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iPhone4S Shipment Status: Backordered!

Sorry, did not read the whole thread, but wanted to let y'all in on something that might help, if you do not know it already...

I pre-ordered via the web on 10/8, and it still said "processing" when I went to the ATT store today. I had to call and argue with the people that answer 611 about it, but the lady transfered me to a different department who canceled my order, and then I bought it in the store with out any problems. I had 4 different people at ATT tell me that they could not cancel the pre-order before I got to someone that canceled it, so if your local store has it in stock (mine had 10 left at lunchtime) then you can cancel and get it at the store no matter what they say. :D Well as long as the status is not "shipped" of course
 
MizuSeirei said:
:confused: I just got another e-mail from at&t that said (once again) that they need more info from me. I contacted them to see what was going on and the lady told me that they failed to update the system from last night. My status is still the same and I should expect my order to be shipped out by tomorrow morning. She said that the back-order does not apply to me because it is only a high demand for the 4s. I guess this should make me happy, but I am tired of them sending me e-mails like there is somthing wrong on my part.:mad:
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They are LYING to you!

I have a "Chat Transcript" where the guy told me it was shipping for delivery TODAY. I stayed home…and yes NO PHONE. So I called and I was told the same thing you were but now I am told by another rep that they really don't have them and it will be at least 14 days!

I ordered on Oct 7th at 1:14PM as per my email. One person said the phone shows it was ordered on the 8th while another said it appears it was placed on the 11th. Every time I call, and I've called 5 times today, I have been given a different story.

Now they say I can't cancel it? It's just phone and I really don't want to deal with this..rather wait a few months and just go buy one. Not worth the stress for a phone. Thanks AT&T!
 
How to cancel your AT&T iPhone 4S backordered phone order

I too ordered two AT&T iPhone 4S phones (32GB Black) online at AT&T.com. Both ran into credit card authorization issues. One, however, didn't happen until Sunday, 10/9. So, that phone got put on the 21-28 day backorder. Normal AT&T customer service repeatedly has told me that I could not cancel my online order because it was "pending shipment." Finally, one caring AT&T rep informed me that if I got to the Apple (or other store) and was able to secure an iPhone 4S, I could call them back and cancel my online order. I went to the Apple Store and sure enough (surprisingly) they had plenty of phones. When I called back AT&T, the usual customer service reps gave me the same old run around. When I insisted that I had already been told that I could cancel, they finally transferred me to the department that was apparently handling all order cancellations -- AT&T Premier. Here's the number you need: 866-499-8008, option 2. Important note: if you're porting your phone number from another service provider, make sure that in addition to cancelling your order, that they also cancel your existing port request. Otherwise, your port will not go through at the store (this happened to me, but the AT&T rep at the Apple store was able to cancel the previous port request). Good luck!
 
Screwed my order over, went to store, had them cancel and i got a iphone in person. waited 15minutes, got iphone. happy.
 
Very bad experience with ATT.COM.

Ordered within 90 minutes of the Preorder starting. (basically kept retrying until I finally got through -- their website kept timing out or displaying error messages.)

Got my order confirmation 40 minutes later.

Throughout the entire process the site said my phone would be shipped on or before the 14th.

As of today, my order still says, "In Progress", "Back Ordered", "Pending Shipment".

I've gotten no e-mails with shipping information. And no email from AT&T telling me that they are not able to fulfill their promise of shipping the phone this week.

I'm upset to pay a full $36 "activation fee" and then have them not deliver the phone.
 
iPhone 4S delay

Yeah, I figured I'd rant on the wall of shame with everyone else. Will it get me my shiny new iPhone faster?...No...:) I just need someone to give me psychiatric counseling on my ill state of mind from not getting my iPhone on the 14th. I don't know if I can live another day without it... What am I going to do? The thought of not being able to walk around and gloat because I don't have the phone on day 1 is almost more than I can take. I'm having trouble sleeping now and not sure I can function at work.

LMAO!!! Just kidding...:) Sure, I haven't got mine either...but I'm in the boat with everyone else. I'm kind of glad this has happened actually. Now I know not to pre-order through my carrier anymore. They're obviously not set up like Apple and can't handle the loads. Heck, they can barely support their own network infrastructure. I'll just do like I have in the past from now on...Wait in line at the store. Always success there!

Cheers!:cool:
 
At least you can check your status! I ordered mine by phone on Saturday and I still can't track it at all. All I know for sure is that the order is in, that's all. If I cancel, I'll have to wait until 11/1 since my official upgrade date is 11/25 (the store can only go back 30 days, yeah I know, that's not the first, but that's what they told me). Now they claim its waiting to be shipped. Really? I've heard that line before!

