O2 starts 3G iPhone stampede - and runs away O2 today started taking pre-orders on its website for Apple's iPhone 3G - and stopped taking them again within minutes of opening the doors. Customers were told by text message that new iPhones were available to existing customers who upgrade. But they were presented this morning with error messages on the O2 upgrade site …
As I've been saying for a week or more, there's no stock.
No pre-pay, no white iPhones, very few 16Gb iPhones, less than 45K iPhones in total for the whole of the UK for launch week.
As for O2 fucking up the launch/ordering process - quelle surprise. The full details of the tariffs were only signed off on Friday, 4 days after they originally planned to start taking pre-orders.
i always wondered why everyone complains so much about O2
this is the first i've been with them and, upto yesterday, i'd had no complaints at all
but to be caught unawares that there would be a stampead like this is just ridiculous. did they really expect people to get the text message this morning and think to themselves "well that's nice, maybe i'll log on this evening when I get home and put my order in"?
i'm hearing that people have called the customer services up, but have been told that upgrade orders can only be placed online, they won't even allow you to do that in the shop on Friday!
I'm >this< close to just buying a new one and getting a new number instead of smegging around with this upgrade process.
o2 Ireland seem to be a bit confused about the whole affair aswell. They were taking pre-orders as of last Tuesday. I was the 2nd customer in the door and was told they didnt know how to order it on the system yet. Was then told that if I wanted to put down €50 deposit that would guarantee me the phone. Went back later that day and they had several hand written A4 pages of people that had given over €50...didnt fill me with confidence.
for an hour. What a horribly complex process. I login, then I have to type my phone number ( I just logged in, its on the screen!!) and then it texts me a code ( except it didn't the first dozen times) and reloading gave a remedial screen which asked for credit card details before crashing. It also warns that it will need my account number ( I JUST LOGGED IN. YOU KNOW IT ALREADY). And then it broke completely. I wasn't even offered a phone number. Why not click "Yes I want it and put it on my next bill?", Or stagger then texts they sent out this morning?
is the way the have dealt with existing iPhone customers. If someone was prepared to pay £269 (or latterly £169) for the version 1 phone, I'd say it's a pretty fair bet that they are nailed on to buy the new one at £99. Therefore (if you work on the principle that these customers' loyalty should be rewarded), homes have already been found for the first 200,000 or so of the phones to arrive. The pricing has been common knowledge for a month or so. Why on God's Green Earth could they not have been nice and calmly taking upgrade orders for the past few weeks and making sure they were in a position to have all the upgrades lined up and ready to go on Thursday night. If this is not logistically possible, they could allocate customers to particular stores for collection. For example, I live in Macclesfield, so I would have been quite happy to have been told to go and pick a reserved phone on Friday from o2 (or indeed CPW) in Macclesfield.
No, wait. Maybe their bedlam approach is more sensible.
So I get my text just after 8am and I try and order.
I get to the point where I have entered my card details and 4 times it says there has been a problem - please try again later!
Now its been in maintenance mode since 9.30!!
Is this O2 hyping up the situation or is their upgrade site really FUBAR'd?
Really annoying!
I started the process at about 9:05 and never had a single problem. My order has been confirmed so hopefully i'll recieve one on friday :)
As another point, I was interested in getting the phone in white, but was never given the option, it just defaulted to black. Never mind i'll be happy either way.
They won't even offer me an upgrade until the last month of my 18 month contract, next february. I imagine something shinier will have caught my fickle eye by then, was willing to give them money for it, unfortunately they're unwilling to take it. I'm sure someone will...
Daft buggers.
I got the text at 8.45am and tried right away. It took a while for the site to get to the application form, which I filled in, but on clicking send just got a page telling me there was a problem and to try again. I went round this loop several times over the next 45 mins (when I actually managed to get that far) then eventually got the maintenance page, which has been up ever since.
