparently if the phone is powered on without the sim card and you skip through the initial setup to play with the phone it will fail on activation. We had to do a factory data reset before the phone activate.
So my point is - make sure the phone hasn't been played with before activating.
 
One other thing that I found when getting my phone is that even after it successfully activated, it needed to be rebooted before it could successfully start connecting to the network.

So, if you get someone who is still new to setting up thunderbolts, and it doesn't get any network connectivity even after activation, just tell them to do a simple reboot and you should be fine.
 
Over the years I have found out that if you have a problem with a smartphone the first thing to do is re-boot it. I re-boot my phone first thing every morning
(hot restart) and seldom have any problems.
 
Wow, that sucks. I had to do it yesterday at lunch as well for the same reasons. I can understand your difficulties because I have a 15 month old and a newborn that was born on 3/12/11. If I wasn't able to buy it at lunch I wouldn't have mine either. Hopefully you'll be able to get it today at lunchtime.
 
Mine is coming today via Fedex. So what is the exact process for activation without screwing it up? I mean how hard can this be, right? Charge the phone, put in sim card, power up, and then.... ? I saw somewhere that #228 doesn't work or it was not the proper way.
 
I'll have to give my local best buy credit. The girl there, even tho she wasn't even aware that the thunderbolt USED a sim card (They just set their demo unit up on the stores wifi), got mine activated right the first time and was pretty damn knowledgeable to boot.
 
VeryEvilAsh said:
It's hard to even get out with a newborn and also working 12 hour days 7 days a week.
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If you have a newborn at home, seems your priorities are a little mixed up. Who cares about the phone. It will be there days or weeks later. Your new born is changing every day and needs constant attention. It goes by very quick. And get sleep whenever you can.
 
dm33 said:
If you have a newborn at home, seems your priorities are a little mixed up. Who cares about the phone. It will be there days or weeks later. Your new born is changing every day and needs constant attention. It goes by very quick. And get sleep whenever you can.
Click to expand...

It's not like he's leaving the newborn home by itself. Life doesn't need to stop when you have a kid...
 
Totally agree. We can multi task these days too. Hopefully, he has a wife that can share in the attention part. The problem that I found with couples that are new parents is that all of a sudden their entire world is the new kid. Not to say don't change your life some, but don't give up *all* that brought you to where you are now. Keep working, keep going out with friends, keep playing with your TB.
 
Can I just say congrats to you guys that have got newborns? Sounds crazy I know, but I miss those days (got a two-and-a-half year old). They are so precious, and something I wish we could do again, but we can't. :(

Sorry to hijack, but congratulations to you two that mentioned them. And yes, enjoy any sleep! :)
 
Hellershanks said:
I'll have to give my local best buy credit. The girl there, even tho she wasn't even aware that the thunderbolt USED a sim card (They just set their demo unit up on the stores wifi), got mine activated right the first time and was pretty damn knowledgeable to boot.
Click to expand...
BB had it up going 1st time. they had tons of sim cards, Activated. phone works like it should, no problems so far.:cool:
 
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