Amazon Reactivated

As if my hassles buying a phone through Amazon.com were not enough, now I have a new wrinkle. I received the phone by FedEx last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. It wasn’t activated like it was supposed to be and I spent much of the day working with AT&T to get things straightened out and the phone turned on. On Friday I received an email from Amazon stating that my order was delayed and would be shipped the day before Thanksgiving. I chalked the email up to delays caused by the Thanksgiving holiday.

This morning I received another email from Amazon.com. My order has been shipped, the phone is activated, and here’s my new phone number. There’s even a FedEx tracking number that shows my shipping status—for the original delivery last Wednesday.

Calling AT&T, I discovered that I now have two accounts. One for the original activation and one for the new number that Amazon has just sent. Of course I cancelled the new number, but AT&T is unable to tell me if I’ll see any activation charges on my next bill. They don’t know if any additional charges will show up, but if they do, I’m to call them back and have those charges reversed.

It appears that Amazon’s systems aren’t well synced between the physical delivery of phones and the creation of wireless accounts. Although my phone was available and shipped immediately, it took a week for them to create my wireless account. During that week, Amazon’s systems thought my order hadn’t shipped yet because a portion of hte order (the activation) was still pending.

It’s great that Amazon shipped the phone as soon as it was ready, but I’m curious as to why it took a week to get a phone number. Any idiot can do that in half an hour over the phone. I thought automation was supposed to speed things up.It also would have been nice had Amazon included a note with the phone shipment explaining that the activation was still pending and that I’d get an email when it was complete.