iPhone 3G Launch Fiasco

Monday was a bad day for O2 and Apple in the Uk as no sooner than the iPhone 3G launch site went up, it all came crashing down in a big heap.

I considered myself one of the fortunate ones as I was sitting at my mac when the email from O2 arrived in my inbox with a link to logon an snag a new iPhone.

So I clicked the link and was whisked away to a web page where I was able to order a new iPhone (16GB black). I duly handed over my credit card details for the phone and my bank details for the new contract and received a confirmed order number.

Job done!

The next few hours, twitter was ablaze with tweets from frustrated current iphone users who were not having such an easy time. The site was down most of the time, pages did not load, upgrade codes were not working...

Upgrade codes? What upgrade codes?

My earlier email said nothing about upgrade codes?

I bit of digging and it becomes apparent that O2 had sent me a link for a new iPhone and not an upgrade.

I'd bought a second iPhone as a new customer ....D'oh!

By this time, the 02 website was declaring that all stock had gone despite the site being down all morning.

Never fear, I thought, I'll get those nice customer service people at O2 to change my confirmed order to an upgrade. Shouldn't be too difficult.

Email was duly dispatched and at 10:30pm(!) on the Monday night I get a reply from O2 which basically said (my words not theirs):

Don't worry about duplicating your contract as we've cancelled your on-line order dummy. The pre-orders were for new customers only.

Join the queue with the rest of the existing iPhone users on Friday and if you're lucky, you might get a phone but there's only a slim change as we won't have much stock.

So long and thanks for all the fish

O2 Customer Support

Great!

The Apple stores still aren't saying if they will be selling the iPhone on Friday, and I'm hearing via Twitter that upgrades are only available online. I phoned my local O2 store and they say there will be upgrades available in store on Friday morning,

You know, I'll probably still get a new iPhone as I really need the 3G here in the UK as Edge coverage is so poor but as for waiting in line on Friday morning, I'm not too sure. The way I feel at the moment, I might just leave it a couple of weeks.

Poor, poor show....

Then again, I might not!