at the end of the day whos fault is it? its not o2's, its not the carphone warehouse's, its not apple's...
- It's Apple's fault for trying to audaciously trying to release in 22 countries when they obviously didn't have the manufacturing capability to deliver. In fact, I think it's fairly likely this was on purpose to create scarcity, buzz and therefore more demand.
- It's Apple's fault for not building an adequate system and contingency plan -- technical or procedural -- to manage the high rate of activations, directly leading to inefficiencies and supply problems in store, leading to knock-on effects through the channel. Note, I'm not suggesting they buy massive amounts of extra capacity for this one weekend. I'm suggesting that they should have had procedures and systems in place to mitigate the load, through pre-registration in the preceding weeks; deposits on phones so they could be activated from home if necessary; distributed registration capability rather than centralised servers; NOT releasing the iPhone 2.0 upgrade on the same day; and so forth. The faster they can get people successfully in and out of the store, the better for them AND for us.
- It's Apple's fault for keeping the facts so tightly controlled that none of the parties involved seem to know how many or when the stock is going to arrive.
- It's Apple's fault for promising levels of 16GB units which then unexpectedly arrive as 8GB units, plus promising a store 10, and then delivering 5. This makes the disappointed customers switch gears and start ordering from websites, running round to other shops, and yes: ranting on the Intarweb. This just makes matters worse.
- It's O2's fault for massively underestimating demand, and launching a sales website that crashed within minutes.
- It's O2's fault for continuously moving the goalposts: promising existing customers that their pre-pre-pre-registrations would make them "the first in the world" to get an iPhone 3G.
- It's O2's fault for trying to supply existing customers free upgrades at the same time as enrol new customers, AND require extensive checks for those existing customers, rather than relying on the data they already have on the database. This caused more load on the activation systems as above.
- It's O2's fault for not managing expectations better in the first place: we can handle "Estimated Delivery Date: mid-August", as shown by Apple's frequent keynote announcements with shipping dates months into the future.
- It's O2's fault for not building a pre-ordering system and allowing pre-orders to occur weeks in advance, thereby getting a much better idea of supply and demand, thus allowing Apple to manage allocations better; spacing out credit checks over a longer period; collection and verification of customer data in advance.
- It's CPW's fault for proudly spouting a "guarantee" (in their words) that "In Stock" means in stock, right up until they acknowledge that they can't fulfil their current stock.
- It's CPW's fault for building a system -- again, technical and procedural -- that permits their staff to say things that aren't actually true, good intentions or not.
- It's CPW's fault for not preparing this adequately with City Link so the phones were pre-ordered and pre-collected and in City Link's system before Friday. In other words, having a efficient and fault-tolerant logistics solution in place.
- It's CPW's fault for not having an adequate stock system to accurately track stock, as I've been told that they're still trying to get their bearings with regards how many iPhones they actually have left.
- It's CPW's fault for having an alleged history (as I was told by Barclaycard Fraud Prevention) of fraudulent transactions. This means that Barclaycard block a high rate of unexpected CPW transactions, thereby fouling up the fulfilment process, and making it all run less smoothly for all, as stock gets repeatedly allocated and deallocated.
- It's CPW's fault for not being straightforward and up front on their website. Even now, there's nothing explaining any of the situation on their website. All of this information so far has come from people like me and the others on this forum sitting on hold for hours at a time.
- It's CPW's fault for not keeping delivering on their promise to keep me informed. I got a text message and an email on Thursday immediately after my order, but nothing since then. As I've said before, if I'd taken their word for it, I would have wasted all of Friday and Saturday waiting in, because I was told it was due to arrive.
It's admittedly our fault for believing this stuff, and getting upset about it now, but this demand was intentionally
engineered by Apple and O2. Apple are the masters at creating this demand, which is why people queue up for days (if not longer) outside Apple Retail stores, keynotes, and so forth. So, when it cocks up, they've only got themselves to blame when their devoted masses turn into rabid dogs.
There's no denying that this week has been a failure on many fronts: technical, logistical, marketing, customer communication, and economic as a lot of time and money from both the companies and the customers has been wasted.
If this had been done right, O2 and CPW would have pre-sold
all of their limited initial allocation well before Friday. There would be no question of whether there's one in the warehouse with my name on it: there just wouldn't be, because by the time I went to order it (Thursday), it should have said "Every single one has been accounted for and is on a City Link truck ready to be delivered on Friday. Sorry."
Also when phoning dont mention 'apple' or 'iphone' or there is a high chance you will get cut off.
I've been very courteous each time I've talked to them, and have often said things like, "I'm sorry if I'm being short with you... I know what pressure you guys are under", "I know this isn't your fault, and you're doing what you can for me", and so forth. Speaking to friends who've worked in jobs like that, many just don't care when customers say that. They just want to get you off the phone ASAP and make their call quota (if they have one)
On the other hand, cutting someone off (as happened to me yesterday when I lost my temper slightly and momentarily near the end of the call) is
incredibly rude. When that happens, I hope the call
is being monitored for training purposes.
I said you dont understand, i want a refund to my card now, he put me through to somebody else who refunded me straight away and the money is back on my card already (rang 30minutes ago).
Meanwhile, I was very patient and calm yesterday on the phone, and my credit card is still charged; my order still pending; the cancellation I phoned through unprocessed; and the email I sent to confirm cancellation, unanswered.
I'm now going to phone up for the
sixth time to verify again and try to push it though; then call Barclaycard to see if they can cancel the transaction from their end (unlikely); and then call Three to revoke the PAC number and issue a new one, if they're able to do that.
