That's not the half of it! As an employee of the Rogers subsidiaries,.. we all get a 50% employee discount on all services (not products). However due to the horrible launch of the iPhone 3G, the upper management has halted all employee upgrades of the iPhone with their discounted plans - even if we want to pay more - we aren't allowed to get the phone.

Unfortunately almost the entire company, is a customer to itself.
How many people are employed with the company? How much revenue does that bring in?
Still to this day we can't get the iPhone, and they haven't provided us with a date of when we can due to the demand of the public.

Update - Rogers employees are now permitted to get iPhones, looks like the crunch is over.

I'm wondering if anyone else who called Fido or Rogers to order their iphones on launch day are now having problems with getting the product. My girlfriend and I ordered two iphones right at the beginning of launch day. I got connected at 9am sharp, she got connected 20 minutes later.

Well, despite a lot of hassle we both got 16GB iphones reserved for us. Mine was sent in the male the following week. Her iphone was apparently processed the Monday after launch. Now, despite both iphones being reserved and designated for the first wave of shipping, my girlfriend's phone is nowhere to be seen. She been charged for it and doesn't even have a tracking number.

We called Fido and they said have a phone reserved only meant the paperwork was done, and that she might not get it by the promised August 1st date. Now, we may be looking at another long wait as she has to wait for more iphones to come in from Apple. Is it just me, or is there something seriously wrong with this situation. It's not like we waited a week, or even an extra day. It was 20 minutes into the launch.

Your comments and suggestions please.

My first iphone from Rogers came with a busted sim tray, now they're sending me another one.

Hey Rogers, your computer crashes must be payback for your ridiculous iPhone plans you first laid out for us two weeks ago, karma man.
Hey Rogers lets see how you explain all this negative press away this time, because you guys looked like fools!!!

Yeah my GPS has me located in China somewhere, lol. Maybe it's at the factory where they built the iPhones, ahahaha

I got the 9th iPhone at the store I lined up at in Edmonton on Friday morning , here it is 27 hours later and I am still waiting for Rogers to configure it. Store says both Apple and Rogers system are toast.
Rogers doesnt care, they have us on the hook for the next 3 years.

Instead of spending 6 hours in line I cleaned my basement - what a pleasure!!!!

wow, I got off work at 3 pm and head over to rogers and got my 16 gb phone. No wait walk in walk out :D

I too was effected by the crash. What happened in the Belleville, Ontario store was the first 4 people got their activation done in like an hour. Then I was next and the system was totally down so they obviously couldn't give me a phone. So the reps took my info down and they literally spent the whole day seeing about the network. They then called me at work and told me that they were able to activate my phone and I was the only other phone activated.

I was able to keep my Right Fit Plan. I got the value pack and the $30 dollar data plan. I am completely happy with the service. I have my iPhone fully working and the Reps were awesome. They stayed til 2 hours past closing just to wait for me to come into the store after work to get my iPhone.

After waiting 4-5 hours, 2 of those in store, I was told that my upgrade would cost $599 (for the 16 gig) because they were not doing corporate upgrades and I was not eligible for HUP despite being told I was yesterday. I managed to get them to hold the phone for 2 hours while I spoke to 4 account retention agents. Thank god my corporate plan contract was up, went to regular plan and got the 16 gig for $299.

Wow!
I tried to order iphone over the phone from rogers.... When you first call they tell you to hit "1" to access iphone team. So i do that and then 2 hours later, yes thats right two hours on hold. I reach a kid who takes all my info then i ask him about iphone and he tells me he cant answer any questions on iphone. IM LIKE WHAT!! hes like but no problems ill just transfer you to someone who can and has been trained, ohh ok! 55 MINS later i get a new kid, who when asked about why my transfer took 55 mins tells me that the iphone team has now gone home for night. So after asking him a few more time he tells me that after 3 hours on phone he cant even take my order. But he told me he could call me at 4am and then i could wait on hold for an hour till they opened again at 5am, 8am there time i guess, what an a-hole. I told him i would never be calling them again. And Rogers reps say they have dont everything thing they can to make today go as smoothly as possible, apparently that includes sending home the iphone team home at night so 24hr phone line can become completly useless.

