Sprint iphone 4 flashed to metropcs: Says failed to activate, unable to ota activate

[rich hathaway]

you didn't offend me, don't know about anyone else.
here is what the deal is......you get what you pay for,you are learning that i see.it doesn't work with them yet because they need to steal more.
so i hope you understand,i am trying to sell flashes for iphones,and iphones only.not any of the other thousand phones out there only iphone and only the cdma ones, you could not possibly understand the amount of work the 3 of us have put into this and we deserve to be paid for it. i can help you with your android problems all day, but i absolutely will not help you to solve the problems you got when you gave those thieves your money period.

all i can say is you get what you pay for,our tool works for full flash,and we offer support live from 2 guys that know what they are doing and will solve your problem.we are the authority on cdma iphone flashing,we will always have it first,the rest is just that,the rest.if you want it from them,wait for them to steal it.
if you want to be stuck looking around searching forums and trying to get free help from the guys who's flash you didn't buy because the other guy's junk flash you bought doesn't work and they have no support to help you,your not gonna get it. you do really get what you pay for.how much is your time worth or the headache of trying to fix this? bro,you should have just flashed with me and you would be done

i appreciate your membership here brother but i cant give a free flash to correct your problem. i don't understand the logic in you say you only charge the end user 90 bucks.i sell flashes as cheap as 25 bucks,that leaves you almost triple your money and a happy customer because everything works as stated and in only a couple minutes,so????? scratching my head... end rant.lol

just please try [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] next time we would love to have you as our customer brother,we made this tool for you!

[elisa191]

Keep up the rant Rich!!!!

Just my two cents

I don't know much about Apple phones that's why I decided to get out of development on it early on and throw my financial weight behind another dev (sorry it wasn't you Rich but Willy hadn't told me you were as far along as you were at the time) At any-rate I can say after almost six years of having my solutions stolen and used by all my competitors to drive the market and the industry into the dirt I am so glad that Rich is not Bastardizing the iPhone market by releasing solutions or fixes to junk solutions.

Yes everything in this business eventually gets stolen (Usually by your "Friends") but 90.00 for an iPhone flash is the problem. How can I pay the light bills in my stores when a customer tells me he can go to you and get a "Full" flash for 90.00?

Easy - I tell them that for 90.00 it isn't a full flash and that the guy their talking to is full of it!

So if Rich gives you the solution I look like an idiot!

If you Pay 50 - 75 per flash then were in the same ballpark and can all make money.

If your concerned about the customer do it right

Sell customers on your quality not your price and you will find that if you deliver the quality you sell you will make so much more money in the end.

Rant on Rich Rant on

elisa191

[cbernardo13]

Ok,

This is turning into a good discussion...I'm gonna try and respond to everything...

First of all Rich, I CAN ONLY IMAGINE how much work you guys have put into this iphone. It shows through your knowledge and expertise on the iphone. So I give you guys much respect for that. I know what time it takes from our lives to figure these phones out.

So, with that being said, I charge my customer $90 for as full a flash I can get on their iOS because I still have to pay $40 to get it into Metro's database. So that only leaves me with $50 for any headache that comes with it. So Rich, if I pay you $75 a phone, plus the $40, I end up spending $115 just to get the phone flashed. I'm back to charging $150 to a customer, which is what I was charging when I first started using DFS, before any other solution was out. Now my competitors are charging this lower price. I have to compete.

Elisa, I understand where you are coming from. This is a very competitive market, and I do care about giving the end user the cheapest price. You all know as much as I do, trying to convince a customer that your service is better then anyone else's is hard to convince, especially when you are asking $30 more for a flash. Most people just hear the cost. I tell them completely up front what they get with their flashes.

So Rich, based off what you are saying, is their a cheaper solution out there where I can still give quality? And what about Boost? Here in the Tampa Bay area, Metro only offers 1x (or LTE), so for a customer to pay $150 for a flash to Metro, only on 1x speeds; I feel guilty asking a customer to pay more then what I am offering. Not to mention that I have Cell Bros only 1 1/2 hours away from me offer full flashes to both carriers for under $100. Makes it VERY hard to not try and charge $90 and give them what they pay for. I am all about honesty, quality, and professionalism, and I try and provide quality off of my own knowledge and research. I do not use others stolen solutions (that I know of).

Anyways, if there is a cheaper solution Rich that I can pass down to my customer, please let me know. Again, I pay $40 to get the esn added to Metro. I would also love to learn Boost if anyone can help there. I want to use the premium forum, but from what I understand, it isn't in that section either.

