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Failure to Activate?

Anyone having activation problems? In our area, mine hasn't activated yet and I've been trying since 9:30am this morning (the 8th).

I finally went back to the store tonight and there were several people there with the same issue. While we were there, two folks' Bionics activated out of the blue. The techs (a couple of my geekbuddies, so I was in good hands) were furiously trying everything they could think of and simultaneously on the phone. The Verizon phone techs weren't having any luck pushing the activations. But they would eventually activate. And we were told that there were MANY activation attempts going on at the time.

Verizon, you are better than this. I'd expect this out of AT&T. We wait months for the phone and now this....Make it happen!

Geri O

Comments

Wildman

I have read about a number of users are having issues activating the Bionic, sounds like a Droid X and iPhone issue all over again... Hope they get you figured out soon,,

curtterp

Force it to go to 3g.... I wonder if the problem might be LTE.

droidsw

Hang in there.

droidsw

You aren't the only one.

http://community.vzw.com/t5/Upgrade-and-Activation/BIONIC/m-p/660283

gerio

droidsw wrote:
You aren't the only one.

http://community.vzw.com/t5/Upgrade-and-Activation/BIONIC/m-p/660283

Yeah. I've seen that.

And it would be one thing if you just turned on the phone and it would sit there and attempt to activate, but nooo, it will attempt to activate for 5 or so minutes....then it shows a mesage "The activation attempt was unsuccessful, please retry or call customer service". So you hit retry, the phone reboots itself, then Andy shows up wanting to be "touched here to begin" and the entire routine starts over again.

Man, I can't do this all night!

Here's hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Geri O

khntfamily

Yea. I have been waiting and trying for 10 hours now. I finally called tech support. The first person didn't know anything about the situation. Then another person came on the line and took over. He wasn't up to date much better. He had me going in to some computer language mode and dumping previous data. Then re-booting system. All this in blue wording. He finally gave up too. He said he would call me in the AM. To see what the status was.

But I think this is ridiculous. What these phone company's rape us for, then hold out a new carrot for months, and when we grab it and put it in our mouths it disintegrates. The fact that Verizon did this is a surprise. But on the other hand, they are pushing so hard and fast to be the best and be first at everything, I think they are starting to forget about some of the simple things that have to work. Plus US !

Elitist_Jerk

same thing happened when the thunderbolt came out...your phone will activate give it time

Welcome to being on the bleeding edge of technology.. 24-36 hours down time can be expected in situations like this

I'm sure ATT network never had an issue when the iphone launched for the first time, and if sprint gets the iphone5 i'm sure they won't have any problems either..

When demand overloads the capability issues arise, then get fixed.. Enable wifi and set up your apps or take a nap and try again tommorrow

blee32

Simply "restarting" your device will not help in most cases. The best practice is to do the following steps:

1) battery pull

2) sim card pull

3)wait five seconds

4)insert sim/battery and retry

obviously if you are trying to activate it at home, you must have ordered online or had it delivered somehow. make sure if you upgraded that you accepted the terms and conditions of the upgrade by calling the 1-888 number in the box. by doing this, it will switch out your old phone and make your bionic active. simply putting the sim card in does nothing without making sure that bionic is assigned your number.

hopefully that helps

curtterp

I wonder if the activation server is a 386 running at 8mhz with DOS 3.1 sitting in a room out in Southern California where the power outage is.

Just a thought

leonj710

did it activate yet?

Laytimator

4 hours and counting and still no activation. I'm just about to lose my patience with this $300 brick.

gerio

Laytimator wrote:
4 hours and counting and still no activation. I'm just about to lose my patience with this $300 brick.

I was gonna write about this later, but really quick, are you in an area that doesn't have 4G yet?

Take it to a store and have the tech (if they aren't doing this already) take your SIM card and insert it in an established 4G phone, such as the HTC Thunderbolt. That's how they activated mine after 24 hours of failed activation attempts. I went to the store to activate another phone on another number, and they hurried to a corner where they had set up 3 demo Thunderbolts and calling the 40-some-odd Bionic buyers having the same trouble to come in. It took 3 minutes for my SIM to activate in the TBolt, then another couple of minutes to activate my Bionic.