Way to stick it to Rogers people! How are we going to push for better rates when you all rush in like you did?

I got to the Pen Centre in St. Catharines at 9am and was 13th in line at the Rogers store. Luckily the mall has a Fido, WirelessWave and a Telephone booth and I promptly got a number in each line and talked to the various reps while waiting for opening time. What I found was a big difference in what you could or could not do plan wise between them. At WW I had to get at least a $35 voice mail but at the Fido store there was no minimum but if I went under $30 I had to pay an extra $50 for the phone. I don't use a lot of minutes so a $20 voice plan and the $30 6gb data plan suits me fine and the extra $50 is made up in 3 months. I was first in line at WW and 10th at Fido but because of the system problems I ended up first at both. Finally at about 12:30 I got my phone and unbricked it at about 3pm when Apple fixed their servers. When I went by the Rogers store the guy behind me originally in 12th still had not even made it into the store yet. I figure the 4 stores between them had about 60 phones and there was not enough people in the lines to buy them all which was probably an odd occurence overall. Sometimes there is an advantage to being in a smaller population area.

I have found the GPS a little odd, had me located in Oklahoma at one point otherwise its a heck of a device.

I was #10 inline at FIDO and I waited 5 hours to get my iPhone. they where having problems logging in to their system. so when I finally got my phone they couldn't activate at the store so I had to do it at home with no problems at all! in the end I was very happy!

what a pathetic launch by roger/fido this was

woke up early was 12 in line at the brentwood mall Fido store
Watched 9 people get sign up in 4 hours just to find that this location had only 1 or 2 16g iphones on hand the last one ready to be pick up by the guy right before me.
I knew it was one or two because i was watchin the people sign up before me... all of them only bought one and i didn't see anyone buy a 16g.

What a bunch of bull 1-2 16g phone for an actually fido store......
Either Rogers is playing games wit the consumer or online petition had rattled up

Here in iphonecanada.ca reporteds that
1. MSF(voice + data) total > $30.01= eligible to get a the iphone for $199/299
2. iphone can be get without a data plan as long as the ur voice plan is over $30.01

Apparently someone reported that 1. is not true, while i haven't heard anything from iphone without dataplan, they are saying ur voiceplan has to be >30.01 regardless of what's ur dataplan or have/don't have a dataplan.

So i went to a local rogers and asked again today...
in regards of what iphoneincanada.ca reported, #1 is true but #2 is false(@ least that's what my local rogers sales rep told me)

more infomation about HUP..
i'm an existing customer with rogers for quite a while n my current contract(due to HUP) ends in 7 months.
I am eligible for the iphone for 299/399 instead of 199/299

I can waive that fee if someone(most likely a family member) is also a Rogers customer(i believe fido friend/family member won't work) that is willing to use his/her HUP on my account....then i can get it for 199/299 and use my own number for it

Question: I am an existing Rogers customer but because I upgraded my phone in January, I was not eligible for an iphone upgrade so I opened a new contract. I am wondering if I will be able to cancel my new activation after receiving the iphone (and pay the $400 penalty) and then insert my current phone's sim card (so that I dont lose my current phone number and plan). Thoughts? My understanding is that the in-store activation ties the phone to Rogers and that the itunes component of the activation will allow me to swap my SIM.

I showed up at Oakridge mall at about 8:45pm to catch the Fido kiosk at 9:30am. Decent lineup but nothing major. Nice thing is, they were handing out black cards with numbers on them. They took names and numbers which allowed customers to wait else where and they would be called 15mins before the customer ahead was activated. Funny thing was.....by 10am or so, customer #1 still wasn't activated!!!
I took a stroll to Wireless Wave on a tip from a bf/gf combo (thanx guys) and I guess a lot of people didn't realize they were authorized Fido/Rogers dealers. I ended up being customer #3. By 12:15pm I had my iPhone although the sim wasn't switched over and itunes was still dead. The rep offered to let me walk out with the phone and he would call me later in the evening when it wasn't too busy and the activation server was back up. Low and behold, he just called 10 mins ago to let me know he was switching my sim over.

