So I pre-ordered Friday AM from the store and the order is sitting in back-ordered status. I spend an hour on with Premier & the store... 3 managers told me the same thing... and it's not good news.
1.) Pre-Orders are "low priority" - orders will be fulfilled for first 200K customers that made the cutoff friday 10/7, after that you are considered in the 3rd wave anywhere from 14-32 days.
2.) Based on iPhone4 last year, the priority is for in-store stock so the majority of iPhones are being made available in-store rather than pre-order, that's why so little stock is allocated to pre-orders.
The in-store rep then said that if you show up at the store to get a phone and you pre-order they won't let you have it, We would have to have canceled the pre-order first and had the upgrade flag removed from the account prior to 10/14 or they will turn you away.
So a big F-U from AT&T on this... pre-orders are given low priority? that's strait from 3 managers.