How did your iPhone 6 Pre-Orders go

Apple broke records yet again on Friday With 4 million preOrders in 24 hours. Did this effect your iPhone 6+ pre-orders? It sure did for us. 

We like most were waiting for the Apple store to go live Friday night at midnight after an hour of waiting we decided to go ahead and pre-order through ATT's site after a bit of trouble we got through.

I wish it was over then and there, however like the energizer bunny the problems just kept going and going. Every morning I kept waking to an issue and hoping my dates were not getting pushed back. To this date, I’ve put in a good 8-10hours over the phone with ATT not counting hold hours. I’ve had every iPhone since the original launch and have pre-ordered multiple times and have also stood in line twice. 

 

You're not a real Apple fan boy until you have gone through your initiation process. 

   ▢ Get your first Pre-order in
   ▢ Meet some fellow Apple fan boys on a product launch Line

 

Friday Night: 

  •  Apple store: didn’t come online till 2:45am PST
  •  Apple Store App: was up and down, some people got their orders in
  •  ATT: I believe were getting flooded because Apple store was down however they seemed to have their own issues. Some were able to get through without any issues. However, to me it seemed to have something to do with ATT eligibility. The service that checked eligibility was very unstable flopping back and forth.
  •  Email: Many people were not getting confirmation emails of their preorders and left in limbo.

 

Saturday:

  • Morning Email: received an email from ATT saying basically they could not charge my card. I called my bank (USBank) and found out this transaction was reported as fraud. I cleared this up and got back on the phone with ATT. After a few hours of trying and messages like “Due to technical difficulties call back later” which is very disconcerting to hear for a time sensitive matter. At this point I spoke with customer support and they indicated that it would just automatically charge again and would be fine. 


Sunday:

  • Morning Email: Once again received an email saying the same things as Saturday. Got on the phone with my bank again to find it was declared as fraud again. Cleared this up with USbank and got on hold for another solid hour plus waiting for ATT. This gave me some time to search through twitter for other people with the same issue. I found that many people were having the exact same issues with their transaction being flagged as fraudulent. 
  • ATT on the phone: So finally got through and was working with a very nice woman Jamie who knew what she was talking about. Things seemed to go well we were manually pushing the orders through so I wouldn’t be worrying if this was going to happen again. First order went through fine
  • And then we hit a bump: Tried to push the second order thought and ran into the wall saying insufficient funds, which shouldn’t be the case their was clearly over 1000 dollars in their. So I asked whether she would stay here with me while I get USbank on the phone as well. 
  • Both ATT & USbank on phone: I thought wow I got another knowledgable lady now from USbank as well this is going to be a breeze (Jasmine). So after a little back and forth it seems this order shows it being charged on USbank side but ATT does not see this on their screens. This is the reason why it showed insufficient funds because she was trying to push a third order through. Ok at this point their wasn’t much we can do. 
  • Not much we can do: So at this point I wondered what our options are neither had any ideas. I suggested can we cancel that charge and push it through again? Which was fine, but another issue took shape. Neither of them can call out and due to a bank requirement to talk to the seller this wasn’t going to happen. I then suggested that I put them both on speaker phone.
  • Speaker Phone with ATT and Usbank: Well after doing all this we find out Usbank needs an authorization code to cancel this order and since ATT doesn’t see the order as processed so there was no code and became a bust.
  • Only option: At this point the only thing I could do was to use another card and dispute the other transaction with the bank later. With that said new card went through fine without any issues. However, now I have a third charge in limbo for $479 that I will have to dispute which could take a week or more to see that money back. So now I have over $1300 bucks tied up in the preOrder and many hours on the phone.
  • Checking Shipping times: So at this point I again point out I am doing all this so my shipping date does not get pushed out further. At this point, I had a floor manager on the phone by the name of Diana who confirmed that my dates are still looking good. I took this time to ask her some additional questions. 
  • Floor manager questions: Does ATT have the iPhone's or do they have to wait on batches from Apple? She stated all iPhone's with shipping dates to November they have in their warehouse. She also stated their warehouse workers will most likely be working through the weekends to get us our phones as fast as possible. I then asked are shipping dates like 14-21days include weekends? She stated that its business days however again our warehouse personnel will be working though weekends.


Monday:

ATT Support at 866.267.4510 from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. ET daily.

ATT Support at 866.267.4510 from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. ET daily.

  • Status Page: Ok so decided to check my shipment status though ATT's status page. Bringing bad news for a 3rd morning in a row. I noticed 2 things have changed. First my order date changed from 12th to the 15th and my shipping dates are now out in November.
  • Calling ATT again: Ok once again calling ATT. This time by the sound of it I seemed to get someone who was new. But I had her check her screens and it seems all the information is correct there and that ATT's status page is wrong. Which was a relief, made me wonder how many other people were about have have this issue today.
  • Shipping don’t worry: The ATT customer support lady said not to worry about the shipping status as its there just to give us reinsurance. I told her it’s doing the opposite for me. She said go by the tracking number once you received it in say 24-48 hours.
  • Argument: So I raised an argument with her so if these shipping dates are fake and I need to wait to get a real tracking number to verify my shipping, wouldn’t it already be too late to do anything about it and even cancel. I made the point Verizon currently would guarantee a ship date of Sept 28th this late in the game. She kind agreed without saying anything.


Tuesday:

  • Status Page: Ok seems the stats page is back to the real order date of the 12 and showing a ship date of 10/13/14 - 10/22/14. Now again I’m told to ignore this date and wait for tracking info. Still no tracking 

 

Wednesday:

  • Tracking: Still no tracking and show same info as Tuesday

 

Round Up

  • I preOrdered 2 64gb iPhone 6 plus’s though ATT
  • I spent over 10hours on the phone
  • Had to get both ATT and USbank on the same call 
  • I have an additional $476 dollars that I need to dispute
  • I will not have my phones on the 19th

P.S keep in mind ATT still has a $40 per phone upgrade charge..

 

Worst iPhone pre-order ever. Personally I hope your experiences have been better. Please take a moment and share them below, the good or bad.

Thomas Fraley
I am a tech enthusiast whose main focus is making technology easy again for everyone. Educated with degrees in network engineering and project management. I've worked in the entertainment industry for a decade as a director of information technology for global companies pioneering the way. A few years ago I decided to give back and have been helping young entrepreneur startups off on the right foot.
www.lifewithtech.net
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