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iPhone 3G Remains Hard to Find

trfoust said:
Yesterday I spent four hours on line there and left empty-handed after running out of patience. I figure I was two hours from getting in to the store. I had brought enough work to keep me busy for a while but not all day.

What was frustrating was not being able to get a straight answer from the staff walking the line to questions on how long the wait would be, how many people were supporting iPhone sales, and how long a standard transaction took. In fact they would not answer these questions.

My estimates were clearly off, which is my problem. But a little honest info from the staff would have helped me to make a decision earlier. If I had known early on that the wait would be over four hours I would not have started.

So be advised, at least for the next week or so, that the wait is long.
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No kidding ... I called earlier (I live 2 hours away) and asked if they had the 16G Black in stock to which he said yes. So I ask how many do you have ... "I'm not permitted to give out information on stocking". What kinda answer is that? My next question is how long the line was .... "I'm not permitted to answer that". I don't give a darn if they were told to give out stupid responses like that or not when someone is going to travel that far to attempt to get an item and you can't give out information to let them know if they even have a remote shot at getting it that is plain old bad customer service. My only shot at getting one any time soon appears to take a day of vacation to drive to the store to buy a phone.

What has this world come to? Shame on you Apple.

Chris
 
trfoust said:
Yesterday I spent four hours on line there and left empty-handed after running out of patience. I figure I was two hours from getting in to the store. I had brought enough work to keep me busy for a while but not all day.

What was frustrating was not being able to get a straight answer from the staff walking the line to questions on how long the wait would be, how many people were supporting iPhone sales, and how long a standard transaction took. In fact they would not answer these questions.

My estimates were clearly off, which is my problem. But a little honest info from the staff would have helped me to make a decision earlier. If I had known early on that the wait would be over four hours I would not have started.

So be advised, at least for the next week or so, that the wait is long.
Click to expand...

I got one yesterday but the process was so. . .stupid that I was speechless. It wasn't the line or the activation, it was the Apple employees that have no clue how to do, well, anything they aren't told. Here is the story:

They weren't supposed to have any but I stopped by anyway around lunch time the sign was up (no Iphones) and I was chatting with an Apple staffer and asked when. . .she said, in hushed tone and looking around to make sure no on was watching, that they got some boxes in that morning but no one knows whats in them. . .come back in an hour.

An hour later there are maybe 20 people in line, the sign is down, so I queue up. The line quickly grows to 75 folks or so and in the first 30 minutes ONE employee helped one person. I asked the Apple lady how many phones - "can't tell you". I ask do you have all models in stock - "can't tell you". Finally I pointed out to her how stupid this was and none of us want to wait in line if they don't have the model. . .she says she is going to talk with her manager. They have THREE fricking managers debate this for TEN minutes. Finally they come over and tell the crowd "we are not supposed to but we will tell you if we run out of a particular model.".

After 2 hours they finally added a few more staffers to help move the line. When it was my turn I was concerned that they would not be able to help me as I needed a new family plan created, a number ported, etc. The activation and set up went quickly 10-12 minutes with no issues.

So, activation was fine, crowd management, information distribution and customer service (prior to being served) were a joke.
 
First off, I realize that a product roll out like this is pretty hard and nearly impossible to please everyone. Or even most everyone. But there are some simple things that Apple could do to make it better.

Last night I checked the availability chart for the Apple store in West Nyack, NY Palisades Mall and it showed red for all models. This morning at 10:15 am I figured I would call just to check. The very friendly Apple store employee told me they had all 3 models in stock and there were only 3 people currently in line. (I have to say the Apple Store employees deserve much kudos for actually answering the phones and not giving customers attitude for calling throughout the day to check on iPhone stock.)

I rushed over and got there about 12 minutes later. I was 6th in line. When I got there the concierge told me the phones had not been scanned in yet but as soon as they were they would start selling them. About 15 minutes later an employee came out and gave each person in line a ticket with the type of phone they wanted. This ticket "reserved" the phone and assured people in line that if they had a ticket they were getting a phone.

