Just heard the (incredible) reason why this has all happened from local store. Apparently the CPW website can't manage stock in real time (which I find surprising because I could get an ecommerce site working by this time tomorrow which could manage stock and I'm not a web designer). They literally just have to keep it processing orders Anyway, what happened was that the stores (all 750+ of them) opened on Friday morning and started allocating stock to people walking through the door. Bearing in mind that my local branch only had 1 16GB and 6 8GB, there were plenty of people all over the country taking them up on this. At the same time, in one of the worst retail decisions ever made, they decided to open the flood gates online, thus creating thousands of orders for phones which had already been allocated to customers who had ordered and paid in stores. Meltdown followed, and it would now seem that they are indescriminately filling orders as new stock dribbles in.
Bearing in mind that I was first in the queue at my CPW, the 1 16GB had already been promised to someone else and I was offered a choice of an 8GB there and then or a 16GB one by supposed next day delivery, you can probably imagine that I'm pretty hacked off that (like many others), I've been told that they don't really know when I'll get it, but it'll probably be by next Friday, which will be 13 days after it was promised.
I'm really most annoyed with Apple over this. I worked out the other day that I've spent around £5,000 over the years on their stuff. For the crime of being a loyal enough customer to have bought the first iPhone and not unlocked it, I have been rewarded by being denied apparently the two most strightforward purchasing options (i.e an early order on the Monday on the CPW site or queuing at an Apple store). I wonder how many of those people who've got their phones from the retail stores could even switch a Mac on? Thanks, Steve.