Apple Stores Experiencing 'Global' Issue With iPhone and Apple Watch Reservation Pickups

[cast128]

Which CO store were you at? We were at Aspen Grove. There wasn’t a line but they didn’t have most of what people were looking for.

Yeah stock today at Aspen Grove wasn’t what it usually is....pretty slim pickings for walk in customers. I also stopped by Target early this afternoon to pick up a few groceries and one of the employees stated they had nothing this morning and had to break it to the 30 or so people out front. They were hoping the phones would get there later today, but didn’t expect any watches today. He said none of the stores in the distric (Denver area) had received any watches for launch day.

 

[jbachandouris]

I had an 8:30 reservation, but the phone wasn't available until 12:30 due to UPS. Didn't get to the store until around 4:30.

Phone setup was painless. Watch setup less so. Had to unpair it twice.

 

[ctdonath]

Still showing "The package is at the clearing agency awaiting final release" in China.
Delivery today was assured this morning.

 

[bruinsrme]

We're hearing from a number of readers over the past hour or so that Apple's retail stores are having problems completing in-store reservation pickups for the new iPhone and Apple Watch models. Multiple customers have been told there is a "global" issue affecting Apple's systems and we're hearing there are some long lines building up as customers wait for the issues to be resolved.

Pickup line at Manhattan Village store in Manhattan Beach, California​

Some customers have reportedly been told to cancel their existing reservations and make walk-in purchases from available stock, while others are simply being told to wait things out while staff members discuss how to handle the situation.

We'll update this post if we hear more about the situation, but if you have an upcoming pickup window, you might want to be prepared for some delays.

Update: Apple's systems appear to be coming back online and reservation pickups are now being processed. There is, however, still a backlog of customers to work through.

Article Link: Apple Stores Experiencing 'Global' Issue With iPhone and Apple Watch Reservation Pickups

What jackass would tell them to cancel a reserved product for walk-in stock?

If the system was down how could they cancel?

 

[AppleFan91]

Logistically speaking, this has been a complete failure thus far. Between UPS screwing waaay up yesterday, to Apple delaying orders this morning (possibly UPS) to this issue now....it has to be one of the worst launches yet. Hopefully they get it all sorted quick and get devices to people and rectify this before next year.

 

[AFDoc]

Standing here in Houston waiting for Apple to get their **** together. I can’t believe that they could drop the ball this badly. Heads need to roll for this.

Lol you’ll certainly be a-ok.
[doublepost=1537591345][/doublepost]

What’s the appeal to in store pickup?

No waiting for delivery..... from check in to out the door was 7 minutes for me.... picked up Penera for lunch for the wife and I and home.....

 

[pdaholic]

Deleted

 

[cwanja]

Has anyone been able to just walk into their local store and pick up a new Series 4? I was told yesterday that you needed to reserve before walking in.

Yep. Had no issue

 

[Mark Booth]

This evening, I'm now having trouble with SIRI. She's been having difficulty connecting to Apple's servers. Several SIRI requests were just dropped (SIRI gave up) after she couldn't connect. I first noticed it about 8:15pm Pacific and it was still an issue around 9:30pm Pacific. I don't know if it's been working better since (haven't tried).

Mark

 

[Protocol41]

Supposed to get phone today via UPS.
Tracking was just updated:
Saturday delivery has been requested. / Delivery will be rescheduled for Saturday.

Update:
After all that the delivery is scheduled for Monday.

 

[5105973]

Well my Max that I ordered is still in China. But I was able to walk into the store and get one when my husband went to pick up his. The system was slow but we managed to get through fast enough to get to our evening engagement. I did not even know there had been a problem. There was just a short line to wait in by the time our appointment had rolled around.

 

[psblake]

We're hearing from a number of readers over the past hour or so that Apple's retail stores are having problems completing in-store reservation pickups for the new iPhone and Apple Watch models. Multiple customers have been told there is a "global" issue affecting Apple's systems and we're hearing there are some long lines building up as customers wait for the issues to be resolved.

Pickup line at Manhattan Village store in Manhattan Beach, California​

Some customers have reportedly been told to cancel their existing reservations and make walk-in purchases from available stock, while others are simply being told to wait things out while staff members discuss how to handle the situation.

We'll update this post if we hear more about the situation, but if you have an upcoming pickup window, you might want to be prepared for some delays.

Update: Apple's systems appear to be coming back online and reservation pickups are now being processed. There is, however, still a backlog of customers to work through.

Article Link: Apple Stores Experiencing 'Global' Issue With iPhone and Apple Watch Reservation Pickups

Walked into Best Buy no preorder and bought an XS 256 unlocked. I Never buy from Apple.

