I spent a good 10 minutes in the parking lot after picking up my new treasure a couple weekends ago messing around with this new gizmo. I even downloaded the Pandora application so I could have awesome streaming radio the whole way back home. Everything was great, or so I thought.

3G reception in my house and the immediate area around it is spotty. Oddly if I drive down the road in any direction maybe a half a mile, it improves. But phone calls are where the troubles begin.

During another frustrating session with Time Warner cable a few weeks ago, I made my series of calls to them in 3G, before knowing it is not a viable option in my apartment.

3G phone calls have been a bit like walking around my house with a cordless phone in the mid-1990s. Remember how you used to pick up radio waves or other people’s conversations? The iPhone will occasionally do something like this when it’s not dropping calls in 3G.

It’s not just me

CNET yesterday provided the best overview article on the subject to date. Basically I am not alone. AT&T and Apple have remained quiet about the subject, despite the massive number of posts on Apple’s own discussion forums. (It got so bad, that it spilled over into another thread after the original one hit the limit.)

Since Apple has been mum on it, many have speculated on what’s going on. In summary:

• It’s a 3G network thing. It’s being overwhelmed by new iPhone traffic, especially in big cities.
• It’s the hardware. Apple and its chip maker didn’t make the antenna and associated components strong enough.
• It’s the first batch of 3G iPhones and a SIM card exchange fixes this.
• It’s Apple’s first 3G phone and other cell phone manufacturers have had similar growing pains.

Help may be on the way, according to Business Week sources.

Apple will likely issue a software update by the end of September—if not by the end of this month—to resolve the issues. Apple and Infineon are currently testing the fix, which will be included in a broader update of the iPhone’s software. iPhone owners will be prompted to install the update when they synch their iPhones to a PC, just as they have on many other occasions. In its statement, AT&T said, “We urge our customers to synch iPhone 3G to iTunes frequently to ensure they have the latest software updates.”

USA Today’s mysterious “sources” put it as early as next week. The Wall Street Journal also chimes in, adding more software update speculation.

Back to customer service

I am not an expert on public relations. As a journalist, I’ve been trained to not trust those spinsters. But here’s a bit of free advice for Apple and AT&T: acknowledge the problem!

Yes, Apple has had to swallow its pride on the Mobile Me roll out. Steve Jobs even apologized. Now it’s time for the 3G.

I, like a lot of 3G owners, would be more understanding if Apple and AT&T issued status updates. What’s going on? When do you expect to address the problem?

So far the official word out of Apple/AT&T customer service has been for users to switch to the slower, but more reliable, EDGE service. Really? I’m paying quite a bit extra for 3G service in an area that supposedly has pretty darn good coverage. (Something AT&T will deny. This map is just an “estimation.”)

Here I am “saturated” in 3G coverage.

A bunch of whining fanboys?

Is this problem magnified by Apple’s intense following? Perhaps. But it’s these intense followers that make up Apple’s “fan base” and are the ones Apple should be very concerned about. It’s also the casual user, new to Apple products, that the company should also worry about. For a firm that churns out products that “just work” this is a mighty blow to its credibility.

I have until early September to return my phone and get out of the iPhone contract. I don’t want to, but I will, especially if Apple and AT&T remain quiet on fixing this problem.

Aside, the phone call/3G problems, the iPhone has some pretty cool other features that mean a lot for the future of journalism and communication. More soon!

I woke up the next morning and tested the URL.

Nothing.

Great, I thought, maybe it’s still not finished being setup. I jumped over to GoDaddy, logged in and — bam — yes, they said I was ready to go. I dumped a test index.html through the GoDaddy interface. You guessed it … still nothing loaded on my computer.

For the next couple hours, I dumped countless caches, histories, restarted my computer, restarted my router, tried the site on my laptop and still no Web site would load.

To make a long story short, the Time Warner DNS servers were not recognizing my new site. This problem was peculiar to me, because all the friends and family I had check for the site are not on Time Warner. It loaded perfectly fine for them.