I am now happily using my 3G iPhone!! (sweet)

For those looking for iPhones, here's a tip......
COSTCO is authorized to sell iPhones but not many people know (Wireless Wave owns their kiosks) Get there early tomorrow morning and you should be in business!

has anyone here upgraded their old 16gb iPhone via iTunes? Anxious for the exchange support. Will get 3g when a 32 gig model comes out. Has anyone tried to get an iphone plan without buying a 3g?

I finished working at 16:00, went in Rogers boutique at 17:00, got out at 17:45. The guy had 1 line at DIG (whatever that means) and a co-worker gave him a secret line where the CSR answers in like 3-5 mins... so off I went home.

iTunes activate was a breeze, pretty sure being a .Mac owner had something to do with it (just the fact I didn't need to register an Apple ID).

Now the Rogers Data network is down. LOL :(

Finally got it to WORK - awesome phone! well worth the wait

This does not suprise me at all from rogers, they are the most screwy company out there, specially teamed up with apple on this one, well maybe if they get an ulimited data plan we can discuss a deal, or else screw the wi-fi. peace.

Went to the Roger's Video store this morning at 9:30... doors opened at 10. Only 1 16GB (which went to the guy first in line) and 5 8GB models. My friend and I got the last two. I had a 17.50$ employee plan and slapped on that 30$ 6GB data plan and went on my merry way with my brand new iPhone =) 11$ value pack gives me my txts, caller id/display, and voicemail. Visual Voicemail? Nah, maybe when its offered a la carte and not in those ridiculous iPhoneValue Packs. Happy customer in Collingwood! Thanks!

I waiting for about 2hr but fido(rogers) was having major problems about one activation an hour... they were on hold with customer service trying to activate over the phone so i decided to call my self, got lucky and got trough i five min. so i just decided to order my two phones (16g white 16g black) my phones are on their way with in 5 to 7 days, activated i can wait at home. Besides i already have two unlocked iphones i can use in the mean time...

Hahaha. http://www.flatliner.ca is reporting violence at a location in the USA. Awesome.

I am just getting off work now, gonna see if anyone has phones left. Probably not. :-\

I have an 32 GB iPod touch and today I was trying to upgrade to version 2.0 of the iPod software. Many forums are indicating that Apple is having problems in providing this upgrade.

the worst part is that there is such a huge demand for the iPhone, rogers doesn't feel they have to make deals with their existing customers or give any discounts. I was on the phone earlier today and got to the point where I was ready to cancel ALL FOUR family plan phones, plus the home phone service. I was expecting this to give them some incentive to help me out! But the rep said there's such a huge demand, they can't make any exceptions right now. She was willing to let the account go.
We didn't cancel, but usually they're way quicker to keep a customer. I think we should wait for everything to cool down over the next week or two, and we'll have a much better experience upgrading to the iphone.

People were asking about SIM SWAPS. I already had an existing line. I was apple to SWAP THE IPHONE SIM OUT AND INSERT MY EXISTING SIM INTO THE IPHONE CONNECTED TO ITUNES AND IT ACTIVATED JUST FINE. WORKS LIKE A CHARM. SO YES YOU CAN EXCHANGE SIMS WITH ANOTHER ROGERS SIM. BUT YOU HAVE TO CONNECT TO ITUNES EVERY TIME YOU DO.

So on the 10th, I stopped by Rogers Plus at Lynden Park Mall in Brantford, spoke to a friendly CSR who confirmed that I would be able to get a $25 Fav5 plan with a $30 data pkg. She also indicated that visual voice mail is already included with the iPhone..after doing some quick math ($25+$30+$6.95+$.50) I came up with an after tax $59.98 (including the 15% discount that you get for mutiple services). I thought maybe after all this isn't all that horrible (still expensive but I could live with it).

Having showed up at one store today at 8:45 for a 9:00 opening, I only had to wait for the 10 or so people in front of me. By 9:30 not even one person had left the store with an iPhone. They were having problems activating them. At 9:35 the teenage girl behind the counter said that they were out of the 16gb. WTF??? They were only on the 3rd customer and they were all gone???

I walked out and headed for a rogers video store I knew was opening at 10. Line up there was also about 10 people. The Manager there was filling out paperwork with the people in line to expedite the process (good idea I thought). When he came up to me he advised they only had 4 16gb iPhones and 6 people in line so far wanted the 16gb. Math may not be my strength but...ummm...I was not getting a 16gb there either.