Here's next years plan:
Start an 'iPhone upgrade account' at my bank and start saving money for the early upgrade (assuming I can't wait until my official upgrade date...who are we kidding here:)).
Either order from APPLE or wait in line like last year, you know, the year I DID get my phone on LAUNCH DAY.

After all my efforts, I still have no 4S. Oh well, I received $220 in 'I'm sorry' money from AT&T and my iPhone 4 still works.
 
DiamonMac

when did you order your new iphone and how long did it take to go to "prepared for shipment"?
 
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iphone 4s

diamondmac disregard the last post. so pretty much all of these posts are about att does anyone know about verizon? the woman i spoke to said "the website says it will ship by october 28th but it will probably be sooner than that, we just put that to try to decrease the number of people ordering the phone." i also watched numerous news clips and websites with news on them that foxconn makes 137,000 iphones in one day alone. when you think about all of the companies who have a large amount of iphones needed to get out that may not be a lot, i am just curious as to what the total number of backordered iphones is.


...hoping you all/i get my new iphone 4s soon!!!!:(
 
Gents... Here's the deal obviously. ATT probably sent the majority of their phones out for distribution at retailers to get the Max sales with what they had on hand from Apple. The pre-order sham was exactly that. A way to lock in a huge amount of new customers by giving them the perception that by pre-ordering they would get their phones early and not have to stand in line or deal with the hassle. I personally believe they did not have the stock on hand for the amount of pre-orders to begin with. When you pre-ordered your phone they were able to lock you in on contract and by smoke and mirrors trick you into buying the phone under the pre-order premise (A locked in Contract that cannot be cancelled). Actually, smart marketing on a one time deal. I believe though by using this tactic they have upset a lot of new and existing customers by not being able to deliver as promised. They should have told us up front that there is a chance we may not receive it early instead of sending us emails that stated shipment will be on the 14th. I would imagine there are a few hundred thousand people who pre-ordered and are now in a back order status as ATT cannot fulfill their orders until they get more stock from Apple. Sucks to be us! I would assume that this would hurt their future pre-order scheme in the future with the new and existing customers the next time a new phone is released.

One more thought!... It seems obvious that the computer system that tracks inventory and manages the pre-orders from ATT would be able to handle the volume and have an exact count based on a known stock on hand. Either through faulty computer strategy or gross mis-management the pre-order system was allowed (probably knowingly) to run its course and allow an exhorbatant amount of pre-orders over what stock was available. If that was the case then ATT should have changed the pre-order status link to just "Order" instead. It smells of a gross mis-conduct on ATT's part to allow this to happen. I would bet that the Management that oversees the online ordering scheme allowed the pre-order status to remain intact to gather as many contracts as possible from the unsuspecting customer base. Think about it. If ATT were to cancel the pre-order as it was designed they would basically be loosing out to new prospective and exsisting customers that would see that all the pre-orders were filled. This would force either new or exsisting customers to either look to Verizon or Sprint to lock in an early phone. Why would a large company want to lose out on gathering as many new customers as possible by locking the pre-order status once the stock of phones was depleted? Exactly! They wouldn't... Taking the risk over going over pre-order stock was worth it to them. They consume a large number of new customers by gambling that everything will be "OK". Management tells their ATT customer support reps to deny canceling any newly established contracts. They won at their own game in the end. The only way I could possibly forsee getting out of this would be to contact the Better Business Bureau and complaining about a mis-leading contract based on the email notices sent immediately after pre-ordering. It's worth a shot, but big corporations have money and good lawyers. There's always the disclaimer way out for them. We've been stooged at our own game. This was the first time that I have pre-ordered and I thought I would get good results. I really thought I was smart in this action. Now I see my co-workers going down to a well stocked store 4 days later and picking up a new iPhone. It's tragic in the principle yet unfortunate for the common customer. My 2 cents...:)
 
Have the same problem and I preordered through AT&T the morning of the 7th. Today is the 18th and I still haven't received my 4S.
 
I hope you guys are filing complaints against AT&T with the Better Business Bureau.

a.) You avoid the holding/waiting to speak with an incompetent AT&T phone rep,
b.) A mid-level or higher AT&T rep is required to respond to the complaint with a proposed resolution,
c.) The complaint gets documented with a third party and compiled along with many others to develop a business rating.

