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For everyone planning to pre order online...

RafaelT

RafaelT

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 9, 2010
1,169
15
NM
This is just a little reminder for everyone who is planning to pre order online when it becomes abailable.

There is a good chance that once again there will be issues with the online stores (Apple, AT&T, etc). You can do the following things now so that you are not struggling to do them on launch day. That way all you will have to worry about is checking out with the phone and not updating info.

Update your credit card info on the Apple site and your carriers website. If one of the sites is having issues you may have to try and use the other.

Update your shipping address. In some cases it may need to match the billing address so if possible use the same address for both to ensure that there will be no issues with the order being flagged for review.

If you plan on using the Apple site make sure your shipping address matches the one on your carriers site. Some people had issues last year if they did not match.

Once you get an order submitted on one of the sites do not try to get an order in on another for "backup" (EX: AT&T & Apple). This MIGHT result in both of your orders being cancelled.

If you plan on using the Apple site you should enable "Fast Purchase" to speed up the process.

If you use AT&T (and possibly other carriers) and get any kind of company discounts, you may need to order through your carriers site and not Apple.

Do not freak out if you do not get an email confirmation right away. As long as the order looked like it went through ok when you checked out you should be ok.

I also highly recommend you check your upgrade eligibility through the Apple store. The link can be found on the following page.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone

If you can successfully complete the eligibility check then you should be good to go!

If anyone else has anything to add please post it!
 
Last edited:
RafaelT said:
This is just a little reminder for everyone who is planning to pre order online.

There is a good chance that once again there will be issues with the online stores (Apple, AT&T, etc). You can do the following things now so that you are not struggling to do them on launch day. That way all you will have to worry about is checking out with the phone and not updating info.

Update your credit card info on the Apple site and your carriers website. If one of the sites is having issues you may have to try and use the other.

Update your shipping address. In some cases it may need to match the billing address so if possible use the same address for both to ensure that there will be no issues with the order being flagged for review.

If you plan on using the Apple site make sure your shipping address matches the one on your carriers site. Some people had issues last year if they did not match.

Once you get an order submitted on one of the sites do not try to get an order in on another for "backup" (EX: AT&T & Apple). This MIGHT result in both of your orders being cancelled.

Do not freak out if you do not get an email confirmation right away. As long as the order looked like it went through ok when you checked out you should be ok.

If anyone else has anything to add please post it!
Click to expand...

+1 To you for the helpful advice.

I suggest you mention when pre-ordering usually starts being available, though.
 
Also make sure you enable the "Fast Purchase" option so you need only hit the "BUY" button and you are done. The least amount of time you spend on the sever the better chance you got.
 
Switching carriers

Any advice if one is switching carriers? Say from AT&T to Verizon? Is the best option simply to order from Apple, or do you need to activate service with Verizon first? Thanks for any advice.
 
Correct me if I am wrong, but....

I also remember that if you get a company discount on your service, you cannot buy the phone from Apple. HAD to go through ATT. This happened to me twice (and I drove 60 miles each way! - the first time). I even had the phone IN HAND and they said I couldnt purchase it.

Hopefully things have changed.
 
Thanks guys, I updated the post to reflect that info.

huxbnw said:
Any advice if one is switching carriers? Say from AT&T to Verizon? Is the best option simply to order from Apple, or do you need to activate service with Verizon first? Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

Are you planning on porting your number? I know that you can use the Apple site to set up new service... I don't know if it handles porting, maybe someone who tried that last year can give you some more info.

woodekm, I believe you are correct. I will add that to the main post until we hear otherwise!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_10 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E600 Safari/6533.18.5)

Do they ever have in store pre ordering?
 
woodekm said:
Correct me if I am wrong, but....

I also remember that if you get a company discount on your service, you cannot buy the phone from Apple. HAD to go through ATT. This happened to me twice (and I drove 60 miles each way! - the first time). I even had the phone IN HAND and they said I couldnt purchase it.

Hopefully things have changed.
Click to expand...

I did not have to do this when I got the 3GS - went to the Apple store for both mine and my wife's. Upgrading from plain old phone to the data plan - had no problem w/ my discount. This was in July and September, 2009.
 