So I headed to the mall to the rogers plus, I was told that they had a lot more 16gb there. I get there and am excited to find out I'm 6th in line. by 11 am the first person was still there and they were not able to activate the phone. After seeing a happy shopper walking by with an iPhone they just bought from Wireless Wave, I thought I would try my luck there. Oddly enough I was the only person at Wireless Wave and they had a few 16gb of each colour. I thought GREAT!

We start talking about which plan I want, I'm thinking this is great, I know everything I need to know (I confirmed everything just yesterday with a rogers csr). I say I would like the $25fav5 and the $30 data pkg. Of course as you may know by now, you can not get a plan that's less than $30 and one cent. Then she tells me that I have to get at least the $35 fav5. I tell her that the rogers csr confirmed only yesterday that you can get any plan and head back to the rogers plus guys. There the same girl I spoke with the day before again confirms this. Of course her boss standing right next to her corrects her and tells me that it has to be at least $35.

So back to Wireless Wave I go (no line ups there still), I think I can handle the extra $10 (which includes LD). I'm still under $70 taxes in. Have I mentioned that I just came off working nights and have been up for about 22 hrs? So we start doing the paperwork and I find out that the visual voicemail is an extra $8 and that you also need to get the call display...and that is of course another $7. Now my total just got to about $83 after taxes (that's an extra $1000 over the 3 years) WTF?? Is my battery on the iPhone even going to last 3 years?? Of course the entire time I'm talking to her she is on hold with Roger HO because her system has crashed.

I tell her to forget it, I'm going home to sleep. Epic Fail, yeah, I have to agree. regardless of who's fault it is. Rogers or Apple. The rollout was completely botched. I hope both Apple and rogers figure out what they're doing and I hope rogers stops nickel and diming they're customers to death. My rogers internet and cable subscription is on the line. Rogers could have had my cell business along with millions of other Canadians but they F***ed it up!

Huge mess. Stood in line for over 3 hours and was told I could not get an iPhone because I have a BlackBerry and the process to change the data plan from a BlackBerry data plan to an iPhone data plan was broken. No work-arounds. I was just turned away. I have spent over $3,000 with rogers in the last year and have been a customer for over 5 years - great way to treat your best customers. Huge failure.

I went to a wireless wave around 9am this morning (opening at 9:30) and was the 5th person in line and claimed the 5th (and last) iphone of their stock. OR SO I THOUGHT...
Yes, apple went down today but so did rogers. Their servers were dead by 10am. I waited around until 5pm - SEVEN HOURS - while the reps tried to activate the phone via rogers CSR line.
When they finally got through, the rep tells them that i have to pay $299 for the 8GB because I don't have enough tenure, mostly due to the fact that i was on a family plan, even though it was the last year of the contract. Funny thing is, a phone rep told me 2 days ago that I had lots of tenure and that everything would be fine! I was so frustrated i just said screw it and walked out. Called Rogers Cust. Relations, and they couldn't really help me either. I'm just going to wait until next week, or even two weeks, until this whole mess is sorted out and get an iphone stress free. very disappointing, but now that I have some perspective on it... i'm okay with it. Glad i didn't cave to the extra fees today, but it sucks that i spent an entire day at a kiosk for nothing.

I was in d/town vancouver at 2PM on Robson. No lineups because no activations were taking place at FIDO and Rogers!!!

I waited from 9:00am to 2:30pm before I was even permitted to enter the store to make my purchase.

There was about 30 people in line when I arrived and half of them left after the first few hours.

They took in three people at 10:00am but it wasn't till 2:00pm, when they finally had their phones activated. By that time, most of the people left because of work or personal engagements.

I stuck in there and got my iPhone 3G!

It's better than expected but I ended up having to pay $100 in addition to the $199 for the 8GB iPhone - totalling $299 because of "qualification issues". I've got perfect credit, eligible for an upgrade, been a Rogers customer for 16 months now and my plan exceeded the $30.00 prerequisite for an iPhone upgrade. Like c'mon? You make me wait in line for 6 hours and then charge me $100 more for the f'n phone?

