Oceanside, Nevada

This time starring Esme!

A day or so ago, I started having problems with placing calls. Every time I tried to make a call, the first attempt would immediately fail. Second attempts would work though. It was annoying but survivable.

Until I found out that folks trying to call me were going straight to voicemail without ringing the phone. And I wasn’t able to access my voicemail. For someone who lives on his cell phone, this is not good.

So I called AT&T and they put me through to Apple iPhone tech support. After verifying that, yes, I had already done all the recommended basic troubleshooting (restoring the phone, reseating the SIM card), Apple handed me back to AT&T. The AT&T CSR ran through her list of troubleshooting things to do with much clacking of keys and turning off and back on of the phone. She called to verify that, yes, indeed, calls to me were failing straight to voicemail.

Then it was time to talk to the Apple folks again, after which, the consensus was that I needed a new phone. They were kind enough to set up an appointment at the Apple Store for me and away I went. One short wait later, I had a new iPhone that seemed to work. Of course this new phone had not been restored from my backup, so…

I got home and did the aforementioned restore from backup and…. same. damn. thing. Even restored the iPhone without restoring from backup, in effect returning the iPhone to a fresh, out of the box, but activated state. No improvement.

Well, crap.

Another call to AT&T, explain the entire situation again. Talk to Apple again. “Yep, well, there are no network issues reported so the only thing left for it to be is your SIM card. You’ll have to change out the SIM.” So a trip to the AT&T store nets me a new SIM. I get home and throw it in and…

I’m STILL not receiving calls. By this point AT&T customer service is closed for the day so I’m SOL for any further resolution, but really, what else could it be? New phone, new SIM, problem occurs whether my data is synced or not. Esme certainly hasn’t been hacked or jailbroken. I’m no cellphone guru, but, at this point, it’s got to be the network, right?

Wake up this morning and it seems to work just fine.

Argh.

Update: Calls work fine now. Mobile Internet, A.K.A. EDGE connections, are stubbornly not working. Argh again.

Tags:   disappointment · gadgets · geek · iPhoneNo Comments