 

[Macaholic868]

Every year we see iPhone launch day delays that lead to long lines for one reason or another. There are one of two actual reasons why lines seem to form every year. Either they are deliberately shortening supply for the launch day to produce the lines that then create a feedback loop making people who want one in more of a frenzy to get one or they are trying to very closely align supply with expected demand and have decided to error on the conservative side.

If I had my bet I’d go with the latter. I think that they are trying to align supply with expected demand and are erroring on the conservative side because they know that under supply and the longer lines to purchase their new phones are better optics than a gluttney of supply sitting on store shelves with buyers able to walk in and out quickly with whatever they want. Going that route is a win / win for them.

It’s pretty rare they launch a product like the HomePod where they overestimate demand and have too much supply sitting on store shelves.

 

[SwiftcastFlare]

It was only down for about 2 hours at best and people still got their phones at the end of the day. RELAX.

 

[sigsegv]

As (bad) luck would have it, I ordered for in-store pick up for the first time ever. I'm flying Saturday 9/22 and will be gone for a few weeks so I figured I would not chance a missed home delivery.

What a bad idea that was.

Oddly, this outage was only affecting those people that had pre-ordered and pre-paid. In-store purchases were still working fine.

There were several of us in the store who had prepaid the full price for unlocked phones (cards were charged early this week), our phones were in the store, yet the staff said we could not have them.

Because in-store payments were working, we all offered to pay again and cancel the original transaction, but the staff told us we would need to reserve a device for that, and there were none available to reserve. This in spite of the fact that we had reserved PAID phones in the store with our names on them.

Overall I've never seen such ineptitude in handling a systems failure (except maybe from a slacker in a convenience store or supermarket).

To top it all off the staff said they could not promise our pre-paid phones would still be there in the morning if we could not collect before 7pm today 9/21. Apparently the devices would be forfeited if we had to go back to work and try again tomorrow.

To sum it up:
1. We had all paid for our phones in full.
2. They were SIM-free, unlocked. Not needing carrier activation.
3. The phones were there.
4. We had receipts and ID.
5. The staff were just flailing their arms because their iDevices were doing the spinner/beachball thing.

I now feel stupid for owning an iPhone. I've lost count of how many over the past decade. Apple seems to be the company of airheads.

 

[djkinetic]

As (bad) luck would have it, I ordered for in-store pick up for the first time ever. I'm flying Saturday 9/22 and will be gone for a few weeks so I figured I would not chance a missed home delivery.

What a bad idea that was.

Oddly, this outage was only affecting those people that had pre-ordered and pre-paid. In-store purchases were still working fine.

There were several of us in the store who had prepaid the full price for unlocked phones (cards were charged early this week), our phones were in the store, yet the staff said we could not have them.

Because in-store payments were working, we all offered to pay again and cancel the original transaction, but the staff told us we would need to reserve a device for that, and there were none available to reserve. This in spite of the fact that we had reserved PAID phones in the store with our names on them.

Overall I've never seen such ineptitude in handling a systems failure (except maybe from a slacker in a convenience store or supermarket).

To top it all off the staff said they could not promise our pre-paid phones would still be there in the morning if we could not collect before 7pm today 9/21. Apparently the devices would be forfeited if we had to go back to work and try again tomorrow.

To sum it up:
1. We had all paid for our phones in full.
2. They were SIM-free, unlocked. Not needing carrier activation.
3. The phones were there.
4. We had receipts and ID.
5. The staff were just flailing their arms because their iDevices were doing the spinner/beachball thing.

I now feel stupid for owning an iPhone. I've lost count of how many over the past decade. Apple seems to be the company of airheads.

Wow I'd be absolutely livid...to be told something I paid for and it's legally mine could possibly be given to someone else the next day due to a system glitch...I'd have raised hell with the managers and customer service to be told that is absolutely unacceptable.

 

[scubadiver84]

Was supposed to get my Phone delivered today. UPS Domestic said it was because of customs delays, but after further digging, found out from UPS International that it was because they didn't have enough capacity to get all the phones out of Korea quick enough which is why my phone sat there for 27 hours. Despite not being delivered on time, UPS Domestic said it was not delayed and would be delivered on time on Monday. They couldn't explain how not delivering it as scheduled today wasn't a delay. Just got notification from UPS that my shipment will now deliver on Tuesday. What kind of games is UPS playing?

 

[sigsegv]

Wow I'd be absolutely livid...to be told something I paid for and it's legally mine could possibly be given to someone else the next day due to a system glitch...I'd have raised hell with the managers and customer service to be told that is absolutely unacceptable.

Indeed. Many of us were incredulous that the staff were so unhelpful and unimaginative.

Nobody on staff had the wherewithal to stand up and say "If you have pre-ordered but can't wait here all day, see me and I'll take down your details and give you my business card. We will hold your devices until you can arrange a time to come back and collect."

Ultimately this was resolved later in the day (at least for me), but there were others there who had arranged their work day to be able to front up during their collection time window.

