How cross am I at O2 and Carphone Warehouse? Very.

by Suw on July 11, 2008

I’m pretty sure that there isn’t anyone in the country who doesn’t know that the iPhone 3G went on sale this morning. I know a few people who have managed to order one, but for me, no such luck. And as far as I can tell, it really is down to whether Lady Luck was smiling on you earlier this week that determined whether or not you got to even see the iPhone order page, let along actually get the damn thing to work.

Yes, unprecedented demand. We know that. Indeed, O2 and CPW knew that too, given that you could sign up for an alert and 200k people did so. Did that not give them an idea that things could get a bit hectic? Clearly, it didn’t give them enough of a clue. Maybe I should pop round and insert one by means of a good thumping with a cluebat.

I was in Prague at a conference, and I couldn’t spend enough time online to get the damn shop to work. There was much talk on Twitter about it, with many of my friends having the same problem, although a lucky few managed to get an order in.

Today, I could have got up really early and camped out in front of CPW in Holloway waiting for it to open at 8:02. I’ve had a long couple of weeks, though and to be honest, I’m feeling iPhone Malaise – a sense that it would be futile to try and get hold of an iPhone, so why bother?

And what have O2 and CPW done to help customers who couldn’t order online or get to a store in time today? Well, precious little. CPW is providing iPhones for sale online only to customers who buy new contracts, so those of us upgrading have to wait.

iPhone 3G is currently available as a new subscription only. Please come back or call us on Friday 11 July to upgrade.

Oh, thanks for rewarding my loyalty, way to go CPW. Oh, and by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, it is Friday 11 July today. Morons.

The O2 website has a lot of excuses but precious little actual information on it. So what do I do now? Is there a waiting list? Any hint as to when we’re going to get a second chance to get an iPhone? Any fricken information at all? Nope, nada. I can’t find a damn thing.

I have to say that O2/CPW’s management of this has been completely incompetent. It’s been a total debacle from the moment the online shops opened. And no, O2, grovelling apologies by text won’t help. Come up with some sort of waiting list or pre-order system so that we can at least bloody register for an iPhone when one becomes available. Saying that new deliveries will happen weekly isn’t much help – you expect me to queue up each week just in case? Come on, the internet is really good at doing things like taking pre-orders, so just let me register for an upgrade, notify me when my turn comes, and let me get on with my life.

It just should not be this difficult.

James Heaver July 11, 2008 at 3:03 pm

Suw,
Their corporate account handling has been just as bad (and by corporate I mean >200, not just business).

Despite registering our interest and promising to contact us back, they never did. Their own sales representitives seem to know even LESS than they’re publishing on their website. They’ve given us wrong pricing, wrong dates and the only reliable thing they’ve been able to tell us is that they “don’t know yet”.

Ho hum, won’t matter though, I’ll still buy one from them.

Suw July 11, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Yeah, and it’s been worse for people who are upgrading their iPhone to 2.0 – many have been bricked because the iTunes servers have been pounded to death:

http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2008/7/11/So-far-iPhone-20-is-DOA

It really has been handled dreadfully.

Cynthia Genato July 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm

because the iTunes servers have been pounded to death

Oh, tell me about it! I was just trying to upgrade iTunes – I have no ambitions for an iPhone, at the price it’s going to sell when it’s released in the Philippines – and it took me *two days* just to get that software upgrade done.

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