Apple woefully unprepared for iPhone 4 demand

You can blame Apple or you can blame AT&T. Neither will do you much good, though, because neither company was at all ready for the iPhone 4 pre-order demand today. As fellow Appletell writer Ed McKell told me earlier regarding my wait time, “That’s awesome/terrible.”

My story begins at 8:45 a.m. this morning when I saw that the online Apple store was back online and accepting pre-orders. I tried a couple times to order online, but my session kept timing out before it could advance to the next step of the process. Now, I’m upgrading my iPhone 3G, and the problem mostly happened when checking my AT&T contract upgradability. Having no luck online, I started calling 1-800-MYAPPLE. After about ten minutes of redials, I finally got through and was put on hold after being told the wait time would be “more than five minutes.”

Two and a half hours later, I had to leave my office to pick up my daughter. So, that was a lot of holding for nothing (and aside from the Ting Tings, Apple’s hold music really blows). Thank goodness for speakerphone.

On the 45 minute trip home, I kept trying to reach Apple on the Bluetooth system. No luck. On the rare occasion when I got past the initial “We weren’t ready for work today so call back tomorrow when we’ve actually got our pants on” message (paraphrasing), I was immediately kicked back to that message upon telling the robot that I wanted to order the new iPhone 4.

I then ate lunch. Subway. Tasty.

Back home, I went to back to the routine; try online while dialing Apple. At this point, it was more of a curiosity than a need to get the phone on day one. I’m not that much of a fanboy, and I can always just demand Jake or Josh give me theirs since I’m their boss. After a couple more hours of this, I finally got through to a real person, but only after the robot told me that if I was interested in the iPhone 4, to look at its features online. All others please hold. I held anyway.

The first thing the Apple rep asked me (after my name) was whether I was ordering the iPhone 4. “Yes,” I replied. “Yeah, not gonna happen,” he told me (paraphrasing). “Our systems can’t handle load, so we can’t place orders right now. Try calling back in two hours to see if we can place your order then” (only slight paraphrasing).

Now, whether customers who don’t need to check a current AT&T account are having this problem, I don’t know. I’m also not about to visit an Apple Store today, because those poor people have to deal with angry customers face to face, not just over the phone. You think you’re frustrated? Imagine being one of the people having to deal with you.

So, possibly, by the end of the evening, I will have my pre-order placed. Possibly, it will still arrive by June 24th. Regardless, you’d think Apple would have rolled out enough of these new products that they’d be equipped to handle the demand. On the other hand, it’s not likely anything that’ll be fixed soon. People frantically redialing on day one of a pre-order aren’t the types to suddenly say, “Screw it, I’ll just go buy that little Android device.”

In the meantime, I really need to see what Nintendo was doing today, anyway. I’m more interested in a new Zelda than I am in a new phone, anyway.

If you’re having the same problem I am, check out Jake’s Where, when and how to get iPhone 4 for other ideas.

Update: 10:45 p.m., 14 hours after my first attempt, and I was finally able to place my order online. Note…once you get past the AT&T checks and the iPhone is in your cart, it’ll stay there. I had another half hour of trouble completing the credit card process, but I didn’t have to go through the hassle of having Apple connect to AT&T to approve the purchase and get my rate.