All in all, I guess I didn't have much of a choice. I need an iPhone and Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada so I have to live with it.

Also ... they did not inform me of the rise in price till after the paperwork and the upgrade had been completed.

Not to mention the fact that they FORCED ME to buy an iPhone value pack and data plan. I was gonna get the data plan but I already had a value pack with most of the primary features of the iPhone pack. They told me that a non-iPhone service pack would not work with an iPhone and I could not get the device unless I switched to a more expensive, tailored iPhone value pack.

This is BS! But I gotta say, I love my new iPhone.

I SHOWED UP AT 12:15PM TO A SMALL KIOSK IN "GHETTO" PENHORN MALL DARTMOUTH, NS, CANADA AND THEY STILL HAD SOME LEFT!!

So I had to go to work. Sucks to me I suppose, initally that was the thought. As a contengency plan, I decided that as worst case scenario I would try to buy one after the supposed rush during my lunch hour or wait a couple weeks for another re-stock. What a joke this release ended up being. I called the store around noon, without delay they answered the phone after one simple ring. Now keep in mind, even during regular business hours, a one ring answer is like winning the lottery with Rogers. So after they answered and I cringed as I asked the inevitable, I was shocked to find that they still had phones remaining??WTF, lol

So I zip down to the mall running down the hallway expecting a huge line-up or for the kiosk to be busy. Well NOTTA! nothing, zilch! I was the only customer whom they happily handed over one of their remaining 8G phones. (Great customer service BTW, Thanks April :) No waiting whatsoever. Man I felt duped just like every other customer of this imensely over hyped marketing ploy.

Now, the Nintendo Wii.....that was the real deal. The Rogers iPhone= Dismal failure.
It's not all Roger's fault though, Apple has been quoted by journalists (Chronicle Herald Section C, 11 July 08) to be quite good at marketing their products, to adding lots of false HYPE, or making people who can't afford Apple products dream of owning one. Obviously that proved true today. Sorry for all the folks who lined up. But on the bright side, those who came, received and that's all there was to it.

OH MY GOODNESS! So to anyone who heard that rumor i guess of new activations being a priority is true! I called my local robbers wireless today to get the update on the activation problem and the worker asked me if i was a new activation or upgrade and i didn't want to but spilled the beans and said "oh upgrade? we will call you back bye" and hung up! WTF!

I got in line at 530 this morning, was about 7th or 8th in line. The store opened and bam not much went on. A very nice Rogers rep came out and let those who would be actually getting an iPhone in out from the rain, went and got coffee and donuts, and we all sat around for a while and had a good laugh. They took everyones names and put a phone a side for all of us and told us to go home and they'd call when they had ours activated.

A BIG plus, the Saskatchewan dealer was able to come up with some RAD voice and data packages. $70 bucks gets me 450 daytime with eves starting at 6pm, MY 5 Canada wide, 6GB of Data, Visual Voicemail, 2500 sent txts, voicemail and all that extra jazz. There were even cheaper plans but I needed the MY 5 Canada wide.

Although I've waited much longer than I expected, I'm not too upset at the situation. The plan is way better than I thought and the people I dealt with Rogers have been nothing but awesome.


Hold you horses.

This is bull s---, it might be apple's server but Rogers was so poorly prepaired for this, I'm still waiting for my phone at 5.15 got a flight to catch at 9:30 tonight.
Looks like me and the blackberry.
P.S. we pay way too much for s--- service !!! and why do we have to change email address my blackberry is with Rogers, they should find a way to make it easy.

You guys all need a life. How are you going to afford a $100/mo plan if you're all skipping work/school whatever to get this thing. First everyone bitches about the high rates, then the same people go hang out in line! No wonder Rogers fucks all of us in the ass...BECAUSE YOU FUCKING LET THEM. I hope they give you a lifetime supply of KY with that 3-year contract you signed.

Anyone know if the iPhone is locked to specific SIMs or If someone in my family gets an iphone from rogers on thier account for me, could i use my rogers sim with it?

two things.

1. I was told by my rogers rep that I could add a $15 value pak to the $20 My5 that would included visual voicemail and call display. Had to pay the extra $50 for the phone because the plan was under $30. I tried to CONvince him that $20 + $15 value pack equaled $35 :) no luck.

