iPhone launch day experience at one ATT location
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From the moment I unboxed my original EDGE iPhone, waited more than 10 seconds for a webpage to load, and maxed out its hard drive with one video and a few CD’s, I knew I would one day buy it’s successor. Then when the SDK was announced and they admitted the iPhone 3G’s existence, I committed to buying one right away. Finally, when I found out that my Bush Stimulus check would be arriving the same day of the subsidized phone, I decided it was fate (lol). So this morning I decided to take a little stroll over to the ATT store to fulfill my destiny. This is what happened instead.
So this morning I woke up a little earlier than normal with hopes of possibly procuring an iPhone. I normally wouldn’t want to pick one up on Launch day (because of the mayhem), but I’m going on a camping trip this weekend and I won’t be able to pick one up till later next week. So, without too much expectation, I decided to just drive by a few ATT stores on my way into work and see how bad the lines were. Of course, they were horrible and with all the reports of failed activations I figured it would be better if I just went in to work early and waited a few hours for the lines to die down. So I did just that.
Around 10:30am I pulled out my phone and try to call up the closest ATT store. Instead of a customer service rep, I got some stupid recording with a bunch of different options. After about a minute and a half of that, I just hung up and decided to head by the store and see for myself. When I showed up to the store, there were still about five people in line, but it wasn’t enough to turn me off. I hopped in line assuming that there wouldn’t be a line if they were out of phones. Just then a guy pulled up in his car and yelled, “hey, do they still have phones?” Almost in Unison the line replied, “um… yeah… I think so… I sure hope so…”
Now keep in mind that at this point there was an ATT customer service representative standing in the front of the line in full view and ear shot of everyone. So I stood there for a grand total of about seven minutes before the woman, who had just gotten to the front of the line, asked the representative which models they had left. It’s only then that the guy told the woman that there weren’t any phones left. Here’s the thing. He just told it to her as if it wasn’t important information to the rest of the people in the line. It wasn’t untill she turned around all upset and told us that we even knew.
Here’s the best part. As we were all standing there pondering who’s genius idea it was to keep it a secret that they were all out of phones, a UPS truck AND a FedEx truck rolled up and start off loading boxes of iPhones. We all sort of looked at each other for a second, turn to the rep, and said “those are iPhones, right?”. You know what his response was?
“Yes those are. But those are Saturday’s shipments and we’re not allowed to sell them till tomorrow.”
Are you kidding me? Really? I mean I sort of understand it, but what the hell? Then they started pushing this stupid fulfillment order nonsense. Basically asking everyone to sign up now, and ATT would special order them a phone that would arrive in a week or so. Now I’m no rocket scientist, but why on earth would I sign up now and wait a week for my phone from these guys when I could just walk into another store tomorrow or monday and have plenty of stock available (like what happened with the EDGE iPhone). So I left, and I’m going to buy my iPhone from an Apple store in a few days.
All in all, I wasted only about 30 minutes, but I completely lost what little respect I had for ATT during that time. It’s not like it puts me back much since I’m going to be camping all weekend and I’ve been using the 2.0 firmware and the new apps since yesterday, but I thought it was seriously lame.
posted by Christopher Schnese
