A Day I’ll Never Get Back
I now own a new Apple 3G iPhone, and I ain’t real happy about it.
I’m not an unintelligent person. I went to college. I program databases for a living. In short, I should know better than to try and buy one of the hottest gadgets ever made on the very first weekend it’s available. But, you see, I had no choice.
This past Saturday, my Sprint Treo cell phone went on the fritz, as we say in the tech support industry. It began dropping calls, even with signal strength of five bars. The battery began discharging at an alarming rate, and the system software needed to be reset nearly a half dozen times in the past week alone. Earlier in the year, the Treo began refusing to talk to my Mac, thereby making it impossible to update my address book and, more critically, the mileage log I keep for income tax purposes.
This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I was about to embark on a 14-day road trip, first to the NFFC National Convention in Garden Grove and, from there, to Comic Con in San Diego.
I had to have a reliable cell phone, and it was clear the Treo no longer fit that bill.
There is an AT&T store just a few blocks from my house in a small neighborhood strip mall with a Subway Sandwich Shop and a check-cashing outlet. Not, I thought, a high-demand area for high-tech gear.
I called the store and, after three minutes of pushing buttons at the behest of an automated attendant—who on behalf of AT&T told me how much they valued my business—finally let me talk to a human being. The real, live AT&T representative told me they sold out of iPhones the first day they went on sale. In fact, by Sunday morning, every AT&T store in Los Angeles was SOLD OUT.
Likewise, the Apple Store nearest my home was on the verge of selling out. The clerk on the other end of the line seemed concerned for his and his fellow Apple sales reps safety, as they were about to venture out of the store and inform the assembled throng that the 3G iPhones they’d been so patiently waiting for were no longer to be had in Sherman Oaks.
The next closest store, some 12 to 13 miles away, was one of the first Apple Stores. It is located near the center of the Glendale Galleria, a mega mall in downtown Glendale, California..
The calm before the storm at the Apple Store in the Glendale Galleria.
Image copyright© Apple, Inc. All rights reserved.
The folks at this Apple store seemed relatively certain they would not run out of 3G iPhones anytime soon. I jumped in the car and made a beeline for the Galleria.
I got my first clue that this wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had when I found several hundred people already in line ahead of me. It was 12:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
Doesn’t anybody go to church anymore?
Not one of the dozens of folks queued up to get into the Apple Store I passed, while searching for the end of the line, appeared to be over 35. I was the oldest person there.
I found the end of the line some 200 yards from the entrance to the store in a corridor adjoining the main mall with a bridge to the parking structure. There I found the only three people I’d seen in line over the age of 40. They were all arguing with a young woman from the Apple store.
The 40-somethings were demanding to know if after standing in this line they would, in fact, be able to purchase a 3G iPhone. All the poor store rep could tell them was, “we have an ample supply of new iPhones.” I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think these people had all just come from the Sherman Oaks Apple Store.
The middle-agers departed in a huff and once again I was the reigning senior, all alone at the end of a very long queue.
Scream Baby Scream!
The end of the line for a new Apple iPhone was located directly opposite the Galleria’s Kiddie Play Pit. This is a gigantic enclosed area teaming with toddlers and preschoolers, all squealing, shrieking, and screaming either with delight or in various forms of pain after having fallen off one of the brightly colored, highly polished fairyland figurines in the pit.
Directly in front of me was a large plasma ad kiosk rotating between disco beat ads for the “essential” specials of the day to be found around the mall...and an extremely annoying ad for an upcoming Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly film.
The only good thing about all the noise pollution was that it distracted me from noticing that after twenty minutes of standing in line, I was soaking wet from profusely perspiring and so was everyone in line around me.
Someone in their infinite wisdom—the manager of the Apple Store blamed the Glendale Fire Department—had decided to run the iPhone queue down the connecting corridor directly above the Galleria’s food court.
Mr. Oberleitner was the only person over 35 in line for an iPhone this past Sunday at the Glendale Galleria.
Image courtesy of Google Images. All rights reserved.
Roaring up through the opening between floors was the combined cooking heat from every fast food vendor you can imagine. The air in the corridor was every bit as hot, if not hotter, than the air outside the mall, and it was over 90 degrees outside. To make matters worse, Apple insisted we stand next to the railing beside the furnace chimney-like opening between floors.
The next corridor over, on the other side of the Apple store, was situated above retail stores and was some 25 degrees cooler.
