brad garland

It’s last night at about 9:30p and I pull up Apple’s website to see what the availability would be for my Apple store at Willow Bend mall to have an iPhone 3G tomorrow. The website says it would be available in my flavor (white, 16GB) tomorrow so I began wondering what time I had to get there in the morning to be one of the first? They opened at 9am so what? 8:30a? 7am? 5am?!?

I decided on 7am and if the lines were too long then I’d just leave and go to my appointment early. Well, I rolled in at about 6:50a and only one car was in the parking lot and I ended up being number 3 in line. YAY! I had a book, magazine, and my current iPhone to keep me busy. The time went by really quickly. Everyone else waiting were really nice and we chatted each other up while we waited.

The store opened at 8am for those with Genius Bar problems or training and all was looking good that I’d be getting my iPhone 3G today when the store officially opened at 9am. That was until at 8:30a the store manager came out and looked up and down the line (up to about 50 at that point) and announced that despite what the website said they had not received any iPhones yet. WHAT?! She said the website said they were in stock because they had two iPhones on hold for others and it was a glitch in the system. This didn’t make people happy. Some were down right pissed. Come on, guys, what is this little girl going to be able to do about that? “Sorry for the trouble, free iPhones for everyone!” Negative.

She said what she could do is check with FedEx to see if she could get a better indication on when it would arrive today. After about 10 minutes on the phone, she came back and stated with confidence that some would come today no later than 12pm but she didn’t know what kind or how many.

12pm?!? I had a BIG appointment at 10am that I couldn’t miss so that wasn’t going to work. So after that realization I tucked my tail between my legs and headed to work. The only time wasted was my own and it was all ‘sleep time’ so not much lost in my book. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not trying that again. I will either wait until the phone is readily available anywhere or just order it from a AT&T store and go pick it up when it arrives. Fool me once, shame of you. Feel me twice, shame on me!

UPDATE: I walked into an AT&T store this evening, paid & ordered what I wanted, they will email when it arrives (10-21 days), done deal. 5 minutes tops.

UPDATE 2: Ordered it on Wednesday night, it’s Saturday morning and got this email from AT&T.

Looks like they maybe underpromising and hopefully over delivering!

UPDATE 3: Picked up my white 16GB iPhone on Monday, got it all setup and I’m rocking! My wife is loving her new/old iphone, too. Kudos to AT&T on under promising and over delivering.