At&t – Still Unhip Even After the iPhone
At&t needs help. Botched rebranding aside, they just can’t get anything right. Not even a kiss from Apple’s ultracool iPhone can turn this frog into a prince. They were given a gift – the most highly touted product in the history of the world – and they can’t gain an ounce of street cred. As I observed the launch of the iPhone I was really surprised by how poorly at&t handled their part of the deal.
As a current at&t customer I visited at&t’s website last week to see how much it would add to my monthly bill. I couldn’t find any info about the iPhone anywhere on the site. I am not sure if I just didn’t look in the right places or if it wasn’t there, but it surely wasn’t being promoted. Think about that: The iPhone, the hottest product on Earth, was not visible on at&t’s website! Unbelievable.
Today I checked back at at&t’s site and saw that the homepage finally has a small blurb about the iPhone. You can find it right above the disclaimers. Click on the homepage button and you are directed to at&t’s wireless page. It is a Frankenstein hybrid of at&t logos and Cingular’s old site. Not to cut at&t any slack, but they are obviously going through a transition as they absorb the remains of Cingular. It looks to me like they just did a “find and replace” on Cingular’s website and switched out some logos. In contrast to Apple’s iPhone web pages, this is a cluttered mess. By the time they finally redirected me to Apple’s site I had three browser windows open and more questions than answers. Luckly, Apple’s website does a fantastic job of explaining things and simplifying the process.
[One funny sidenote about at&t is that they don't own www.at&t.com. Don't believe me? Type it in for yourself and see what you get. This isn't an oversite, rather it is a limitation of the internet. You can't register a domain name with a symbol (like an ampersand) in the name. I would love to know how much web traffic at&t loses and how many customers get frustrated every day by having such a poorly designed company name.]
The at&t website is actually not as bad as the at&t store experience. These are Cingular stores that are slowly transitioning to at&t stores and they are pretty much a clutter of Cingular leftovers combined with both new and old at&t logos. It is no wonder that Apple came up with an elegant solution to help their customers avoid these stores all together. When you purchase an iPhone you can activate it at your convenience. This is done simply and quickly through iTunes.
The launch of the iPhone went relatively smoothly. The only major flaw in the system was due to, you guessed it, at&t. People are complaining about really long activation times. With months of time to prepare for the surge of iPhone activations it is unacceptable to be caught unprepared. The tragedy of the whole Apple and at&t partnership is that despite the incompetance of at&t they still benefit from the iPhone. If you want the best phone on the market you have to put up with at&t. We can only hope that some of Apple’s design sense rubs off.
Update: I got a mailing today from at&t. It is a 16 page 8.5 x 11 brochure talking exclusively about at&t’s wireless service. Absent from the entire piece is even the smallest mention of the iPhone. Somebody must not have gotten the iPhone memo.
July 1st, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I hear you, Adrian. I have been telling myself for months now that I would wait for v2 of the iPhone because of the death star’s dull Edge network.
I made the mistake of swinging by the Apple store in Corte Madera this morning before we hit the farmers market. Not a good idea. Now I am in love with the device. I knew it was cool from all of the online demos, but actually USING it blew both me and my fiancé away. The interface is SO INTUITIVE that seeing is truly believing.
I could not care less about who the carrier is now. It could even be Alltel’s godforsaken service and I would want that device.
Unbelievable… now I am trying to figure out any way possible to rationalize buying it.
In closing… DO NOT GO TO AN APPLE OR AT&T STORE IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPENDING $600!
Glad that I own stock.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
All cellular companies suck. Customer service is a dirty word it doesn’t matter to which company. So I am not surprised that AT&T couldn’t pull it together. Apple should have just contracted the time on the network like Disney does.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:57 am
I’ve been an AT&T customer forever now….I was disappointed with the whole change over to Cingular and even though the name says AT&T, it’s still Cingular.
I’m glad that the iphone went to AT&T because I don’t have to switch to another carrier. Which I believe is why Jobs picked AT&T because they have the most accounts. Activating the phone was a breeze and sycning with all my mac apps was seamless.
The edge network is not that bad. I found it way faster than expected. It also automatically finds any open network to join, so most of the time I’ve been connected to some wifi or another, helps to be in near larger cities. (I’m between DC & Baltimore).
The phone is sweet and the potential of cooler updates is incredible.
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:00 am
Yeah, I played with one of these, well, two of these, at the Apple store here in town this weekend. My wife likened it to playing with a puppy in a pet store: The longer you hold it, the more you need to make it a part of your life and take it home right then and there.
at&t does need to get their shit together, though. I imagine the stories will start circulating the media soon to the tune of “Thousands of iPhone Users Pissed at at&t for Sucking So Hard When Everything Else About the Device is Sweet, Sweet Heaven.”
Actual headline, right there.
July 5th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I agree that the new “at&t” logo in no way holds up to Saul Bass’s original, but as I have watched my beloved Cingular “Jack” be replaced by the new disgrace, I caught myself digging one application:
you can see it here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elizabethjahn/BlogStuff2/photo#5083763359886157394
It’s white on black and throws back to the simplification of the old mark, removing the (already obvious) three-dimensionality of the globe in the blue background.
I saw it on the at&t corporate building sign in downtown atlanta – do you think this might be a reaction to the design community’s rejection of the new mark? Has anyone else seen this application?
July 6th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
“I would love to know how much web traffic at&t loses and how many customers get frustrated every day by having such a poorly designed company name.”
Seriously? The company was incorporated in 1885; a little over 100 years before the internet became a commercial landscape. Yes… how dare they lack that kind of foresight.
In terms of the iPhone’s placement on att.com. Not everyone hitting AT&T’s site is interested in their wireless service, let alone the iPhone. The site should be designed with a focus on their line of services, not of one phone that a customer can get. That’s the job of that phone’s manufacturer and is probably why the iPhone commercials are more about Apple than they are about AT&T. It was the same way with the Motorola Razr.
I’m more concerned with the fact that I found the iPhone commercials so dull.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
It’s obvious that AT&T doesn’t feel ownership of the iPhone. Let Apple do the work and they’ll just mop up the sales. You’re right, they’re missing a big opportunity by not branding themselves with the iPhone.