Since I work at an office I was planning on pre-ordering one for me and one for my wife (she is not near a computer all day) when it comes available. Am I going to be able to order 2 iPhones in one transaction or do you think I should just create a separate account with her name/info and order the two separately?

Also, my wife does not have an apple account so am I better off ordering both from att?

Thanks
 
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How to reduce your chances of getting the new iPhone pre-order online.

Write a guide on how to increase your chances of getting an iPhone pre-order online.
 
charliecc said:
How to reduce your chances of getting the new iPhone pre-order online.

Write a guide on how to increase your chances of getting an iPhone pre-order online.
Click to expand...

Pre-ordering has always worked perfectly for me and thousands of others.:p

Sounds like YOU had a problem.
 
This might be a dumb question but, what do you mean by all the information matching on my carriers site? I have AT&T but, I can't access my account online because it's a business account. Am I going to run into problems pre ordering from apple's website because of this? I went to my local AT&T store yesterday to make sure all of my information was correct & I had an upgrade. But I'm curious to see if I'll encounter problems.
 
Excellent little guide, I totally forgot I had turned the quick buy off, so thanks for the tip :)

Just hope Vodafone UK sell the without contract, but I don't mind if they are locked so I have more of a chance to get one
 
Thanks for the tips...I hope I can use them on a new iPhone 5!

Also, Verizon Wireless is down and has been down all morning when you try and sign into your account! I wasn't able to check anything...crazy!
 
woodekm said:
Correct me if I am wrong, but....

I also remember that if you get a company discount on your service, you cannot buy the phone from Apple. HAD to go through ATT. This happened to me twice (and I drove 60 miles each way! - the first time). I even had the phone IN HAND and they said I couldnt purchase it.

Hopefully things have changed.
Click to expand...

I have a FAN discount myself but purchased my phone from Apple with no problems. They check your upgrade eligibility and that's it. But I did go instore... Perhaps it was different online?
 
sydia21 said:
I have a FAN discount myself but purchased my phone from Apple with no problems. They check your upgrade eligibility and that's it. But I did go instore... Perhaps it was different online?
Click to expand...

My online iPhone4 ordering experience was a debacle, caused by the ATT website since the Apple site needed to access it. Eventually visited an ATT store, where their internal system was also down.
 
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Also, my business account with AT&T is not registered to be accessed online. I can only access it through the actual store.

Is this going to cause me problems when pre ordering through apple? I have all of my account information but Im just not setup for online use.

I talked to an AT&T rep yesterday & they said it won't cause any problems. But, I know for sure most of you know more about this than them.

Can anyone help?
 
NacSquared said:
This might be a dumb question but, what do you mean by all the information matching on my carriers site? I have AT&T but, I can't access my account online because it's a business account. Am I going to run into problems pre ordering from apple's website because of this? I went to my local AT&T store yesterday to make sure all of my information was correct & I had an upgrade. But I'm curious to see if I'll encounter problems.
Click to expand...

There were some reports last year of orders being cancelled when the shipping address did not match what AT&T had in their records. It was probably related to minimizing the chance of fraud. In your case since it is a business account it will probably be ok, but that is just a guess. Also I don't know if it happened to everyone.

As for not being able to access your account online... I don't know how that would effect your experience ordering from Apple.

Unfortunately this is just a general guide. There are so many different possible setups and issues that it can't be a definitive answer for everyone.
 
RafaelT said:
There were some reports last year of orders being cancelled when the shipping address did not match what AT&T had in their records. It was probably related to minimizing the chance of fraud. In your case since it is a business account it will probably be ok, but that is just a guess. Also I don't know if it happened to everyone.

As for not being able to access your account online... I don't know how that would effect your experience ordering from Apple.

Unfortunately this is just a general guide. There are so many different possible setups and issues that it can't be a definitive answer for everyone.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much, this answered my questions.

I was told by the AT&T rep that all I needed was my account info for them to verify my upgrade, swap the phones, etc.
 
I've never pre-ordered anything from Apple before. Will it be on the apple website? Probably homepage, right? Will it be available for pre-order straight away in all countries or just the US? I'm in Ireland
 
Even if you don't receive a confirmation email, check your credit card statement. If you were charged then most likely your order was placed properly.
 
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