Why is AT&T Family Plan so difficult?

Last year it took two months to get our iPhones all onto AT&T’s family plan. I visited the AT&T store half a dozen times, spent hours on the phone with them before it was all done properly. I assumed then that it was a problem with Apple and AT&T working together and first-day problems that I forgave.

But, today, our iPhones are again on individual plans (not voluntarily, either) and I was told to visit an AT&T store “soon” to get all my accounts onto a family plan. Apple employees tried over and over again to get our phones to join up into a Family Plan, but they couldn’t make it work, so they gave up and told me to go to an AT&T store. The fun starts over again.

This time I totally blame AT&T for not working with Apple and making sure that the process is much smoother for existing customers. Especially since last year Apple wasn’t even part of the problem.

So, AT&T, why is it so hard to make it easy to join all your accounts together into a family plan?

Making it worse this year is I have several accounts:

1. My iPhone, which now is a 3G.
2. My son’s iPhone, which is now a 3G.
3. My wife’s iPhone which will stay an original iPhone.
4. My Nokia N82 account.
5. My Nokia N95 account.

So, I have five accounts using several different kinds of phones, which makes it hard to join them all together.

Anyone else having this problem?

UPDATE: AT&T, over the phone, fixed all of our accounts, so I’m happy. They don’t know why the Apple machines weren’t showing that we were all on a family plan yesterday.