I’ve had my iPhone for a bit over a month. For the first couple weeks the 3G connectivity was great. I switched markets from the New Mexico market to the New York market so I could put my phone and the missus’ phone on a “family plan”. Since I did this, my 3G connectivity has been somewhat less performant. Sometimes it works great, sometimes (especially lately) the Internet has been kind of spotty. Pages take a long time to load if they load at all.
I waited a while to see if it would clear itself up, but the last week or two it seems to have gotten worse. I decided it was likely that the problems more or less started when I changed markets (got a new SIM card), so today after work I stopped by the Lexington AT&T store near Grand Central Station. I talked to a customer support women whose name starts with “H” and explained my situation, stating the problem started since changing markets and getting a new SIM and she largely just blew me off. She said “our 3G network is fine” and “the problem is your phone, you have to call Apple.” The only thing she asked in the way of troubleshooting was if I had updated to the latest firmware, which told her I had. She otherwise had no interest in helping me troubleshoot my problem in any way. Initially I walked out, but then I went back a few seconds later. I asked if she really understood that the problem started after getting a new SIM card, that previously my phone behaved perfectly. Very reluctantly she offered to switch my my SIM card. She got a new SIM but practically insisted that I use my own SIM ejection tool and that I do the SIM replacement myself – as if swapping the SIM card was a major inconvenience for her. After I changed the SIM and checked the 3G networking, it seemed to work much better. I told her “it seems to work much better now” her only response was a somewhat snotty “The number is 800-My-iPhone, call Apple when you have the problem again” (or something along those lines). I hope she was just having a bad day and isn’t always so rude to her customers. This seemed odd as my few experiences with AT&T employees have always been positive, I previously felt they were helpful and customer oriented.