Figured I'd get my story into the universe and vent once again about how ridiculous it is to have carriers involved in any of this process when paying full price outright for an iPhone directly from Apple.
Refreshed the app over and over, didn't finally let me in until around 3:07am Eastern. Already had the model I wanted favorited and ready to go (iPhone X Silver 256GB on Verizon paid in full). But then I ran into the "carrier verification" BS even though I was paying full price directly to Apple. I put in the phone/zip/SSN#, then was prompted for my Verizon PIN. I put in what I remembered it being, but it kept failing. I assumed the issue was Verizon's verification servers being overwhelmed. I tried on the website instead (took a while for that to come up). After repeating the same process and failing again, I then vaguely remembered I changed my Verizon PIN back in July when it was announced that they had been compromised. By time I got the correct PIN in and my order completed it was about 3:15am and the shipping had already slipped to 2-3 weeks. Ultimately my fault, sure I accept my slip in memory at 3 in the morning. Problem is, it should never have been a problem because having the carrier involved in this process at all is completely unnecessary. And my normal PIN would've been fine if they hadn't been compromised. /end rant.
That said, it could've been worse, and I'm hoping that as with other launches in the past (such as Apple Watch S0 that said I wouldn't get it for several weeks but it still delivered day one) the 2-3 week quota is being over cautious and it will still come sooner.
)