My buddies were brainstorming this issue last night until midnight, they were telling me and one of them thought of this idea. NO sooner had they tried and it worked than another store in a nearby city called and offered the same suggestion. They think that the phone is looking for a 4G signal during activation and won't revert to 3G on its own. Once it's activated, you can set the phone to not look for a 4G signal, but you can't get to that point during the activation process.

That's all I have time for right now, but I hope that works for you. Yeah, it makes no sense, it's clumsy, and should have been foreseen. Well, my week had way bigger issues than this, so I'm no worse for the wear.

Good luck, Geri O

curtterp

gerio wrote:
Laytimator wrote:
4 hours and counting and still no activation. I'm just about to lose my patience with this $300 brick.
I was gonna write about this later, but really quick, are you in an area that doesn't have 4G yet?

Take it to a store and have the tech (if they aren't doing this already) take your SIM card and insert it in an established 4G phone, such as the HTC Thunderbolt. That's how they activated mine after 24 hours of failed activation attempts. I went to the store to activate another phone on another number, and they hurried to a corner where they had set up 3 demo Thunderbolts and calling the 40-some-odd Bionic buyers having the same trouble to come in. It took 3 minutes for my SIM to activate in the TBolt, then another couple of minutes to activate my Bionic.

My buddies were brainstorming this issue last night until midnight, they were telling me and one of them thought of this idea. NO sooner had they tried and it worked than another store in a nearby city called and offered the same suggestion. They think that the phone is looking for a 4G signal during activation and won't revert to 3G on its own. Once it's activated, you can set the phone to not look for a 4G signal, but you can't get to that point during the activation process.

That's all I have time for right now, but I hope that works for you. Yeah, it makes no sense, it's clumsy, and should have been foreseen. Well, my week had way bigger issues than this, so I'm no worse for the wear.

Good luck, Geri O

You have got to be{word filter avoidance}
me. You mean that the Bionic will not activate unless you are in 4g land?

What about the people that want to buy it and not have 4g anywhere near them......

EPIC FAIL VERIZON

droidsw

The techs that were able to come up with the solution are to be commended. So many times, the personnel at the stores are (no offense) clueless. Kudos to them this time.

And one has to wonder if service providers go through test activations beforehand, or if these new devices show up sight unseen.

If the latter is true, that needs to be changed.

gerio

Or the folks that buy the Bionic online?...

I agree, that's a mighty big ball to drop...

However, there's not been a huge uproar over it... Yet

Then again, I wonder how many people even know that the phone exists yet...

Kinda makes you go "hmmm.... ".

Anyway, I'm enjoying this one in the meantime.

Geri O

gerio

And to DSW's point, is it even fathomable that the activation routine was not checked for 3G compatibility? Apparently, HTC did... :smileyhappy:

)

Yes, as I have mentioned, there is a really good bunch o' guys and gals at my local store. We are fortunate, no doubt.

Geri O

Laytimator

The reason why mine woulnd't activate was because the morons at the 1-800 didn't program/connect my sim card to my phone before they sent it out. Not sure how this works but basically that's what the person told me at the store. Once the sim was connected, it activated in less than 30 seconds. Two different tech people told me yesterday that if I just waited, it would activate eben though I kept getting the error message. The store employees said they were morons.

gerio

Based on this post, as well as my own experience and reading around the various sites, this is one picky phone to get to activate. Mine has settled in nicely, but for grins, I did a factory reset on it yesterday morning.

Uh, oh, it activates, but it won't log in to google services. Ahhh, no data signal. Hmm, let's check that CDMA/LTE switch... And let's try CDMA only mode... Aaahhhh, and there we go. So, now it appears that my Bionic won't look for a 3G signal when it can't find a 4G signal, it just goes data-less. Captain Picard would not be pleased over that (yes, time for coffee... :smileyhappy:

)

Geri O

B33

whew some coffee indeed :smileywink: have one for me Geri :smileyvery-happy: I'm a popsicle man my self an good morning. B33

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