I've seen three different variants of this page. Two of them want a form filling in, but the 3rd wants me to enter my phone number so it can text me an upgrade code (which I've now got) but is worded as if it's starting again. The text message says to enter the upgrade number onto the screen to continue, but there's no field to enter anything into, and no link to follow to go to the next stage. It's really confusing. O2 have really stuffed this up.
I tried a few times this morning, then the site fell over and was just going to a "maintenance" page ("Hi there, we've broken our site because we are stupid and didn't realise that thousands of people would log in at once. We'll be back later. Hopefully"). It claims to be sort of back up now, but I'm not getting anywhere further than the first page where you enter your number to get the upgrade code texted to you.
Selected the iPhone and tariff I wanted, and apparently my baskets empty.
I try again. I get told I have *two* items in my basket on the sidebar, click on the basket link, and get told my basket is still apparently empty.
Tried with IE. The same.
Who coded the O2 site? Retarded monkeys? Could someone explain to O2 that the whole point of buying stuff online is, well, the ability to actually buy stuff...
It was working again - briefly - but now it's keeled over again.
I reckon that O2 ignored all the pre-registrations and just looked at the way the first launch played out - no queues (honest ones, not stage-managed ones) outside stores, low demand, slow pick-up - and figured that it would be the same this time round. Quite possibly they figured that although was loads of hype last time, there was ne real surge and that it would be the same again.
What's the chances that when the third iPhone comes out* they'll look at today's antics, figure "OMG We'd better spend bazillions on extra capacity to cope" and, since all people really wanted was 3G and GPS in the first place, there will be minimal demand again and they'll have wasted all that money and effort...
*Since Apple call each iPod by version, eg iPod 2G, Nano 3G, what will they call the 3rdG iPhone, since the iPhone 2G is already called iPhone 3G...?
The email went out at 7:36 (atleast that is when i recieved it) i checked the website and it was down for maintenance, I checked back at around 8:20 and it was working again and I managed to get my order in for a 16GB and I have just checked back to see what is going on and that option isn't actually available anymore, seems like a bit of a mess really, you would have thought they would have been a little better prepared
You all laughed at them when they fully staffed the last jesus phone launch, which completely fizzled. And now youre moaning cos theyve learnt a lesson and arent doing the same for the second coming? IS there no keeping some people happy? Its the same as the last one for gods sake. Its just a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, doesnt have sat-nav and does have a shit camera. Why on earth would anyone get any more excited than last time?
So the shop seems to back up and running now - after being told i had 2 items in my basket (after all teh times i hit the Add to basket button in frustration, it seems that they have no 16GB iphone available at any tarriff online.
Its sucks! Get real O2!
iHate - Cos you'd nnever foind M$ doing anything like that......um ok maybe you would..
Thought I'd made it through this time... even got as far as getting the upgrade code text, and a page with pretty little iPhone pictures asking me to select either 8GB or 16GB and a tariff.
But the next step leads straight into the Form From Hell that I was getting earlier this morning, which in turn led to its badly-formatted clone, neither of which have the option to order a dock, etc. That form, after a couple of minutes' worth of a loading whirligig, led to the message "There has been a problem with taking your order. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please try again."
Not getting that "valued customer" feeling here.
I run a few really noddy websites and before I try and plug 'em anywhere (and that reminds me - www.scareports.com !!) I run the simplest of load testing so I can see how much they can handle before buckling - not that fussed whether its the web server, the database, bandwidth or whatever - but just an idea on how many concurrent users the site can handle. It's really not that difficult that, if I were to have a list of 10000 people who wanted to use the site and that I know it can only cope with, say 2000 "simultanouesly", then DONT TELL EVERYBODY TO VISIT THE SITE AT THE SAME TIME.
And yes my frustration is partially because that o2 refuse to ship the phone to my office ( I'm not taking a day off just to get a phone delivered to my home) and that my order crashed half way through and now it just tells me that they wont sell it to me as I'm outside the UK, even though I'm sitting here looking at the drizzle of the square mile right now...