At the time the staff position was basically: "We can't tell you when the system will be restored. We have no idea and no control over that. Oh, and by the way, we can only hold your reservations until 7pm today and then they will be cancelled."

 

[rainafterthesun]

45 minute wait to pick up Apple Watch 4.

Seriously, what's the point of an appointment window?

Worse though — at The Grove store, they put Watch and iPhone pickups in the same line. An iPhone takes time to activate. The Watch is literally a box that you hand me and I leave.

But no.

So dumb. Especially for one of the world's smartest companies.

The retail experience has really declined in recent years, in my experience anyway.

I actually picked up my phone between the window quotes 830-900am and left with my phone activated in a minute...I didn’t stick around to restore iPhone or open the box—WiFi is faster at my office anyways.

 

[SwiftcastFlare]

As (bad) luck would have it, I ordered for in-store pick up for the first time ever. I'm flying Saturday 9/22 and will be gone for a few weeks so I figured I would not chance a missed home delivery.

What a bad idea that was.

Oddly, this outage was only affecting those people that had pre-ordered and pre-paid. In-store purchases were still working fine.

There were several of us in the store who had prepaid the full price for unlocked phones (cards were charged early this week), our phones were in the store, yet the staff said we could not have them.

Because in-store payments were working, we all offered to pay again and cancel the original transaction, but the staff told us we would need to reserve a device for that, and there were none available to reserve. This in spite of the fact that we had reserved PAID phones in the store with our names on them.

Overall I've never seen such ineptitude in handling a systems failure (except maybe from a slacker in a convenience store or supermarket).

To top it all off the staff said they could not promise our pre-paid phones would still be there in the morning if we could not collect before 7pm today 9/21. Apparently the devices would be forfeited if we had to go back to work and try again tomorrow.

To sum it up:
1. We had all paid for our phones in full.
2. They were SIM-free, unlocked. Not needing carrier activation.
3. The phones were there.
4. We had receipts and ID.
5. The staff were just flailing their arms because their iDevices were doing the spinner/beachball thing.

I now feel stupid for owning an iPhone. I've lost count of how many over the past decade. Apple seems to be the company of airheads.

They DEFINITELY shouldn't have told you that your devices would be forfeited, b/c spreading misinformation leads to problems and unneeded anger.

IIRC, upaid reservations are held for a week, paid reservations fall under the same ruleset as a regular online order and have 30 days. Also taking into account the system downtime, they should be accommodating regardless.

It understandably sucks for everyone involved, however, I'm certain Apple didn't expect it to go down either, and they worked tirelessly to keep us updated at the store I was at. Sorry you had such a poor experience.

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

After 3.5 hours Verizon got my phone activated. As a consolation prize, they're sending me a 'wifi mini cell' to help with my crappy at-home reception, for free. Although with wifi calling I am not sure why this is even needed?

 

[dwright1974]

Currently in a queue at the Apple Reading store for my IUP appointment.

Everything still down. Looks like I can’t do it. They have everyone in a queue to speak to a manager.

Obviously stuff happens but they could let people know before they set off to a store.

 

[Tech198]

Standing here in Houston waiting for Apple to get their **** together. I can’t believe that they could drop the ball this badly. Heads need to roll for this.

No system can be 100% up... This is the internet we're dealing with here.. it ain't a 1-man ship

"It worked in the past, so why would we need to check it now" right ? No one re-checks stuff that previous didn't have issues with..... Even I don't, unless something goes wrong, which its toolate if that happens

Currently in a queue at the Apple Reading store for my IUP appointment.

Everything still down. Looks like I can’t do it. They have everyone in a queue to speak to a manager.

Obviously stuff happens but they could let people know before they set off to a store.

You mean spam users ? It would be classified as spam i guess sending that many emails to all those people who reserved.


I thought people liked waiting at the Apple store

 

[cwhite02]

Currently in a queue at the Apple Reading store for my IUP appointment.

Everything still down. Looks like I can’t do it. They have everyone in a queue to speak to a manager.

Obviously stuff happens but they could let people know before they set off to a store.

I had purchased my phone and watch for pickup, the system was down last night in Regent's street. They ended up cancelling my order and sorting the phone out. They worked out there was only one SS watch left, so they did that on a new order for me as well. Was in there for well over an hour but got my max and watch in the end!

Someone will be getting their butt kicked for system issues like this on launch day, bad customer PR if they've purchased things and can't get their order as the system is down!

 

[phoni]

Logistically speaking, this has been a complete failure thus far. Between UPS screwing waaay up yesterday, to Apple delaying orders this morning (possibly UPS) to this issue now....it has to be one of the worst launches yet. Hopefully they get it all sorted quick and get devices to people and rectify this before next year.

Isn't Mr. Cook supposed to be the 'master' transport logician ?