iPhail
Today is iDay 2.0 or the release of the second version of the iPhone called the iPhone 3G. The nomenclature has the adverse effect of causing people to call the original iPhone the "second Gen" and thus confusing many, or at least just me. After my participation in the original iDay on June 29th I was happy to once again join into all the fun and excitement that can be had while standing in a row. Knowing demand was not going to exceed last year and that this year's model had a release time during most people's work schedules, I assumed the same size line or slightly less. So with cash in hand at 5:30 this morning (t-minus 2h30) I headed to the apple store and found a fairly small line with myself in a low 30's in position. I was originally going to wait at an AT&T store but the lines were about the same for smaller stores with less employees. (not to mention AT&T's legendary ability to suck) What I did not factor in was that proximity to an AT&T store is not a factor when measuring AT&T's ability to suck.
The line went smoothly with various news crews and apple employees handing out water to those in line. The mall security, always happy to assert authority with anyone who will agree to it, made us rearrange our line to form "an aisle for mall traffic" a full 3 hours before the mall officially opened. Opening time finally came and probably 50 bouncy appleheads greeted us. Then came the unexpected part, they let about 12 people in and then stopped the line. A full 15 minutes passed before cheers came from the store heralding the first successful purchase. Slowly they brought us in one by one and then it was my turn I was prepared more than average but in for a less than average trip.
I was originally thinking of white for myself and the wife wanted black. I told my salesmen what I wanted and how I wanted to pay, with cash. Apparently this is a no-no. I was unaware that sometime overnight cash became non-legal tender in the U.S.. At least it appeared so. After about 20 minutes we had converted my cash to gift cards which somehow ARE legal tender and we were back at step 1. We finally begin the new activation process. About 3 steps in I get a message about an "IRU" which means nothing to me or the apple employees. Further investigation reveals this means they think I'm a business.
In actuality I'm only in the business of trying to buy a dang cell phone but it is baseing this assumption on the fact I used to have a discount on my account through my employer. I call AT&T and they claim to remove everything that says I'm a business. By this time I've lost my sales guy and have to wait for next available.
I get a new sales guy and by this time decide maybe I want black after all and ask for two black. We try to order and even after removing the discount, no joy. More calls and no real help from AT&T's call center and multiple AT&T server outages later, I am informed I need to go to an AT&T store to solve this problem within AT&T's system. This is of course after 11 by this point and all AT&T stores are sold out. I try one AT&T store with a short line and find that they are sold out and are taking ship-to-store orders. These are being done because AT&T backlogged a large amount of stock in their warehouse so they can later ship it to the stores with pre-paid sales instead of trying to second-guess demand. Once I am in the AT&T store and almost ready to pay for my phones I'm told that they don't take cash either.
I head to the bank and deposit the cash, luckliy they still accept it. After some time for venting I head to a store where I know one of the salesmen and know he can tell a cell phone from a hole in the ground. He has no real problems with ordering but by the time we get the paperwork done, the warehouse is now out of black. He asks if I'm set on "Vader" or want to order two "Stormtroopers" (white) instead. I finally agree and he gets them marked for expedited shipping. Fingers crossed I leave the store with little more than a few slips of paper and a hopefullness that they will arrive soon.
Well the iPhone3G was pretty cool when I played with it in the store at least...
The line went smoothly with various news crews and apple employees handing out water to those in line. The mall security, always happy to assert authority with anyone who will agree to it, made us rearrange our line to form "an aisle for mall traffic" a full 3 hours before the mall officially opened. Opening time finally came and probably 50 bouncy appleheads greeted us. Then came the unexpected part, they let about 12 people in and then stopped the line. A full 15 minutes passed before cheers came from the store heralding the first successful purchase. Slowly they brought us in one by one and then it was my turn I was prepared more than average but in for a less than average trip.
I was originally thinking of white for myself and the wife wanted black. I told my salesmen what I wanted and how I wanted to pay, with cash. Apparently this is a no-no. I was unaware that sometime overnight cash became non-legal tender in the U.S.. At least it appeared so. After about 20 minutes we had converted my cash to gift cards which somehow ARE legal tender and we were back at step 1. We finally begin the new activation process. About 3 steps in I get a message about an "IRU" which means nothing to me or the apple employees. Further investigation reveals this means they think I'm a business.
In actuality I'm only in the business of trying to buy a dang cell phone but it is baseing this assumption on the fact I used to have a discount on my account through my employer. I call AT&T and they claim to remove everything that says I'm a business. By this time I've lost my sales guy and have to wait for next available.
I get a new sales guy and by this time decide maybe I want black after all and ask for two black. We try to order and even after removing the discount, no joy. More calls and no real help from AT&T's call center and multiple AT&T server outages later, I am informed I need to go to an AT&T store to solve this problem within AT&T's system. This is of course after 11 by this point and all AT&T stores are sold out. I try one AT&T store with a short line and find that they are sold out and are taking ship-to-store orders. These are being done because AT&T backlogged a large amount of stock in their warehouse so they can later ship it to the stores with pre-paid sales instead of trying to second-guess demand. Once I am in the AT&T store and almost ready to pay for my phones I'm told that they don't take cash either.
I head to the bank and deposit the cash, luckliy they still accept it. After some time for venting I head to a store where I know one of the salesmen and know he can tell a cell phone from a hole in the ground. He has no real problems with ordering but by the time we get the paperwork done, the warehouse is now out of black. He asks if I'm set on "Vader" or want to order two "Stormtroopers" (white) instead. I finally agree and he gets them marked for expedited shipping. Fingers crossed I leave the store with little more than a few slips of paper and a hopefullness that they will arrive soon.
Well the iPhone3G was pretty cool when I played with it in the store at least...
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