2. Even though Rogers are crooks it is encouraging that they were forced to make a change because all of us took a stand.

i've been to 5 stores downtown Vancouver and all are sold out. Anyone know where I can go in the Vancouver/Burnaby area that has some available with minimal lineups?

I have to agree with Mike. You guys woke up at 5am to get 2 hours into a line for a product and you complain? If you didn't want to, you could have just as well slept through it and get your iPhone later.
I'm not happy with Rogers plan. But at least I'm not only bitching...

Whoa, a lot of angry people here mixed in with somewhat happy people. There is reason to complain, because Rogers is a horrible company that is deceitful and loves gouging Canadians. But what can we do? It's the only GSM carrier here in Canada...

Its great to be able to buy an iPhone!!
Problem is Rogers doesnt seem to be able to activate them.
Waited in line outside a Rogers store for 4 hours.. Bought the iphone, then waited so far, 4 hours and still no iPhone activation!! The first customer in line from 3AM still does not have her iPhone activated. Apparently the Rogers activation site is crashed and nobody is trained over the phone at Rogers to be able to handle new activation!!
How do you say clusterf*%$ eh! in french??

So I got was at my local mall this morning at 7 to get my iPhone, doors at 930. I ended up being 9th in line even though I was the first one there. I don't really care though as I got the phone I wanted (16gig white) and no one ended up getting their phone activated. They said that it would be ready by 1 o'clock so I figured I would go grab a paper and some breakfast, I go back at 1 and they only had been able to get two phones up and running. Here's hoping I have mine by the end of the weekend.

complain, complain, complain, complain, complain. You people never stop complaining. I waited in line. arrived at 7am. thought the store was opening at 8am but the one in Burnaby BC wasn't opening until 10am. Yeah there were problems activating it. But I ended up walking out with one working just fine. You people gotta stop your bitching fuck.

I was at the Bayview and Finch location, and even though activations were painful, the staff were more than friendly and accommodating. Water, pop, and juice were offered, and when the servers went down, the staff bought us two party sized pizzas for lunch and pulled out seats from their conference room for us. I would have been a much more irate customer if I had stood 8 hours in line with no relief.

A++ to the staff at the Rogers store location for making the best of a shitty situation.

Just got home...got to Rogers Plus at 6:45 am. Not too bad really..but I was 4th in line. So...we get into the store at 10 am...by 12:45 3 phones had left the store. I left at approximately 3pm. At that point mine was the 5th phone they sold ALL day.

Computers constantly down...customer service hanging up on the employees trying to activate phones...apples itunes down so cant unbrick phones...unable to add the data plans.

My god...with the fucking money they are charging us you woulda thought they had their shit together.

I gave a big piece of my mind to the awaiting CTV news crew outside...at a level loud enough to be overheard by the "Head Office" Roger's reps who promptly went to the newsman after my interview to tell him not to air my comments I am sure.

All in all...FUCK YOU ROGERS. oh yeah...go to hell apple...get iTunes working so I can unbrick this thing.

At least I got my 16GB white...there was 1 16GB instock when I left...and keep in mind...I was the 5th phone sold in 5 hours. NO ONE wanted the 8GB model...but they had no choice. Why the helll did they ship just 6 16gb's but like 25+ 8gb's....

this blog title says it all 'EPIC LIFE FAIL' by Rogers. good work uncle ted

$30 ? Not realy. For me it is $55/mo ...

...because they force me to give up my legacy $20 voice/voicemail/CID plan and go with a 'new' $45 plan which is no better.

That $25 premium I have to pay just to get what-I-already-got adds up to $300/yr - for NOTHING ! ah well, i wasn't suprised. Regards,

- d

I'm unbricked, up and running.

I showed up at the Charlottetown Rogers store at 8:15 am, and was 6th in line. I managed to snake the last black 16gb iphone they had, so I'm happy. Very luckily for me I had my phone unbricked by 9:30; just seconds ahead of the iTunes connection problem. The two guys next to me in line still didn't have theirs unbricked due to the iTunes problem when I left at 9:50.