Apparently not enough people are making BBB complaints, because AT&T is citing statistics like this:

att-bbb-complaints.jpg


EDIT: File a BBB complaint here: https://www.bbb.org/file-a-complaint/nature.aspx
 
squint0241 said:
. The pre-order sham was exactly that. A way to lock in a huge amount of new customers by giving them the perception that by pre-ordering they would get their phones early and not have to stand in line or deal with the hassle. I personally believe they did not have the stock on hand for the amount of pre-orders to begin with.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you. I pre-oredered from ATT around 10am on 10/7, everything seemed fine, got charged, got confirmation e-mail, etc. Then I check my order status and said "backorder" from day 1. It has not changed, still shows "processing" with a backordered status. It is ridiculous, I could have gotten one from the apple store like my wife did. I didn't want to bother with lines at the store so I pre-ordered with ATT. What an idiot I was! ATT led me to believe that they had enough stock to fulfill pre-orders. But they lied... Now that I have a choice in carriers for the iPhone, I can safely say this is probably the last 2 years I got with ATT (Since they say I can't cancel my order due to the 2-year contract agreement). Anyway, if I do decide to stay with ATT I WILL NEVER fall for their "pre-order" scam ever again. I am sure there's gotta be something illegal somewhere... definitely a deceiving business practice...

Anyway, it is now 10/19 and still no signs of my iPhone 4s 16GB Black... Thanks ATT!! My 3Gs is all screwed up that it needed to be replaced a year ago, but wanted to wait for this new phone. I guess I'll have to do with my 3Gs a bit longer...
 
So I pre-ordered at like 1am as soon as we could do it.
Here we are today, no phone. Just still "pending shipment".

Luckily I was smart and went to Best Buy on launch day and simply bought one.

What's annoying (and silly) to me is that they won't let me cancel the order without actually physically "rejecting" the shipment...whenever that happens to be.

What a wasteful organization. Obviously it *could* be cancelled since it hasn't gone anywhere...but no, they are making me actually physically tell the UPS/FEDEX person to "take it back" once it's already been shipped all the way too me.

So silly.
 
BigHonkingDeal said:
For what it's worth.... I finally got my early upgrade date moved to today and ordered through 611.

They told me that they have stock and I should receive it within 3 days.
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How did you do that? My upgrade date is 11/25. They told me my phone is backordered. No TRUE info on when it will ship. Totally not fair! I ordered on Saturday the 8th.:mad:
 
My date was 11/18 and now that it is within a month of the upgrade date they finally moved it to today. Took many calls :)

I ordered the phone today.


jbachandouris said:
How did you do that? My upgrade date is 11/25. They told me my phone is backordered. No TRUE info on when it will ship. Totally not fair! I ordered on Saturday the 8th.:mad:
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I called to check my order status today and was told three weeks until fulfillment. I ordered 10/9/11.
 
What order number did you guys get?

Hi I called At&T and they told me that my two order numbers for my 4s preorder, 99 and 100, meant that I was 99th out of everyone who preordered the phone. I still have Pending Shipment / Backordered status and I ordered on 10/7. Does anyone have a higher order number who is still waiting on their phone???:confused:
 
My order number is 92, ordered in store at 9am (pst) sharp. Still back ordered.
 
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So, I ordered mine early around 10am EST on the 7th, got my confirmation email right after. I was order #38, and still have had no word on any progress on my phone. I just logged in and now it NO longer says "1" under backordered column so maybe I finally am going to get it?! Also, I'm basically being added as a new line to a plan and I wonder if that's why it's taking longer. Maybe there's priority for preexisting lines? Who knows..just throwing it out there.
 
faraabdul said:
So, I ordered mine early around 10am EST on the 7th, got my confirmation email right after. I was order #38, and still have had no word on any progress on my phone. I just logged in and now it NO longer says "1" under backordered column so maybe I finally am going to get it?! Also, I'm basically being added as a new line to a plan and I wonder if that's why it's taking longer. Maybe there's priority for preexisting lines? Who knows..just throwing it out there.
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Nope. Means nothing. There are posters on here who saw that change days ago. Without a tracking number, it means nothing.
 
jbachandouris said:
Nope. Means nothing. There are posters on here who saw that change days ago. Without a tracking number, it means nothing.
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Well after having the backordered column change to 0 last night, this morning I got my tracking number and my phone has shipped! So it did mean something. So excited
 
faraabdul said:
Well after having the backordered column change to 0 last night, this morning I got my tracking number and my phone has shipped! So it did mean something. So excited
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Glad to be wrong. Congrats. Mine is still 'in progress' which really means nothing. Enjoy! Tell Siri I said hi. :(
 
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