so let me explain what just happened to me. I got fed up watching my phone sit in "back order" limbo so I called the Apple store down the street and was told they had plenty of iPhones in stock. Sales guy said they had just received more stock and had many available.
I called AT&T and asked them to cancel my order. They gave me the runaround - it "could not be canceled because it was in progress, and the phone would arrive around 10/14". I told them I was tired of being given excuses, I had pre-ordered very early and was given a 9/21 delivery confirmation. The order needed to be canceled. I knew other people had done it, and it needed to be canceled for me as well. After arguing with the CSR for a while he was able to cancel the order for me. Before I canceled I asked him repeatedly if my eligibility would go back to how it was BEFORE i pre-ordered. He swore it would. I must have asked him 3 or 4 times. repeatedly. I was tempted to ask him to send me an email, something in writing that assured me my eligibility would reset. He assured me I had nothing to worry about (i'm an idiot at this point for trusting anything ATT is telling me)
10 minutes later. Order canceled. Thank god. Off to Apple!
I pull up to the Apple store - SURPRISE!! My eligibility did not reset and I am no longer eligible for the iPhone 5 - in fact, I am not available for an upgrade until 2014! I must buy the phone at full price.
At this point, I am really ready to tell ATT to go to hell. I call them back and the CSR tells me I need to wait 72 hours for the eligibility to "reset" and even then they cannot guarantee it will reset for me.
I was so angry I told the CSR I was going to cancel my service after being a loyal customer for 10 years. She went to find me a "manager". Manager comes back, apologizes profusely for all my troubles and then tells me it will take 72 hours for the eligibility to reset and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING he can do. He says it is their systems fault and he cannot override it.
I ripped into this man. I mean, I'm embarrassed to admit how angry I got with him. Worst part is, I'm a really nice guy and I hate treating people poorly - but I was a HUGE ****** to this poor manager. I let him have it.
I told him to cancel my service. He said they did not want to lose my business after 10 years. I said I did not care, I was done with ATT. I was standing in the Apple store and was going to switch to Verizon. Manager begs me to please give him 5 minutes. He puts me on hold.
2 minutes later he comes back - PROBLEM RESOLVED. Shocking!! My eligibility has MAGICALLY been reset. But I thought it was a system error and there was nothing he could do??? Well surprise surprise everything is magically fixed. I thank him (begrudgingly, since what I really want to do is tell him to go to hell).
I walk back into Apple, which by the way, had many iPhones in stock. They had cards in their hands that they were handing out to customers - each card represented an iphone in stock - and they had TONS of cards. I would guess over a hundred. No problems with inventory at all. 10 minutes later, walked out with my new iPhone 5.
you know what made me the angriest? After all the yelling, all the headaches, all the tension - the ATT manager on the phone tried to sell me a Uverse bundle before he hung up. I think I said something along the lines of "if you seriously try and sell me Uverse right now, I'm going to lose my **** on you"
Image