I found it very interesting that Apple did significantly restrict the iPhone distribution in Canada; I thought the news story a few days ago about Apple diverting phones to Europe was perhaps a marketing ploy. The CS rep I spoke to in Rogers, without revealing how many they actually had (said he wasn't allowed to disclose actual figures), said they had less than half as many phones as they would have liked. 4 of the 5 guys ahead of me in line bought the black 16gb, so that means Rogers only had 5 black 16gb phones, and I'm guessing probably the same number (or even less) of white 16gb. Unless they had more 8gb phones in stock, that means the store received only 20 phones. Not quite the massive rollout I was expecting.

I simply added the $30 / 6 gb data plan to my 7 year old voice plan ($30, 150 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings / weekends which start at 5pm - completely awesome for me because I rarely ever use my phone during the day, 95% of my calls are made after I get off work, and 5pm evenings is damn near impossible to find now).

Currently downloading some music to it and familiarizing myself with the phone; have to say so far it's awesome. GPS came in handy already as I made a 3 hour trip out of town =) Only real gripe I have at the moment is that the data access is significantly slower when not accessing the internet through WiFi.

I went to the stores in Oakridge mall in Vancouver at 10AM and they opened at 9:30AM. There was almost no waiting time to get iphone. But only Iphone 8gb and Iphone 16gb white are left. They told me the system is down, but they can reserve me one, and I will pay for it when the system is restored.

The iTunes store is so swamped with iPhone activations AND iPod touch users trying to get the 2.0 upgrade that I think there servers arer having major seizures. "Look Ma, I'm a Vista PC!"

I got the $30 6gig promo with my existing voice plan - however I was told that Visual Voicemail is ONLY available with the crappy iphone plans. Has anybody had any success getting visual voicemail on its own?? Thanks

Come-on Jan. Don't be a party pooper. The my5 $20 plan is pretty decent.
250min unlimited evenings and weekends starting @6:00pm call display, visual voicemail and 6g of data for $80.00ish after tax is pretty decent.

I showed up to get an iPhone at the Rogers store at Oakridge Mall... nobody was there, no line-up. The 12-year-olds behind the counter did NOTHING to sell the iPhone. The ridiculous data-/voice- and add-on plans amounted to minimum $3560.00 for 3 years... No way I am going to buy anything from those swines. One guy at Wirelesswave in the same mall was waiting for so far 4h to get his phone up and running, he is still waiting. I think the introduction of the iPhone by Rogers is a complete FAILURE. Too bad on Apple's part to (have to) choose Rogers.

Purchased an iPhone by phone with Fido this morning with ease. No need to line-up and I'll get it delivered to me by next Friday at the latest, once all the activation BS is dealt with. Was even eligible to keep my City Fido and add the 6gb data plan. Bonus was that I only paid 50 bucks for the phone after my reward points. After all is said and done, I end up paying less than the minimum iPhone plan and get unlimited calling, enough data for my liking and a dirt cheap handset.

I feel sorry for those who lined up and didn't get anything out of it, but what did you expect from this launch? Anyways.. best of luck to all!

MAYBE This was Apples idea! To give the finger about the bad press in the past weeks.

I ordered my iphone this morning through Fido Costumer Services, the earliest I'll get it is Friday next week. I don't mind though, I didn't have to wait in line for hours and hours, and i got to use my $113 fido dollars towards my purchase.

And really guys, stop the bitching! Did you really expect for everything to go perfectly? It's an international release, it's not rogers fault, or Apple's fault. There's just way too many people on their system right now. Just breath and relax.

Enjoy your new iphones everyone.

AWESOME SOFTWARE!!! You have to buy the Solitaire Forever for your iPhone... it is cheap and totally amazing!!!! You can buy it now at the Apple App store

Jan R- forget 6 months from now..what about this time next year when apple comes out with a iPhone version 3... "ah jee..two more year left in my contract or I can pay a early cancel fee and claim bankruptcy"..

I got mine in Burnaby (Vancouver) !!
4th in line at Metrotown's Fido store. I got in the store around 10:10, was out by 11.
GPS/Maps is friggin' amazing!!

btw, i didnt get the iphone today... well not yet! each customer was taking like 1hour..... wow @_@ like i said, im not desperate for iphones, i just want them.