“Could be worse,” said a handsome young LA fireman waiting in line with his finance to buy matching iPhones. “In Pasadena [where the Apple store is located on the street], they have to wait outside in the sun.”
Ya Want Fries With That?
Some three hours and twenty minutes after finding my place at the end of the line, I was now at the head of the line, just moments away from getting my very own 3G iPhone.
John [not his real name, but boy would I love to tell you who this dolt really is] emerged from the Apple Store and rescued me from my own personal purgatory. He asked if I knew which model of iPhone I wanted. There are two, an 8 GB model and a 16 GB model. The 16 GB phone is available with either a white or black back.
I told John, “I want the larger phone in black.”
It took some time to run a credit check—apparently AT&T wants to make sure you pay your bills before they bind you up for the next two years—to activate my iPhone and run my charge card. I was all set to sign the sales slip when I noticed it was far too inexpensive to be the 16GB phone. Sure enough, John had sold me an 8 GB phone.
That was my first iPhone purchase of the day.
John voided the registration of the 8 GB phone. In order to insure that I would be able to port my Sprint cell phone number to AT&T, we had to go through the entire process a second time. However, instead of crediting my account for the purchase of the first phone, John simply left that transaction in place and sold me the second phone for the difference in price between the two models of iPhone.
At this point, I didn’t care how he rang up the sale. I just wanted to get the hell out of Glendale.
Once home, I sat down at my Mac to sync my new iPhone with the contacts and calendars in my Apple Mobile Me account. As I was about to do so, I noticed that I received one of those Welcome New Customer e-mails from AT&T.
I also noticed that while the message was correctly addressed to me, the cell phone number was not mine. I dug out my receipt and discovered a third cell phone number and $60 worth of charges for items I neither purchased nor came away from the store with.
Three iPhones in one day just to get the transaction right.
Image copyright© Apple, Inc. All rights reserved.
You Again?
Knowing that I would be leaving town the following morning, and that my cell phone number was effectively in limbo, I jumped in the car and raced back to the Glendale Galleria, arriving just minutes before it was scheduled to close.
Apple was still only admitting people to the store a few at a time, even those not wanting a 3G iPhone. I was done politely waiting for service. I headed right for the Apple Store clerk manning the barricade and insisted on seeing the store manager.
Despite the fact that I was obviously upset, the officious young lady, acting like the doorman at some LA hotspot, said, “Is there a problem? Perhaps I can help.”
“Yes, there is a problem,” I told her in the most annoyed tone of voice I could manage. “You’ve lost my cell phone number and sold me stuff I didn’t buy, don’t have, and don’t want.”
“Sir, you’ll have to get in line,” said the female rent-a-cop standing next to the Apple gatekeeper. “I’m done standing in lines!” I told her.
“Sir, if you don’t step back, I’m going to have to call for additional security,” she retorted.
“I have a better idea,” I said glaring at her. “Let’s just call the Glendale Police station here in the mall and let them sort this out.”
She was taken aback by my escalation of threats and stammered for a few seconds while she tried to figure out how to call my bluff. Just as she was about to mutter something, one of the store managers came up and assured her that she would straighten things out.
After listening to my story, Liz [not her real name] asked for my paper work and, after reading the two receipts John had given me an hour earlier, asked, “Are you Mr. Oberleitner or Mr. Peterson?”
“Whose Peterson?” I asked.
Liz pointed out that the receipt with the extra items was for an iPhone purchased by an M. J. Peterson. The other receipt was for an 8 GB iPhone purchased by C. W. Oberleitner.
The ever-efficient John had given me another customer’s receipt.
Liz went on to point out that “it’s impossible to port the wrong phone number from one cell phone carrier to another.”
In order to port a cell phone number, you have to have the person’s account number and password. Despite my having given John my password and cell phone number, four times, and confirming it each time he read it to me, he had managed to assign me an entirely new number.
The only solution was to return the 16 GB 3G iPhone, which I’d only had for a little more than an hour, cancel my new AT&T account, and sell me yet another iPhone, hoping that this time the Apple Store would get it right and port my cell phone number to my second new AT&T account.
It took an entire day, two trips to the Glendale Galleria, three credit checks, three activations, one 8 GB and two 16 GB 3G iPhones, one poorly trained sales rep, and two store managers, but I finally have my new Apple iPhone. Oh, and Liz said she was sorry there was nothing Apple could do about my having to pay AT&T two cell phone account activation fees.
All hail Steve Jobs.
C’ya real soon!