About 15 minutes later (about 11am) the first person in line went in to buy a phone. They didn't have enough employees on hand to sell/activate phones because they were caught off guard and didn't know they were getting a big shipment in.

I didn't get in the store until about 11:45. About an hour and 15 minutes after arriving. Once in the store buying the phone took very little time. About 5 minutes. But the problem is that they only had ONE employee activating phones on ONE computer. This made no sense. Why have several people selling the phones and only one person activating. So a line built up for activating. And they wouldn't let me do it at home. They finally opened up a few more lines for activating and after I got an employee to activate my iPhone it took all of 30 seconds. It was pretty frustrating to have to wait another 30 minutes just to hook up the phone to iTunes, enter my Apple ID and confirm my info. I walked out of the store at 12:15. So about 2 hours from the time I called to the time I got my phone.
Relatively I made out pretty well. And much better than others. But I have to say, a little bit of foresight on Apple's part would make it go smoother.

1)The online chart is kind of useless as is. If it can't be updated a couple time throughout the day then just have automated messages on the phones saying iPhones are in stock or not.
2)Once you get your ticket that reserves your iPhone why do you have to continue to stand in line? Knowing how many employees they have on hand and how long the average activation takes they should be able to give you a window of time to come back. For example, they could have told me come back in 1 hour. Like getting a number at the butcher. It's a system that has worked for years. If you don't come back with that ticket by the end of business day your reserved phone goes back into stock. (It even implies this on the fine print on the ticket. But an Apple Store employee said you had to stay in line or you lose your spot.)
3) Having employees use the handheld checkout scanners and not having access to a Mac to activate the phone is useless. Every employee selling the phone should be able to activate it.
4) Owners of previous iPhones should have an express activation service since it is very easy and takes far less time than activating a new account or porting over a number.
5)I was trying to figure out why it took 45 minutes from the time they started selling the phones for me to get in and buy one. It shouldn't take 45 minutes to sell phones to 5 customers. The problem is that some new customers were taking over 30 minutes with their salesperson. Going over options, features, tips, accesories, etc. The second guy in line was still with his salesperson when I bought my phone! The people selling and activating the phones should not be the people going over features, options etc. Once they sell/activate a phone they should move on to the next customer. If you have questions you can go to one of the employees not selling iPhones.
 
Got one at the Clarendon store in VA today. They received shipments yesterday and today, both times just before noon. It took me about 2 hours in line (I think I was maybe 20-30 people back).

The staff in this store answered our questions reasonably so we knew to stick around: "Do you have all models?" "yes" "do you have enough for the line" "oh yes."

It was a pretty good experience except for the hot sun (they switched from letting 4 people inside at a time to more when the shade disappeared in front of the store). When I was purchasing mine they started talking inside about other ways to get people into shade since the sun was so hot.

They also had received a large shipment of the repackaged apple bluetooth headsets...so my guess is they are getting ready for the weekend rush.
 
hmmm

I'm getting mine next Wednesday at an apple store near me(that's when my upgrade eligibility FINALLY kicks in :)). Seems like the trend here is that the shipments usually come in everyday but not in bulk, and around 11 to 12ish. So, i'm probably gonna just get to the store around 11 on wednesday and hope they'll have em in stock:)
 
Don't believe Apple's inventory

I stopped by the local Apple Store today. I wasn't expecting much because, according to Apple's website, iPhone inventory was depleted in all but three stores across New England. So what did I see as I walked in the store? A guy walking out with two iPhones in spiffy new bags. I asked one of the guys there and sure enough the store had replenished its inventory. But he expected the stock to vanish by evening.

So I bought three: a 16gb (no whites available) for me and two 8gbs for my wife and daughter. Then I spent the next three hours trying to get them activated. Half of that time was spent attempting to port my long-time Tracfone number over to my iPhone. AT&T finally deemed it next to impossible, so I just opted for a new number. With my wife's iPhone, she wanted to keep her old Verizon number. That too proved sightly troublesome. (After the sale was complete, the Apple guy got a warning on his scanning device that there was a transaction error.) But finally everything was up and running. And I have to give Apple credit -- the guy was incredibly calm and pleasant and just kept working until everything was resolved.