Solving this problem took a lot of research and guessing. It wasn’t until I changed my computer’s settings to OpenDNS that the site popped up. Web searches about this problem were inconclusive. Many forums suggested something very wrong was happening but had no solutions. I write about this experience to create some sort of record of my findings for others who encounter this problem.

Customer service dumb

I also write about this because Time Warner needs to be punished for its awful customer service system.

Let’s tell a tale of two customer services. First, GoDaddy, the Web hosting provider, and then, Time Warner, my home Internet service provider. I had to contact both to confirm and remedy my findings told above.

GoDaddy experience

• Call in, hit number for particular area of concern
• Talk to agent who asks for name on account and pin number from registration
• Discuss problem in common English

Time Warner experience

• Call in, hit several numbers to get to particular department and area of service. Be forced to go through automated diagnosis of “Internet problems.” Hit “0″ because I know it’s not my cable modem to get to specific agent.
• Talk to service rep, explain situation, get asked for phone number, name, address and account number, after entering much of that previously in automated menu. Re-explain situation to agent. Dissuade agent from having me plug and unplug modem. “That’s not the problem,” I say. “I know what it is, and I need to talk to someone who can explain what’s going on.”
• Reluctantly agent transfers me to tier 2 support, but before doing it, tries to sell me home phone service. Wait on hold. Have to retell my phone number, address, name, account number, etc. Re-explain situation. Level 2 person tries to diagnose. “No, no,” I say, “I don’t need to plug and unplug my modem.” I restate my problem at least three times. I think each time the agent thinks I want to get my new site listed on the crappy Roadrunner default search page that pops up because Time Warner’s DNS servers don’t recognize my site. Tier 2 agent doesn’t seem to understand DNS servers. Tier 2 girl says she’ll transfer me two Tier 3. Gives me reference number for my problem. Also tries to sell me home phone service.
• Instead of being transferred, I am pushed back to the main menu that I got 30 minutes earlier. I hold back anger and try to not throw my phone into the wall. Return to first level agent. Repeat my account information. Explain my situation.
• Tier 2 person takes my call, again, I explain my situation and give a reference number that I was given earlier. Tier 2 person finally figures out what this means and transfers me to Tier 3.
• Finally, Tier 3 person is on the phone. He explains what’s going on after I tell him I know it’s Time Warner’s crappy DNS servers. He tells me to wait just another day or two and the site should pop up. It’s not actually Time Warner but the crap legacy servers that the company inheritied after it bought Adelphia. Somehow, a year and a half after buying Adelphia, Time Warner hasn’t gotten around to upgrading them. *phew* My problem is taken care of an hour and fifteen minutes later.

To be fair to Time Warner, it is a large organization with many complexities and customers with varying degrees of understanding. But the brain trust at Time Warner is already on my *expletitive deleted* list for not following through with several appointments I’ve made with them in the past and a couple of service changes that they didn’t actually record. If there’s a school for dumb customer service personnel, it’s run by T-W.

What particularly made my Time Warner experience so frustrating was the robot-like nature of its call center people. It’s one thing to be professional; it’s another not to break off script to understand my individual problem. Whereas with Godaddy I reached a considerate person who listened to my problem and discussed it with me, the Time Warner gang pretty much stuck to the “please hold a moment” routine throughout. (Speaking of that phrase, what is it that they are constantly holding for?)

Even worse, and despite being quite audibly annoyed, the Time Warner people tried to sell me home phone service at least twice in my 1.25 hour encounter.

I know Time Warner must meet certain performance goals for its stockholders and must pressure its support personnel to pimp services. But how does training your agents to try to sell a customer with a problem a service make sense? What is their system unnecessarily complex, confusing and inconsistent? Speaking of my old customer service experiences, I couldn’t imagine trying to sell a T-shirt after helping a ticked off customer at Old Navy or pimping popcorn to a disgruntled theatergoer.

Apparently some cities have taken notice and are suing Time Warner. I don’t know if a lawsuit will accomplish it, but it’s hard to root for Time Warner’s success.