Had a hell of a time trying to get a 6+, I don't have a lot of disposable income but treat myself to a new iPhone each year as its my most used item (and after selling the old one doesn't work out to be hugely expensive) so did the usual routine after seeing the announcement last week. My gf is due an upgrade on her phone so wanted to do the same thing and go the cheaper SIM FREE route.
At about 7.45am last Friday we signed onto the Apple Online store via the app which has always worked, come 8am it messed up as I'm sure many of you know but we kept trying and eventually got an order - however the payment failed (for reasons I don't understand) three times. Forth time worked fine but by this point it was set to be delivered in 3-4 weeks, still a month away.
After much searching around to see if anybody would be selling them SIM FREE we noticed that the only people aside from Apple doing this were Phones 4U so placed an order there - they had stock for delivery on launch day! Less than three hours later the company went into administration.
So feeling somewhat cursed we decided to check the Apple reservation site countless times a day all week, no luck. We realised we were going to have to do the unthinkable: queue outside an Apple Store. The nearest to us is Southampton which is a very busy location covering a wide range.
Feeling embarrassed and somewhat lame we planned on leaving early this morning. As reports started coming in on the scarcity of the 6+ we became anxious and decided to leave our place at midnight to ensure we'd get a place near the front. A quick browse of Twitter however saw a tweet at about 9.30 saying there were already 40 people there.
We jumped in the car and sped there like mentals, when we parked the meter ****ed up and we got given an invalid ticket. Irritating. We hurriedly made our way to the store outside and were quite happy to see the line was not huge: we were about sixty in the queue.
I'm not going to lie about this, it was uncomfortable. Due to the rush we didn't have sufficient seating and just sat on old couch cushions. Thunder and lightning started along with the rain, we didn't really have suitable food and drunk people were being complete dicks to everybody there.
We just shut up and made the best of a bad situation, not quite believing that we are this ****ing sad to be in a queue overnight for a phone. It would be worth it though for the one big treat of the year to ourselves.
Suddenly we noticed there were a disproportionate amount of Asians in the line, certainly a lot more as a percentage of Southanpton's population than you'd normally see. There seemed to be getting more and more.
Eventually as it began to get light the Apple staff came out and started taking reservations: it had been so long now that urinating and sleeping were very high on our list of priorities but still we were excited and discussed what we'd do if we couldn't get the model we wanted (64gb + in black, we'd settle for 128GB or a white one in either size even though we can't really afford it).
It was looking good until it became apparent that every Asian person was ordering two + models each, clearly to resell. You know where this is going - despite our pathetic adventure and camping out overnight like a couple of losers we got nothing. All of the + models had gone to the scalpers.
It was a fun drive home, at least once back one of the most relieving pisses of all time was had and of course the beauty of a nice bed after being plonked on the pavement felt lovely. However now we're feeling like ****, didn't get the phone we were really excited about and to top it off I have a ****ing headache. Just realised that the current iPhone has been sold so won't have an iOS device until the + eventually turns up too. FFS.
I realise that it's just a phone and we're not moping around or anything - this really doesn't matter in the scheme of things - but after that series of unfortunate events I really wanted to vent. So thanks. FFFFUUUUUUUUU
