Apple stores were told not to take pre-orders, and even though AT&T tried the same policy “officially”, AT&T cellphone stores were taking pre-orders and people were put on waitlists. These cellphone stores work on a commission basis, unlike the apple stores that don’t.
Now the majority of the phones released this friday were at the apple stores, and just like the xbox, these phones are going to be hard to find for months, the pre-order waitlist customers at AT&T stores will get their phones first from the inventory delivered.
The one million+ pre-order number was known months ago, but never officially released by apple or AT&T to give that “first come/first serverd” apperance at the rollout. That way apple gets lots of lovely press of people camped out in front of their stores and helps the marketing hype.
“these phones are going to be hard to find for months,”
Looked on ebay ? How many do you want ? Even looks as if some are selling for UNDER retail.
The AT&T store by me had only about 10 people in line around 3 PM yesterday
I could have bought one today, so they are not on any waitlists.
The actual facts of the situation is that the iPhones were only available on a “first-come first-served” basis and not on the basis of any “wait lists”. While I read various articles that said that some salesmen (at AT&T stores) were making unofficial wait lists, the actual policy of AT&T was “no wait lists”. In fact, after these “wait list stories” came out in the press, it was then reported that if any salesman was found to be “holding back” any inventory for sale, for a customer who was there, on the spot, that the salesman would be dismissed (i.e., fired on the spot) for doing so.
Therefore, the next story that came out was that a lot of people were going to be very unhappy finding out that their name on a so-called “wait list” was going to be absolutely worthless and they were not going to be told about it, either. The “story” was that it would be “silently dropped” by the salesman and nothing would be said about it or told to these unsuspecting customers, who would find out too late that the wait lists were absolutely worthless and meaningless.
The actual fact of the matter is that every single person who wanted an iPhone got an iPhone, whether their name was on a wait list or not — and all that mattered was that the inventory was there (and the inventory was apparently there).
In fact, if you want to check Apple stores, you can find out if inventory is there, because Apple puts inventory for every Apple store in the country on their web site — as far as if the inventory is there for the next day. I see no problems with all the store I checked. They all had inventory even with the big rush on Friday night.
After about three thousand people moved through the new Apple store in Tulsa, I was there and could have bought an iPhone on the spot, with no problems. I waited, though, because I’ve got to check on an area code first. I see that there are going to be no problems getting the iPhones, because they’ve really pumped up the inventories to meet the demand.
The people on eBay who thought they were going to “cash in” on some shortages were caught short and they’re dumping their iPhones as quick as they can.... since they can’t get a “premium price” over and above the Apple store and AT&T store price (like they were thinking they could... LOL).
Regards,
Star Traveler