Very Little faith in this company
Long time lurker on this thread, first time poster.
I ordered a 32GB in black on 9/29. I couldn't pre-order though I'm chomping at the bit as much as anyone who did (Still using an iP4). My upgrade date was initially 11/1 and I basically griped and moaned and threatened to go to Verizon until AT&T pushed it up to 10/1. I figured I was a long time customer who hadn't upgraded early ever before and I was asking for one lousy month so I thought it was reasonable to ask this favor and they finally granted it with a note on my account at AT&T stating I could upgrade right away on 9/29. If they didn't want another 2 year contract over one lousy month then I was prepared to walk and I said as much.
I wanted to give a little insight into just one step of this ordering process we're all going through in order to illustrate how truly jacked up this company is that we're all dealing with.
When ordering, I would have wanted to go through Apple but given the circumstances of my upgrade eligibility I couldn't because apple wouldn't be able to look up my "note". So I had to order through AT&T. I did so on Saturday 9/29 and they said I should receive Terms and Conditions within an hour. I didn't but I figured I'd have it the next day. I didn't. I looked in spam, nothing. I called customer service the first time and they "re-sent" it to my e-mail. Nothing for another hour. I called again, they transferred me to the automated phone line where you can accept terms and conditions, it said there was nothing for me to accept, that my phone was activated, and to have a nice day. I assumed the auto-lady meant the phone in my hand and called a third time and explained what happened. The guy assumed I was a moron and said he would conference me in to the automated acceptance line and hit the buttons for me, he did, same result, "nothing to accept, your phone is activated have a nice day". He and the auto line promptly hung up on me. I called again and a guy gave me the website address to accept terms and conditions, it was under construction during the call. I was assured repeatedly this would be the end of it. I got the site up, nothing to accept on it. No pending order, nothing. I called again and the automated line to get to customer service went SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE in my ear and hung up on me. I called again and asked for a supervisor and told this whole story, they got me one. He looked into my account and pulled another supervisor over while keeping me on hold for 20 minutes to figure out what was going on. My order had been held and from what I understand I would get terms and conditions a little later because my account had been flagged for a lot of foreign activity in my area (Madison, Wisconsin) and a special team had to review my order before it could be processed and that team didn't work on weekends. I groaned, he said there was nothing they could do, I hung up.
My order went through on 9/30, Sunday, anyway, and I got the email for T&C acceptance, which was in my favor based on what I had been told and probably due to the efforts after the call of this supervisor but still, complete incompetence. Apparently the terrorist review team popped in after Sunday brunch to review my order.
My point is this is the kind of thing that can happen with this company when simply PLACING THE ORDER. It's no wonder you can come off BO and wait a week, every step for these people is a mine-field. And, if you call you get nothing but canned copy/paste responses to questions, completely unreasonable processes, and nobody having any idea what's going on or how to help you. I am not surprised that things aren't first come first serve at all based on my experience with them and I'm picturing our orders in a big pile of paper with a guy fishing one out at a time and seeing if he has a phone to fill it and if not throwing the order back in the pile. Literally if it was this on a large scale I would not be a bit surprised.
So, yeah, resign yourself to waiting, don't about other people's orders, just sit back and laugh at the idiocy. I went from "No. 11/1 upgrade, no exceptions", to "Come on in, place your order", to "You ordered something?" to "We don't know how to complete your order." to "We can't complete your order because you're a terrorist." and finally to, "You'll have your phone around your original 11/1 upgrade date." It's one big joke with these people. Laugh, everybody. Laugh!
