iOS5 and the iPhone

Well as some of you know I went in for Surgery the other day.  Just so happened to be the same day iOS 5 was released.  So I did everything I could to be prepared to deal with the UPGRADE and NOT have alot of issues with it.
I downloaded the latest version of iTunes days before the UPGRADES release and did a BACKUP of my phone.  Just to be safe I did a back up again of the phone just before I went in for my surgery.  Figured having 2 backups would I’d be safe against an issues can could ROLL the phone back if there were problems.

Well the day after surgery I was feeling nearly alert enough to give the upgrade a try, so I crawled to my computer chair and started the UPDATE process.  (Note to self after having major surgery, NEVER attempt to complete anything computer related.)

It was at this point the update went ANY where from NORMAL and EASY.  The update failed and threw and error that I didn’t spot as I was hobbling back and forth from my computer chair to anywhere that my body would feel LESS in pain.  Leaving me with an error message the my UPDATE had failed and a BLACK SCREEN on my IPhone 4.

I decided at this point to call in reinforcements and got on the phone with Applecare.  The call took 30 minutes to reach a live body.  The Tier 1 representative I reached was informative and knew enough to get me headed down the path to try to resolve the issue.  He followed all of apples guidelines for call control and owned the call as he should (Note: I’m a former tier one representative for apple and KNOW how they are supposed to handle calls.)  He stayed with the call as we attempted to restore one of the backups to the phone.  This process took another 30 minutes, he was polite and stayed with the call rather than being worried about his STATS he owned it and stayed with it.  Unfortunately this is not where our story ends with a happy ending and iOS5 in place and ready to run.  This backup failed as well.  The Tier 1 rep and I both agreed it was time to get a Tier 2 agent (now referred to as a Product Specialist).

Enter Agent September, you can tell this gal was READING off cue cards and didn’t belong where she was.  Which was totally unusual for apple as they don’t promote folks that don’t know what they are doing to Tier 2.  She had a nasty habit of talking over me while I tried to explain what we had tried and done.  As well as tried several times to tell me the issue was because I didn’t have a password on my back ups (Which isn’t required unless your ENCRYPTING your backups) Knowing this agent wasn’t going to be of help after 15 minutes of dealing with her, and taking 1 time out as I didn’t was to EXPLODE.  I asked to speak with Customer Relations.  She didn’t argue with me and said she would connect me.  After about 10 MINS of waiting I was transferred to a Customer Relations Rep who politely listened and then asked me what I wanted to solve this issue, to which.  I stated MY PHONE WORKING.  This Relations REP then scheduled a time to contact me at so I could work with someone BETTER trained to deal with problems on the phone.  I went away feeling HOPEFUL.

Well time came and went and NO phone call came.  So I started investigating on my own and found that ITUNE had created a faulty directory called “C:\Documents and Setti”.  I knowing a tiny bit of how the OS works.  RENAMED this to OLD_Documents and Setti and rebooted my computer and relaunched ITune and attempted the UPGRADE and to do a RESTORE.  This got me further than I had before and I had access to OLD Backups from April and August 2010.  However NONE of the Backup’s I’d made earlier existed.  After the UPGRADE and RESTORE from Back up completed.  I had an IPhone 4 with iOS 5 on it.  One BIG issue now.  It was FULL.  The other files on the UNIT had grown to over 3 GIGS in size and filled my entire phone.

At this point I phoned the customer service REP reminding her that she’d made an agreement with me to RESOLVE this issue.  About 30 MINS later she called and then connected me with TIM another better suited Product specialist.  Tim listened with interest to what I had done so far and informed me that I’d gotten farther than their IT folks in solving the issue.  Asked me for a copy of the OLD_Documents and Setti which I packed up and emailed to him.  He then informed me that they did not have a fix for the HUGE OTHER files that had taken up the space on my phone but he would get back in touch with me when they had a FIX.  At least I had some folks that were admitting they had a bug and NO way to fix it.

Now I left it at that point until the middle of the night it nagged me at 2:00am why not just format out the phone and retry the install of the OS again.  So I did that… After several hours of the RESTORE and then REINSTALL of the back up I expected to see iOS4 on the phone.  NOPE, it was iOS 5 with all of the other files cleaned up and had all of my APPS and contacts correct at this point.  At this point I enabled their NEW iCloud and did a back up of the phone.

To this point I’ve not heard a WORD FROM Apple, so I tossed both of these folks a message stating that I HAD FIXED THE PHONE with out them.  And what I had done to accomplish it.  I’m still waiting to hear from the Customer Service Rep no contact from her either.  As for the phone… Working Great no issue, and I’m holding off a week or so before I try to do my wife’s phone.  It is sad when we as customers KNOW MORE about the product and supporting it than the folks at Tier 1 and Tier 2 support and we are doing their jobs.  I’d say they should be PAYING US for the fixes we do at this point.  It will be interesting to see if we hear ANYTHING at all from them at this point.