Based off posts in this thread went to stonestown this morning at 10am figuring I'd be there a couple hours max. I finally left the apple store with 8gb black and receipt in hand around 4:30pm!
The setup there is pretty horrendous. Basically the line starts outside the mall and they can only allow roughly 10-15 ppl or so to wait in line directly outside the apple store in the mall. They would come out and let groups of 10-15 in at a time and this was roughly EVERY HOUR!. Their estimate was that on average it takes 15 min to process a customer and that is provided that there are no hangups with the account (or that they need to be given a handholding tutorial like these two late 50's early 60s women apparently needed 5 ppl ahead of me. As I got closer towards being in the group that got let into the mall it seems like they were reducing the number of ppl they were allowing in. By the time it got to my group they only let me and 4 other people in to wait in ANOTHER line directly outside the apple store.
I probably got let into the mall around 3:45pm or so and it was easily another 30-45 min before it was my turn. The way they have it setup is the iphone line is roped off and goes directly into the front left part of the store which is basically separated off and there were only about 4 employees actually processing customers. So if you went off the average of 4 customers per hour per employee (15 min each one) you can do the math and see how long its gonna take.
They were doing a fairly good job of making sure people knew what they needed and in my case and a couple others in particular since I had my account on a corporate discount (which I called in and had them remove before I got there because I knew that apple stores can't process those types of accounts) they offered to run a prequalification to make sure there would not be any problems once we got in. They asked for
Name
last 4 digits of social security
mobile number
about 2 hours after I had given them that info someone came out and let me know that I was good to go. Up until that point I had been considering going up to the ATT store in the same mall and ordering one. A couple people had left the line at the apple store and said that they ordered at ATT and were told it would be there in 3 days. I had heard att stores were experiencing issues with backorders so wasnt too sure I wanted to go that route. I later heard some of the apple employees say it has been taking the ATT stores on average about 2-3 weeks to fill orders. So I almost left the line out of fear I was gonna wait 6 hours and ultimately get screwed because they couldn't work with my account. Once I found out it was good I kinda sucked it up and rode out the wait.
They also did a good job of early on getting a tally of what everyone in line wanted and were able to tell us by about 11:30am that everyone in line at that point would be able to get a phone.
Man that was alot to type but I figured if I had this information beforehand I may have thought twice about going. Since stonestown appears to be the store that is getting the most shipments expect a long wait. If you are going to go I would suggest getting there early and be prepared to commit the whole day.
Hope this helps others in the area.
The setup there is pretty horrendous. Basically the line starts outside the mall and they can only allow roughly 10-15 ppl or so to wait in line directly outside the apple store in the mall. They would come out and let groups of 10-15 in at a time and this was roughly EVERY HOUR!. Their estimate was that on average it takes 15 min to process a customer and that is provided that there are no hangups with the account (or that they need to be given a handholding tutorial like these two late 50's early 60s women apparently needed 5 ppl ahead of me. As I got closer towards being in the group that got let into the mall it seems like they were reducing the number of ppl they were allowing in. By the time it got to my group they only let me and 4 other people in to wait in ANOTHER line directly outside the apple store.
I probably got let into the mall around 3:45pm or so and it was easily another 30-45 min before it was my turn. The way they have it setup is the iphone line is roped off and goes directly into the front left part of the store which is basically separated off and there were only about 4 employees actually processing customers. So if you went off the average of 4 customers per hour per employee (15 min each one) you can do the math and see how long its gonna take.
They were doing a fairly good job of making sure people knew what they needed and in my case and a couple others in particular since I had my account on a corporate discount (which I called in and had them remove before I got there because I knew that apple stores can't process those types of accounts) they offered to run a prequalification to make sure there would not be any problems once we got in. They asked for
Name
last 4 digits of social security
mobile number
about 2 hours after I had given them that info someone came out and let me know that I was good to go. Up until that point I had been considering going up to the ATT store in the same mall and ordering one. A couple people had left the line at the apple store and said that they ordered at ATT and were told it would be there in 3 days. I had heard att stores were experiencing issues with backorders so wasnt too sure I wanted to go that route. I later heard some of the apple employees say it has been taking the ATT stores on average about 2-3 weeks to fill orders. So I almost left the line out of fear I was gonna wait 6 hours and ultimately get screwed because they couldn't work with my account. Once I found out it was good I kinda sucked it up and rode out the wait.
They also did a good job of early on getting a tally of what everyone in line wanted and were able to tell us by about 11:30am that everyone in line at that point would be able to get a phone.
Man that was alot to type but I figured if I had this information beforehand I may have thought twice about going. Since stonestown appears to be the store that is getting the most shipments expect a long wait. If you are going to go I would suggest getting there early and be prepared to commit the whole day.
Hope this helps others in the area.