3 bucks a day Jan.. it's justifyable!

just start bringing your own lunches to work :)

At the 3c store in Kanata, they had about 50 phones. I was #17 in line, and a few people in front of me left when they ran out of the 16GB phone. I stood for 3 hours in line, only to leave because the activation servers were down. My name is on a phone in the store, and they're going to call me when things come back up... Meantime, I think my Bell phone still works.
Oh yeah, the store didn't open until 10am here, and by noon, when things were going so poorly, the guys in the store bought pizza for everyone in line. They were pretty cool about it, despite the incredible hassle of actually getting the phone.

Rogers and Fido are real mickey mouse companies, it was the same mess here in Quebec, at the main mall in Laval were we also have an Apple store, the apple reps quickly returned to the security store when whey started to get comments from mad customers. All I wanted was an iphone ans all I got was a hat with mouse ears. What a crappy launch... oh and if you are one of the poor bastards that has City Fido plan (where you were forced to take a plan to avoid the access fees before june 1st 2008), your out of luck, no iPhone for you !!! When I spoke to the CSR's yesterday (day before launch) they confirmed to me TWICE that all I had to do is take a 3 year contract on a 30$ 6GB plan and I could get an iPhone well today they simply denied it as if I was crazy. MIC KEY MOUSE...

Talk about impatient people... Will it really ruin your life to wait a day or two to activate? As for an Epic Life Fail? Networks go down, that's just what they do. Talk about a bunch of exaggeration. And before somebody flames me, I myself waited 3 hours this morning and couldn't get past the activation step as well.

WORKING NOW

ok.... im not DESPERATE to get the iphones, so i went to the rogers plus during the afternoon. Around 10 people lined up. I asked one of the sales agent and he was trying to help me by giving me the iphone purchasing sheet. On it was the "original" 4 RIDICULOUS plans, $60 for voice + data with bandwidth 400mb. w...t..f =_= I asked him, "isn't there a $30 data plan"?, he replies, "oh..." and writes down "$30 data plan" on the side of the paper. Ok, so maybe these purchasing sheets were printed before the promo was introduced. I went to stand up in the line, i was like at 11th. I see this one guy in front of me with the same piece of paper, on it, there was a check mark to $75 iphone plan with 750mb... O_O!!!!!!!!!!! lol this guy just got pwned by rogers. so obviously i told him there was this promo event with $30 data plan. i dont understand why there are ABSOLUTELY no signs for this promo event at the store? and why the sales agent forgot to mention it? wtf rogers?

27 iphones at Fido's Kingsway store in Edmonton. I was 28th. 4 sales people were taking about 45 min per customer. I took this as a sign from GOD to stay with 1.1.4 on month-month and wait for the rates to drop. Six months from now, anyone with a 3 yr contract who is making less than 100K/year (like me) will deeply regret 3G mania.

oh ya I was the only person to get my phone activated at Rogers before the damn system crashed but they couldn't unbrick my phone because iTunes had already crashed. This was horrible

Hey! Glad I read this first. I was about to order the iphone through Fido and YES you can get the iphone without a data plan!!! Seriously, it is such a waste of time to get the data since you will obviously go over and there is no way to keep count on how much data you are using. I can't wait for a month from now to see how many people go over on their plans.

I have the unlocked 1.1.4 and will keep this until I get word that the 3G is working well.

PS: if you have pantients... JUST CALL AND ORDER ONE. I waited 5 mins on the phone, got through and they said if I ordered it now it would be mailed out on the 15th. Seriously... that is barely nothing if you can wait a few days. But I am not making any commitments until there is word that it is working.

I was too far down the 'waiting line' so I didn't get one. You'd think each store would have more than 10-15 units for sale. I'm not going to drive all over Calgary hoping that I'm able snag one. All of the Rogers stores must have their phones turned off or off the hook because each time I call (and I've called 5) I get a fast busy signal.

Oh well, here's hoping they get more next week.

I got my iPhone at the local mall... they didnt have 16G either only a few of the black so alot of people when to another rogers store down the street... my iTunes doesn't work either so I am chilling here waiting... I had plans today too.. I knew it was too easy to be true LMAO... this is a test in patience