Anarchy in the UK
Giles Turnbull
build up demand, then unleash the 3G to acclaim and PR-tastic queues
at Apple stores everywhere - has backfired, at least here in the UK.
Everywhere I look this morning, I see people grumbling about how
broken the system is.
The following quotes are pulled from various sources. No, I haven't
confirmed any of them, and I'm not going to link to the originals (you
can dig most of them out with the search webs if you really need to).
They are all hearsay and you should treat them with the appropriate
bucket of salt. But when you hear *this much* hearsay from so many
different places, you have to suspect that there's some fundamental
truth inside it somewhere:
"I got to the front after two hours of queueing, and they'd run out."
"Apple, you are shite. New firmware? Nope. Me.com working? Nope."
"An hour on hold to Carphone Warehouse, then finally told that there
had been a "systems failure" and many iPhones weren't dispatched as
planned... why am I not surprised. Monday for me at the earliest. My
client has been at O2 Bluewater since 7am and is 25th in the queue.
Supposedly, O2's registration system has crashed and they haven't
processed any in the past hour. Apple Regent Street has 30 silent
tills."
"Carphone warehouse are useless, they spent an hour doing the wrong
credit check only to be told their system is down for existing
customers."
"Two hours in the store now and Lewisham O2 still hasn't sold a single phone."
"The scoop ion the street is that the O2 systems went down and they
had to process orders manually. Also the Apple store in regents street
had loads of stock, but only for new to 02 customers... it's a bit
mess really!"
"Dutch iPhone activation system is currently down - what a fuck up!"
"Could O2 cock this Iphone thing up any more?"
"I wonder if there's even any point attempting to get a hold of an
iPhone today. it's absurd they've made it such an unpleasant
experience."
All that said, perhaps this quote sums up the view of the vast majority today:
"Is anyone else already fed up hearing all the people whining about
O2's cock up with the UK iPhone?"
What's gone wrong, then? My guess: Apple and the retailers are equally
to blame. They wanted hype, and they've got it, but the stupidly
narrow window between the first day orders were taken and the day of
launch meant that the retailers needed huge technical and personnel
resources in place to cope with demand. And of course, they didn't put
enough of either resource in place and that narrow window became a
blockage.
What should they have done? They should have allowed online orders
*much* earlier - perhaps a month or six weeks before launch date,
leaving plenty of time for people to hand over their money, and for
parcels to be packed into lorries for delivery.
It would mean sacrificing some hype in favour of a little quality
customer service, but that sounds like a good thing to me.
(Yes, I've ordered one, yesterday, from Carfoon Warehouse. Yes, they
said it would be here today. Yes, I shall be *amazed* if that happens.
No, I'm not at all grumpy about it.)