Next person to rant...lol

[rich hathaway]

well,ill say this at my stores,we are the highest place in town to get a phone flashed,and,we are the probably the most busy store also out of about 100 stores.
how? its simple,we do it right,we do not use magical phone or ftt or any other program that just screw things up,we hand flash our phones it takes longer and requires tools and knowledge,i do most of our flashes myself,i do have a "right hand man" that works with me some of you know him as thephoneguy913 here on the forum.our reputation stands for itself,peeps know of it.daily people bring in there phones that corporate or other magical/ftt stores have done with missing features and/or slow web speeds because they cant seem to figure out how to write simple profiles and that cricket uses specific passwords (lmao)

so how do you charge more you ask and get people to pay it? you offer them better service and i cant say this enough YOU LEARN YOUR PRODUCTS BETTER THAN THE OTHER GUYS. some of your customers will go to the cheap guys,but,they will need help those "magic" guys cant offer... that's where you come in,they bring it back to you,and you fix it,then guess what happens,they tell others man that guy knows his stuff..go there.

your price includes the activation,this is where you are screwing up,your competition is not.do not include activation in your flash.no one here does,and no one i talk to does that,especially for metro because it is so expensive.

activation should be a separate charge.

if you want to flash cheaper buy a bigger package.but stop including metro esn changes in your packages its eating up all your profits.

[elisa191]

I have been in business for myself for almost 30 years and in my constructions business I had to learn the hard way that the guy who is charging the cheapest price doesn't last. That philosophy translates to this business as well. I am south of you, my stores are in Naples and Ft. Myers plus I obviously advertise nationally. I say that to make the point that I know your market its not isolated. In my market I have seen hundreds of guys come and go advertising cheaper prices and in most cases way cheaper prices to try and "Put me out of business" but of all those guys that have poped up guess what? None are left. Every once and a while another one will pop up, I don't even get excited anymore.

I charge more then you and my stores are busy everyday.

You have to sell your services - you have to or you wont survive

I used to do high end condo renovations on the gulf coast. Average job was about 230,000 and my markup was about 15% out of that I would pay my overhead and be lucky to walk with 5k in profit. We did a lot of these but I was barely scrapping by.

I joined a construction marketing group and it took them a year to convince me that I need to be charging 65% markup

Man I bucked the system for so long because so many of my customers "Just heard price" as you say.

Well I changed my pricing and guess what? I almost never lost a sale after that.

I closed my business in 2005 because we could already see the economic trends and I didn't want to get caught holding so much money and that's when I started doing metro flashing but that's another story.

The point is this. They taught me that at 25% you are simply breaking even. That is the truth! In business we calculate our overhead but what about all the misc BS.

Breakeven is 25% markup

Now how much are you worth?

All the customer service you provide? All the hours you put in at your store? All the hours calculating taxes, bills, ect.

All the hours you spend helping customers after the sale

All the hours scouring forms and talking to dev for better ways to flash

ect. ect. ect. ect. ect.

How much are you worth - you have to add that number on top of the 25% if you want to make anything!

If you answer that question honestly your prices will be the same as ours and then your will be making money and the few customers who are shopping price and go elsewhere wont matter besides eventually many of them will be back to you because once people know that your the one to go to if they want it done right even when they flash their evo 4g with the 30.00 flasher when they upgrade to the S2 they will bring it to you because they wont want all the problems with it that they had with the evo the 30.00 guy flashed.

That's how I make my money


This thread is way off subject and I am sorry for my contribution to that so this is my last post on this issue

The best to you cbernardo13

elisa191

[Discodisco209]

Im glad to see my thread back to Life and im also glad i wasn't the only one dealing with this Sprint Activation problem.

Now it seems that on a rare occasion that some Sprint Iphones that don't activate dont even get Data, Just Bars but no circle or 3G.

Ill try using your Bundle Rich, see if that gets data or the activation through, thanks.

And as far as the discussion on pricing, I charge my Customers $75 to Full flash their Sprint/VZW Iphone to MetroPCS, a little less for Cricket, $110 if they need new account

Preflashed iphones starting at $275 for 8GB with free flash.

Why these prices? Because like someone pointed out before me, Giving our Customers the best deal possible is what gets your name out there.

And me and my brother have been established locally for about 4-5 years now when QPST was the only way to flash and we were selling droid 1's for $225, the good ol days

Writing APK scripts for MMS and whatnot, it was a bitch but my brother started out manually flashing Phones and xbox 360's

Being the cheapest doesn't always mean your the one to go first, it means you strive to provide more efficient ways and cheaper ways of getting your customers what they want.

We've established good relationships with most of the Metro/Cricket stores in the area which is why we get discounted on ESN changes and New activations, and we extend those savings to our customer base, Being Established, (which is hard with everything automated now) Professional and working with stores and knowing how to manually flash all the phones you work on is the key in this business, other stores who use automated solutions and get MIP behavior and Profiles all F***ed up and we charge a low fee to fix their mistakes and gaining a customer in the process



If you can't manually flash a phone correctly and root it and get every feature working without automated solutions then getting in this business is a waste of your time, period.

Even with my low prices i still get customers who complain on how long it takes, which is usually 1-2 hours maybe 3 if there iphones on 6.0.1 with tethered jailbreak, Honestly some would rather pay high prices and have it done with an automated competitor then have it done right and end up back to us to have it fixed. smh