As many have possibly read, AT&T managed to botch up the pre-orders for iPhone 4. Well, in my case, they screwed up royally. Let’s set the scene:
Tuesday June 15th:
Pre-orders are not being processed due to an AT&T error of some sort; whether it be a system down or networking errors or what have you. Everybody keeps trying and system finally start to come back online around 5:30 PM US Central Time. So, after trying all day, hurry and get my order in. I think, good, I have my order in — I’ll get the iPhone 4 on Thursday the 24th.
Wednesday, June 16th:
Receive a call from the Assistant Store Manager at AT&T, Nick, asking me to have my brother call the store regarding authorizations and the like. I call him and he straightens it all out with AT&T and he is good to go for Thursday the 24th.
Friday June 18th:
News blogs have information trickling in about iPhone 4 pre-orders being ‘prepared for shipment’. Being the compulsive checker I am, I checked mine — no change. I figure I will check again Saturday morning.
Saturday, June 19th:
Wake up — no change in shipping. Check periodically throughout the day, and still no change. Check at 3:00PM (10 minutes before our movie was set to start) — status of order ‘CANCELLED’. Being a bit irritated and hoping it was an error, I attempted to call Apple. Wait on hold for 30 minutes. Get disconnected. Try again for another 15 minutes. Give up due to missing 45 minutes of the movie.
Finish movie. Immediately call Apple and get through the first time (WTF?) and talk to the representative. He says there’s nothing that they can do and he’s not sure what happened.
Next try AT&T, call their support and talk to a nice lady who is apologetic. She’s not entirely sure what can be done, if anything. Head home after eating dinner and check on doing another pre-order. Type in all of the pertinent information and get the following error message:
So, I try pre-ordering a phone with my brother’s phone number and get the option to pre-order. I have determined the issue. AT&T assigned my number to have the phone and not my brother’s line. (We’re on a family plan). At the least, I have figured out the reason my pre-order was cancelled.
Monday, June 21st:
I call AT&T and talk to the store manager, Gary. I explain the situation. He fully understands and wants to make it better. He offers to try and save a 32GB Black iPhone 4 but cannot promise anything. I said I would think about it. While talking to Gary I did get a glimpse of a few things. First off, he did admit it was their mistake. Also, while discussing Tuesday’s debacle, he stated that his store was on manual iphone pre-orders from the time the store opened. Meaning that the whole thing started before 8AM US Central Time.
So that’s where things stand at this moment. My plan of attack for Thursday is to head to the AT&T store early to see if I can procure an iPhone 4. If I am not able to get one on Thursday, I will just go ahead and order one from Apple and wait until it arrives. This, of course, is not the ideal situation, but honestly I can’t argue too much. I mean, afterall, it’s just a damn phone. Forcing myself to wait will be a good exercise in self-discipline. However, there’s no reason I can’t be grumpy with AT&T regardless.
