I used to think that it was 'wrong' to go buy wifi-only Mini's to use while you wait for your LTE to ship - thinking that was lame thing to do when you know you were going to return it.
But.....screw Apple. They act like a 3rd rate Amazon re-seller.
- Can't give you a straight answer on when you will receive a shipped product
- Establish a huge launch to deliver on Thanksgiving week when everyone is on vacation
- Can't tell you when they'll sell a product in-store.
- Upgrade people's shipping, only to later say "whoopsie, can't do that"
- Ship product FIRST to some who ordered way later than those of use who put in Mini orders minutes after they went on sale
- Inconsistent phone answers to queries, constantly.
So I won't hesitate for a one minute to buy/return. I'd never do that if I could get a straightforward answer from Apple.
WHY can't apple just give us an HONEST answer as to what is going on???????
This is a problem with any big organization. Also known as "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing". It's hard enough to keep a dozen folks on a single team constantly informed and up to date, but hundreds of support staff? Good luck. Especially when you get folks in the support staff that don't read their training material, don't understand it, try to make guesses that turn out to be wrong in the name of informing the customer, etc.
But a couple notes from my own previous experiences with Apple launches:
- They can't upgrade shipping that is already expedited, at least in any meaningful way. This is confusing though since any pre-orders show as standard shipping, not expedited. However, Apple has been using direct distribution for pre-orders for the last half decade in the same way. Customer service at this point is as confused as customers are, but the shipping teams aren't, thankfully.
- Orders are only handled in "first-come, first-served" when you actually have stock to do so. Those who ordered later, and still shipped before others ordered different models for different carriers. It's not as if Apple can redirect a 64GB Verizon model from me to you when you ordered a 32GB AT&T model just because you ordered first. What this means is that the production orders for each model didn't line up all that well with the actual pre-orders made. These production orders are made well in advance of pre-orders themselves being made available. An example is that when I got my iPhone 5, there were plenty of 64GB Verizon models left, but only one or two AT&T versions when they got to my point in line to hand out tickets. Verizon and Sprint models tend to be easier to get than AT&T for whatever reason.
- The ordering system has been giving folks conservative estimates on delivery dates, and meeting or beating them to this point. When customer service starts messing with the ordering system, it will start producing nonsensical answers as we've seen.
I suspect there have been manufacturing hiccups similar to those slowing down iPhone 5 production. I'd be surprised if Apple actually knew they would be able to launch on the 16th before last Friday.
Should Apple have had a better grip on things before trying to launch? Yeah. Would they have missed Black Friday to do that? Not a chance.