I've got a Nokia handset on O2 and am about 2-3 months away from the end of my contract. I phoned O2 CS to ask if I could upgrade to the 3G iPhone when it launches and they said yes.
I went into a O2 shop on Saturday and they told me the opposite, I can only upgrade in August, 1 month before my current plan runs out.
They really need to get this straight, especially because they're making their existing customers suffer. New customers who want the phone will probably get one with no fuss. The usual story.
Well I got a bit further than my last post. Problem number 1, they've not tested their upgrade process using Apple's Safari browser. On a hunch, I tried using Firefox 3 instead of Safari. Having put my phone number in again and got a second upgrade number sent to me this time I got a screen with a field in it to enter the upgrade number. So I did, then got the same details form I've already filled in like 10 times. Dutifully filled that in; it thought about it for a while then dumped me back at the form page again. So I filled it in again, waited, and then got an error with an error code. So I reloaded the upgrade page and this time it jumped straight to the form page again. Filled it in AGAIN, then waited, then got another page which said: "There has been a problem with taking your order. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please try again".
Arrrgggghhh !!!!
And why the hell haven't they got this working with Safari. It's an Apple product. Don't they think there's an outside chance at least some Apple customers might actually use Apple products to buy it. Unbelievable !!
The issue is that o2 don't want you to upgrade - they'd rather use the stock to get new customers through the door - they have your existing monthly subscription anyway, they won't gain anything by supplying you with a new handset.
Hell, the submit button on their upgrade form is set to redirect you to a failure page, it doesn't even try and submit it.
This kind of crap service is exactly what you get when you hand a company a monopoly - existing iPhone owners will upgrade eventually, it's not like they can go anywhere else.
I wouldn't blame anyone for buying a French iPhone and jailbreaking it quite frankly.
It does seam that their servers have had a meltdown. I filled in the form around 9:45am, only for it to crash out on the payment screen - it seemed to dump the hex of a JPEG to screen then give up. Refreshing after that resulted in the maint page appearing :s
I just called O2 and they are totally overwhelmed - big queues. Think I'll give up and try my luck at an O2 store on Friday instead.
I called the UK Apple store last month and asked when they would start selling refurbished iPhones as I noticed they were carrying a lot of other refurb stock.
The chap I spoke to said they have stacks of refurb iphones in stock, but they couldn't sell any yet, but to keep watching the Apple store website as they "might go on soon".
Nice email from O2 on the 30th June telling me it was time for an upgrade.
Nice text message this morning telling me I'm not.
Nice lady on phone telling me that I can't upgrade until the 23rd July regardless of what the mail said.
Chances of there being any stock left then? Pretty damn low!
Ah well. Perhaps it's time for a change of phone number anyway.
My phone went off with a text from O2 at 08:42, I headed straight from my bed to my PC, got straight on the site...and I still haven't managed to get an order in.
Looks like all the 16GB are gone, and possibly the 8GB as well. You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be at my local O2 store on Friday to raise some hell if they won't let me upgrade there and then.
I dropped into an O2 shop in Dublin City Centre near the end of June and was told that I could pre-register from the 1st of July, which I duly did. They assured me that leaving the €50 deposit would secure an iPhone on the day of release. I did ask if they knew how many they would be getting so that they might limit the number of pre-orders only to be told that 'it wouldn't be a problem'.
I didn't quite believe them then, and I believe them less now!
Oh, and if you think the UK tariffs are a bit much, even if you sign up for the €100/month tariff you still only get 1GB data included, O2 ireland aren't supporting the visual voicemail feature and the number of minutes and texts included are appalling in comparison with what UK customers get.
i've been debating - do i get an iPhone and bear wiht the misery thatis O2 or do I get the new Blackberry and have the pleasure that is Vodafone..?
well.. who the hell would want an 8Gb iPhone really..??? O2 are idiots. come to think of it, apple are idiots for not letting everyone sell them.
An iPhone on Vodafone... i can but dream.
Go get a BB... it'll work better and you wont have to talk to O2 - bunch of 18 year old chavs in a call centre anyway
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