A happy story for a change: upgrading to 3GS at an Apple Store

Question

Just wanted to share my recent upgrade experience which went very smooth. My wife and I went to the Apple Store at The Grove, which is one of the bigger stores in L.A. We were upgrading from the original 2G Edge models and I had already signed up online. They had a roped off area out front for the iPhone line, which was only about 6 people long when we got there. The orange shirt folks kept things moving and were very nice, even offering umbrellas to shield us from the sun. Blue shirts came out to collect us one by one, "ushering" people inside for the sale. It's silly, but there's something fun about having a personal 'shopping valet', especially for a phone. When our turn came we actually got NELSON, who is the guy in the Guided Tour online (didn't realize it until later). He was very nice and helpful, and most importantly: patient. The guy must have activated over a hundred iPhones in the last few days but we were treated like we were the first.
Purchasing and activation was very smooth. We logged in to our AT&T account and verified our info, signed a couple items on their handheld device, then plugged in each iPhone to activate it through iTunes. I was able to sync mine with MobileMe right away, so I had all my info. My wife had to wait until we got home to sync with her Mac but that process went smoothly and she simply restored from a backup of her previous iPhone and all was well (she was jealous of MM so I guess we're getting the family plan now). One caveat is that because we had a family plan for the iPhones, they were both under my name in the system. So each time we had to enter my name and SS#, but with a different phone #; that's one reason we had to come in to upgrade in person. Also, FYI to anyone in California: the new sales tax (9.75%!) applies to the UNSUBSIDIZED price of the iPhone, meaning you're taxed on $599 and not $199. So buyer beware, it's more expensive than you think it's gonna be.
Overall, the whole process was extremely smooth and only took about 12 minutes for two activations. No glitches. Nelson was great, as was the whole staff in a very crowded store. I do appreciate that Apple has put a lot of effort into making the shopping experience easy and pleasant, and it's light-years ahead of the customer service at other electronics stores. Nice job

Answer 1

I just plugged the old phone into my daughters mac, clicked restore, and set it up with her media. I took it the the ATT store; they replaced the SIM card and did whatever they had to do to reactivate it under her phone number. I had to add the $30 data plan to her number and I had to set up the visual voice mail. No problem other than the extra trip, apparently the apple store couldn't transfer the number.