Went to Bullring on 24th. I live in Coventry, so took the 6.50am train to New Street. I got unlucky because the train got delayed by about half an hour, even had to change at Birmingham International. I would have gotten on an earlier 6.29am train but I missed that because the ticket machine froze on me while I was purchasing my ticket!
Got to the store at 7.50am and was amazed when I saw the huge queue. I joined the queue for the unreserved line and I was standing just behind the big bull outside Bullring. If I had to guess, there were probably more than a hundred people in front of me.
The staff were nice and friendly, they answered questions and handed out water for us. One Apple Staff said to us that someone would come along with a counter to determine where the cut-off point for the unreserved line would be.
It so happened that the cut-off point would be about 10 people in front of me. This was after an hour of waiting. The Apple Staff then said to us that it would be unlikely that we would be getting an iPhone 4 that day, so they would put us on a priority list, and we would be notified as soon as they receive stock. Also, that this would be the best/earliest way to get hold of an iPhone 4.
I was taken into the store and filled out an online form to notify me by e-mail when the iPhone 4 was available (at this point, there were probably another 30 people behind me in the queue, and more arriving slowly). The phone would then be held for 24hours for me to pickup. Before leaving, I got to hold the iPhone 4 and played around with it, which was nice.
Overall, it was a quite nice experience, despite leaving Bullring empty handed. Got to talking with a couple of queuers as well. From what I heard, the queue was still so long at 6pm. In some sense, was kind of glad because I knew that I would have had to queue for such a long time before I would have been served.
As for stock availability, the Apple Rep said that based on the online store, 14th July would be a good bet as to when the iPhones would come back in store. Although another Apple Rep tried to be more comforting by saying "I know we say 2-3 weeks, but you never know it would be here by next week". He also said that while reserved phones which weren't picked up will go into the normal stock, he didn't think it was likely that someone wouldn't pick up their reservation. Anyway, I hear that they will keep the reserved phones until Sunday (not sure if this is true) because there were just too many people to process.
It's a bit long, but wanted to tell my story. For now, I'm just waiting for that e-mail to tell me to pick up the iPhone. Hope it's not too long from now.