So we're now an iPhone family. To me the device doesn't feel cheap at all. The screen looks great. I'm not noticing any lag. (It even seems snappy!) The sound quality is great. I'm loving the speaker, which has a much beefier sound than I expected. I've switched 3G off to stretch my battery life, and EDGE doesn't take much longer to load web pages than WiFi used to on my Touch. Overall I'm really pleased so far.

Edit: And don't let anyone kid you that the camera sucks. We've all taken pictures with it (indoors at night) and they've all come out good. Is it a Nikon SLR? No, but it's not meant to be. What it does is take decent photos when you're on the go.
 
iPhone 3G Supply Chain Article

This article says it all. Get to the store early and wait in line if you want one in the near future.
 
Counting the months!

I tried to get out of my existing Orange contract but they make them bulletproof!!

Anyway, it might be a blessing because I would be one of those people queuing up for hours to get my hands on a 16gb iPhone :)
 
Slowly, the stores down here are getting more stock or well, I guess they are keeping the stock in store because the initial lines are slowing down

Friend went to an AT&T store and said he found no line and several iPhones available for their purchase.

I am happy to hear this as I will be getting it shortly :)

As of yesterday, several stores were still sold out
 
I waited in line for about 4 hours on launch day at the Apple Store here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the time, I felt pretty foolish as I figured there would be plenty of phones available. Now I feel pretty good about the decision.

Our Apple store here handled the situation very well. There was no shroud of secrecy about stock, etc. though I am told the AT&T stores were using those lines to try to induce people to place orders.
 
New York's 5th Ave. store still with massive lines this morning, BUT at least they had enough of each iphone in stock to keep everyone happy. If you got in line about 9:30 am, you walked out with an iPhone of your choice at about 1 pm. I thought that was pretty bad until I started reading some of the stories in this thread. NY 5th Ave. may be the place to go if you can get there around 7 am.
 
I waited a little about 2 and a half hours in like in the Oakridge, CA store. There were about 40 people ahead of me. I think part of the problem was actually with current AT&T customers who had a discount on their line. They kept getting an error message saying the phone was not eligible or something like that. I got one as well, actually, even though my discount had yet to be applied but I had a FAN number. My activation still went quickly, though, and I switched my current number and got a new line added. The employees continued to keep us informed (although I didn't find out there weren't white phones left until I got there, and the concierges would count whenever someone asked about the size of the line.

And I'm not sure why, but I actually walked out without getting my phones activated. I don't know if it was just because he took me over to the Genius Bar and didn't have access to a Mac or because I told him I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the second line I purchased. I had my MBP with me, so I just opened the one for my line and activated it as soon as I left the store, and installed the Apps I'd already downloaded. Syncing takes forever on these. I think that part took longer than my activation. Even now it takes a long time to sync, and I only have about .25 GB on there. Is there a way to not back it up every time?
 
I waited in line 3 hours on 7/11 only to find out I had to order 2 black 16GBs. I got a note from AT&T this morning with a FedEx tracking number. They will be in the store by this afternoon.

I imagine there will another wait today if everyone who ordered shows up to activate their phones.
 
AT&T Direct Fulfillment works

Shoupgroup said:
BTW, ordered my iPhone through AT&T Direct Fulfillment on Tuesday, will be delivered today (Friday) by 3:00 PM at the store. Only a three day wait! Just food for thought.
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I can top that ... I ordered on Wednesday and it will be delivered today @ 3PM. (This after the sales person cautioned that supplies were low and it could be as much as a 21 day wait.) Since all of the Apple stores in Colorado are currently marked as sold out, this appears to be the only way to get a 3G iPhone at the moment. Part of me is wondering if AT&T should have just set things up this way in the first place. I don't have time to stand in line to get a new phone with all the mystery of whether or not the supplies of the version you want will hold out until you reach the front of the line. For all of the other things that AT&T has screwed up, this part seems to be reasonable good.

