http://brooksreview.net/2012/04/tsa-naked/

(Source: http://twitter.com/brooksreview/status/192655635572211713)

I’ve had a new 3rd generation iPad in my hands for a couple of weeks and yesterday, as I was watching my daughter playing in a tennis tournament, was the first time I succumbed to temptation to activate the Verizon data plan on the device. My attention was divided between my daughter’s efforts on the court and the activation, which is where I went wrong.

I came upon a dialog that I THOUGHT was asking me to create a SIM password. No problem! Enter it twice? No problem! What’s this? Looks like its making me start over. Okay, I’ll enter my desired password again. Oh-oh! And then, realization set in. Duh-ohhhhhhh!

The next thing I knew, my iPad was sporting the message “SIM Locked” and it became obvious that I wasn’t going to activate data there and then to get my eagerly awaited instant gratification.

Since the SIM in question was for a Verizon LTE connection on the iPad, I made a trip to my local Verizon Store. This was mainly because the were located very close to home. They were friendly and professional, but also decidedly unhelpful. It’s never a good sign when you overhear the employee helping you and their manager discussing whether Google might help them figure out how to help you. By the time they were done with me (30 unproductive minutes), all data and applications had been deleted from my iPad, and the problem was deemed unresolvable.

From Verizon’s parking lot, I called up the Apple Store app on my iPhone and was able to determine that, although the stores located in Rancho Cucamonga and Temecula were closer, the earliest same-day Genius Bar appointment I could schedule was in Irvine. I actually managed to get an appointment for just about the time I could expect to arrive if I left right away. So off I went.

I made it to the Irvine Spectrum Apple Store and checked in with one of the store employees who registered my check-in on an iPad. I had to wait for a few minutes, during which I wandered around the displays near the Genius Bar. After a few minutes, it was my turn for service. The apple genius had me restored to LTE functionality in under 10 minutes. There was no charge either. Even including my wait after checking in, the entire visit took less than 20 minutes. I had to thank the young man that helped me for making my day better.

The solution ended up being a replacement SIM, which Verizon was unwilling to try for some reason.

Moral of this story, for me, is that I need to reserve my undivided attention for some activities on my iPad. Also, the Apple service experience continues to rock, but because Verizon couldn’t solve my problem, I got to drive an extra 80 miles (round trip) to clear up the trouble.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I’ve been suffering a bit from the law of unintended consequences due to my OCD-like need to fiddle with automation of posting.  This is sort of sad, considering that I don’t post especially much.  This is one reason why I’ve run into the trouble I have, finally figuring out that I’d set posts to one site to cross post to another site, then set up the same functionality on IFTTT and again on Posterous.  Luckily, I haven’t created an infinite posting loop … yet.  I took some time today to turn some of these off and selectively add some back.  Next step: find out if I’ve got it set up correctly, so that they will now act as I think they will.