Not sure if you guys are on this site, but I ran into a few Canadian iPhone hackers. Sorry we didn't get to talk much, but I eventually got Apple to exchange my phone! Talk about pain in the ass...

AT&T Comes Through, Apple tries to give me the run around:

So I show up at the Apple store in Buffalo (Walden Galleria), after calling ahead and confirming that they would be able to exchange my defective iPhone (Refused to restore, iTunes errors 6, 9 and 1601). I tell them that I cannot afford to drive back to pick up my phone and need a replacement on the spot (Since the phone is new)... They tell me that their policy has been changed and they will give you a new phone on the spot if you're within the 1 yr period. Cool I thought.

So I show up at the store and the guy tries to label my phone as suspicious! WTF. He claims it seems to match a ton of other phones... I'm like, "I never opened up my phone".. If the guy LOOKED at the phone, he could tell there wasn't a single scratch on it. We went back and forth for minutes while I insisted I couldn't leave without my new phone. After his manager approves a swap (Very nice guy btw, very professional -- Not because he allowed my exchange, but because he went out of his way NOT to step on his tech...) they try to get me on the fact I don't have my SIM with me... I figured I wouldn't need it, because I was exchanging it and Apple warns you not to have the SIM in the phone when doing repairs, etc etc.. Anyways, they tried to get me with that.

So fast forward 20 minutes, I walk into the AT&T store at Walden Galleria and two of the coolest sales people I've ever met (Dan and another guy), hook me up with a new SIM and even shoot the shit for a bit.

So anyways, long story short, I had to argue with Apple to get a fscking 17 day old iPhone replaced (Again, only turbosimed, no hw mods) while AT&T went out of their way to hook me up with a SIM. (Which isn't as easy or cheap as it sounds, but they came through.. That's all I'll say

Round 2: I try to get my $200 credit instead of $100 for all this hassle

hey cj

glad to hear everything worked out for you. we were leaving just as you got back from ATT. i was surprised to hear how good your experience was with ATT (i dont think ill ever walk into one of their stores again after trying to talk to one of their sales people in the same mall just a week earlier). it would have really sucked if they made you come back for a repair, but given that your iphone was just over two weeks old, i think they made a correct choice in making an exception for you.

i almost had to turn around and get our new iphone swapped out as I was having the same activation issue, at least this time i was actually able to force a restore (instead of the looping 1011error), now I just need to figure out an alternative method to activate the phone.

good meeting you, best of luck with the new phone.

Originally Posted by -cj-

Not sure if you guys are on this site, but I ran into a few Canadian iPhone hackers. Sorry we didn't get to talk much, but I eventually got Apple to exchange my phone! Talk about pain in the ass...

AT&T Comes Through, Apple tries to give me the run around:

So I show up at the Apple store in Buffalo (Walden Galleria), after calling ahead and confirming that they would be able to exchange my defective iPhone (Refused to restore, iTunes errors 6, 9 and 1601). I tell them that I cannot afford to drive back to pick up my phone and need a replacement on the spot (Since the phone is new)... They tell me that their policy has been changed and they will give you a new phone on the spot if you're within the 1 yr period. Cool I thought.

So I show up at the store and the guy tries to label my phone as suspicious! WTF. He claims it seems to match a ton of other phones... I'm like, "I never opened up my phone".. If the guy LOOKED at the phone, he could tell there wasn't a single scratch on it. We went back and forth for minutes while I insisted I couldn't leave without my new phone. After his manager approves a swap (Very nice guy btw, very professional -- Not because he allowed my exchange, but because he went out of his way NOT to step on his tech...) they try to get me on the fact I don't have my SIM with me... I figured I wouldn't need it, because I was exchanging it and Apple warns you not to have the SIM in the phone when doing repairs, etc etc.. Anyways, they tried to get me with that.

So fast forward 20 minutes, I walk into the AT&T store at Walden Galleria and two of the coolest sales people I've ever met (Dan and another guy), hook me up with a new SIM and even shoot the shit for a bit.

So anyways, long story short, I had to argue with Apple to get a fscking 17 day old iPhone replaced (Again, only turbosimed, no hw mods) while AT&T went out of their way to hook me up with a SIM. (Which isn't as easy or cheap as it sounds, but they came through.. That's all I'll say

Round 2: I try to get my $200 credit instead of $100 for all this hassle

So who replaced your phone? AT&T or Apple? I got mine from Apple on Sep 3 and I tried to unlock it but I didnt succeed so I went back there with the phone still working but no WIFI and the IMEI and ICCID both showing as blank. They didn't replace it.

rock6079: That sounds messed up! No doubt related to the new iTunes? I had activation trouble back in August but that was related to AT&T's side. Won't the normal activation stuff (iASign, etc) work? Lucky for me (As you witnessed!) I had that prepaid AT&T plan and actually used it to activate my phone.. Seemed to come in handy today with Apple. (I used it to build the case that my phone wasn't hacked since I'm w/ at&t)

nas78: Apple replaced the phone eventually, but not before making me run through various hoops. I'm SOO glad I arrived earlier than my scheduled "Genius" appointment. It took like an hour to get the whole thing straightened out.

My phone wasn't hacked though, so you may have a hard time proving it. However, the scary thing is that I lost my WiFi as well. My phone completely messed up while in the car, started getting hot, battery died really fast and I eventually lost WiFi (Plus my wireless was sketchy). I started explaining this to the Apple guy but stopped, because I was sure if I told him I lost WiFi he would group me with the hw unlockers

I'm sure if you could transfer stuff ONTO the phone you can restore your baseband firmware (Which is what sounds like your problem is..). What's the challenge here? Isn't it possible to update new firmware? What happens when you flash to version 1.0 and than upgrade to 1.0.2? Doesn't it replace the baseband firmware anyway?

cj thanks for the reply!!

I've spent hours if not days to get the phone to work but I'm stuck.
I finally got it out of the connect to itunes reboot loop and I was able to activate it using jailbreak (the 10 steps) however my IMEI and ICCID are still showing as unknown and therefor when I try to restore via itunes it does not let me and I can't use Putty because WIFI is down. I think you are right I am missing stuff on the phone, like the baseband, I know that I still have the correct commcenter file int here because I was able to browse the phone files using a program which lets me make a virtual drive out of my iphone but unfortunately it does not let me write to the iphone only copy from iphone.

I guess the reason why I lost WIFI is because I rebooted after i eraser The challenge for me I guess is how do I get the baseband over to the phone.

zebrum wrote the following in my other thread:

In order to flash the baseband you would have needed to have a terminal and the fls file already installed on your phone. That should reallly be step 6b because if you accidently ground the 1.8V which is really easy to do with pins wifi breaks and you need to reboot. The reason is the zeros you wrote to the firmware prevent wifi from working after a reboot.

see "I lost wifi - now it just says "No Wi-Fi"" for more info: http://iphone.unlock.no/

I'm not sure what to do because I'm not very good with these commands, I think I took on a bigger job than I thought I could handle.

I haven't done the hw unlock myself (Was paranoid about the phone breaking and having to replace it), but if you can mount your phone as a drive than why not stick firmware on the phone and run the command to update the phone via a start-up script on the phone -- I suspect you cannot run commands on the phone, just replace files. Well, if you find a start up file that the phone executes on startup, modify or replace it with the same contents except include your firmware updater line, you should be able to restore it that way...

It probably isn't as easy as it sounds, but if your only challenge is executing stuff on the phone and you can get stuff onto it via drive method, that's how I would do it.

In fact, I think I read someone suggesting you do something like that in case your phone reboots..? I'll read that document tho --- Guess it's time I got familiar with the hwunlock