UPDATE: It's 10:55AM and the store just called to say that I could come in and pick it up.
 
production problems?

has anyone heard anything about production problems - seems really strange that apple is not adequately staffing and intentionally slowing down sales. Maybe there has been some directive to stores to intentionally keep phones in stock as long as possible. The whole thing seems really strange. Either way I hope they figure out how to increase supply soon...
 
Just got mine

16Gwhite

the website said they had them, so I got in line @ 6am. There were 3 guys in front of me.

One of the "orange people" started coming out at around 6h30, not telling us how many there were exactly but letting people about how far in the line they could have a chance to get one.

After a while they broke the line, told people who were too far down the line that they would not get one and offered them to stand in a new line in case they got a shipment.

website says they open at 9h30 but they started taking us in @ 9h.

the young lady always repeated her instructions for the people down the line and since it seems there are certain cases where they can't handle the contracts in the Applestore she made sure people were not standing in line just to be told they could not purchase after waiting.

Staff inside was great, this is my first purchase at an Apple store and I was happy with the service.

I scanned through previous posts and it seems many had bad experience, it all depends on the staff I guess.
 
ibrainch said:
has anyone heard anything about production problems - seems really strange that apple is not adequately staffing and intentionally slowing down sales. Maybe there has been some directive to stores to intentionally keep phones in stock as long as possible. The whole thing seems really strange. Either way I hope they figure out how to increase supply soon...
Click to expand...

That seems pretty far fetched. It seems much more plausible that higher than anticipated demand + Apple employees having to deal with the "not so smooth" AT&T activation bumps and barriers with many customers = long wait times and inefficient sales. I've read plenty of reports of quick and painless activations in Apple stores when there weren't hiccups with account issues on AT&T's end (ie discount plan conflicts, eligibility issues, etc).

Its also possible that AT&T's servers are not equipped to handle the large influx of data associated with new customers and renewals on existing customers coming from BOTH AT&T retails shops and Apple stores. Perhaps AT&T asked Apple to limit how many CSR's could handle activation at each store?
 
i walked into the apple store in Chandler, AZ yesterday around 10 am for a genius bar appt. There was a lin in the store of about 7 people for the iphone. I wasn't planning on buying an iphone, but the short line made up my mind for me. I waited in line for 20 minutes at most.

After reading all the "omg this is the best thing ever" and the "what a waste of money" comments, I was a lil hesitant.

I do have to say that I love the phone.

Battery life does bite the big one, but the app store and gps make it well worth it.

I am a satisfied customer. If you have the time, just pop in the store in the morning and maybe you will get lucky...do not rely on the online in stock indicators.
 
magid said:
Does anyone know if there are still lines at the ny apple store?
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My bet is there will still be lines for at least a week or two. The problem is: even if they have the phones in stock it seems to take an average of 20-30 minutes to activate. Previous iPhone owners have the shortest activation times. But unfortunately, many of those in line are porting numbers over, changing services, don't know how to set up the phone, e-mail etc., and they require much more time.

So even if there are 10 people in line, you are looking at a 2 hours wait. They aren't able to get ahead of the curve.
 
drummingcraig said:
I've read plenty of reports of quick and painless activations in Apple stores when there weren't hiccups with account issues on AT&T's end (ie discount plan conflicts, eligibility issues, etc).
Click to expand...

The activation of our daughter's iPhone (a new number) took just a few minutes. My wife wanted her land line number ported to the iPhone. That took quite a bit longer and caused a few errors on Apple's POS device. Eventually it was all taken care of, but we were told it may take up to six days (!) for the number to become active. Then of course there was that debacle when I tried to port my Tracfone number....

Currently my wife's in a weird communication twilight zone: the land line phone still works fine. Her iPhone can make calls from that number, but it can't receive any calls. I'm puzzled at how difficult it is for AT&T to manipulate what seems like simple data in their systems.
 
Broke down and ordered one from the local AT&T store ... I'll update when I get it to see if the 21 day estimate is hooey or not ;)

Chris
 
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