Short story: AT&T customer service instructs me to “take the phone apart”; still not activated.

I knew activating my iPhone was going to be a bitch because a) I already have Cingular/AT&T service; b) I have had said service for a long time without changing anything and; c) I have a corporate discount from that time I worked for that one big company.

At first I thought I might have been mistaken: I plugged in my phone, iTunes spun up and walked me through stuff. It even knew that I had a corporate discount and that it would have to go. But when I submitted the last form, I got the bad news that a lot of new iPhone owners have: that my activation required “additional time.”

Fine. Except a few hours later I got another mail: I had an “incompatible” rate plan. Sigh.

My phone call with AT&T of course bordered on the ludicrous, which I had expected.

There was the 10-minute dance to “upgrade” my account to the more expensive kind. Then there was some nonsensical drivel about my being on the obsolete “orange” network. I was apparently moved to the “blue.” When that didn’t spur the iPhone to try to activate again, things took a turn for the bizarre.

Let me preface this with something the customer rep had said in the call–her entire department’s reason for existing was activating iPhones.

She instructed me (I am not making this up) to “take the phone apart.” I assured her that nothing that Apple makes comes apart. We actually argued about this for about two minutes. “Look through the instructions” she suggested, to “find out how to take it apart.”

“Oh, I have. I am quite certain that it would be a Very Bad Idea to try to take my phone apart.”

After a while she seemed to believe me and instead told me to stick something sharp into a hole at the top of the device and push “hard.” It took about 15 minutes and the help of Mr. Pencil to find something that fit: neither pens, bobby pins, nor our coated paper clips worked. We had to use a needle, blunt end first, and David had to lean against our bed frame to get enough force to eject the SIM card.

The final awesomeness of the call was that the rep had neglected to ask if I were calling from my current phone. As soon as she entered the SIM card number I read off to her, we were disconnected.

That was last night. Now neither of my phones work. Sigh. At least I’m back to the message that my activation requires “additional time.” Which sounds less broken. Sort of.