The shame, the failure...

Sometimes one has a chance to be smug.



I really thought this was one of those times.

As is usual, on release of the latest shiny shiny from our friends at Apple, my son was there on his browser at 8am on the 26th trying to order a new iPhone X.

He was cursing. He could not get to the site initially as it was too busy. The Apple shopping App was not help. He could not get the Apple upgrade programme to work. He ended up faffing with a finance thing, and finally, in spite of all his efforts and fast typing, even only a few minutes after 8am, he got a date of end of November to early December.

I had a lie in, and around 9am, I decided, what the hell, I'll order one, and yay, end of November to early December. They provide a one week window of expected delivery.

However, a friend then told me that "Apple business have separate stock, you could get one on the 3rd".

I thought - yay, I can oversleep and be smug, I'll order from them, and cancel the other order.

So I checked, and we spoke to Apple business. It was a bit like...

• Ordering starts 8am on 31st October...
• OK, so how do we order
• Send us an email
• When, 8am?
• No you can send now (this was the 30th)
• OK so what happens at 8am
• We send off the orders
• Does it matter that we only ordered now and not earlier
• No, they all go in a pool
• OK so when will we get it
• Well, they'll start shipping from 6th Nov

It was not clear if they meant shipping on 6th to arrive 7th, or shipping to arrive on 6th, or whatever. On 31st they confirmed the order had been sent at 8am. But we called on 3rd and were told they will tell us when we can expect it, on the 6th.

You can guess the rest I bet.

• On 6th - no we don't know
• On 7th - no we don't know
• On 8th - no we don't know
• On 9th - no we don't know
• On 10th - no we don't know - but do keep chasing!
• On 13th - no we don't know
• On 14th - no we don't know
• On 15th - no we don't know

This is really poor Apple. I know you have to allocate stock and there is a list but how hard is it to say when it will arrive, as an estimate. They manage it in retail. If it is going to be like 25th November, just damn well say so.

Sadly my smugness at having one on 3rd, or even 6th, has been thwarted by increasing amounts of time passing. I guess we'll see, and cancel whichever takes longer.

I feel I have massively had my smugness taken away. Even if I do get mine before my son, it will only be a few days, and the smugness will have diminished to a wry smile at best.

Damn you Apple!

BTW, Victoria got one on a contract, and got it on the 3rd, and out smugged us both.

P.S. Yes, I ordered one for my son too so that after I was smug I could cheer him up.