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Actual Success in the iPhone Ordering Flap

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Because I sometimes feel people find me too likable, I thought I’d let you know that my iPhone 4 pre-order went through around 4:00 PM ET, right after we had cake at work, to be delivered on June 24th to my office where someone will call me when it arrives, and I will saunter down the stairs to pick it up. Oh, did I mention we had two cakes?

Anyway, like many of you, I’d been hitting the Apple online store to pre-order the iPhone 4 and getting repeatedly bumped out by, I presume, AT&T’s verification system. Got nothing in the morning before reaching the phone number entry screen later in the day and failing there. Fortunately, I have what’s known as “patience” and kept at it periodically, every hour or so (not every five minutes), until getting called away for cake.

Cake was for a long-term temp who was finally leaving us. Very nice girl though I’d only spoken to her a handful of times. Our cake choices were chocolate with chocolate frosting and strawberry cream. Chocolate is always my first choice unless there’s poundcake or if it has nuts (cake should not be crunchy). After cake and quiet conversation, I returned to my desk, got to the phone number entry screen again, and this time, the order went through.

I chose to have my iPhone 4 shipped to me because standing in line is for suckers. One problem, because I am a current AT&T customer, was the default shipping address was fixed to my AT&T billing address. That’s my home address, so no one will be there to sign for delivery. However, thinking quickly, I logged into my AT&T account and changed my billing address to work. Problem solved. I’ll change it back later, but I’m paperless anyway, so no worries about bills going to the wrong place. And actually, logging in now to check my order, I see my shipping address can now be changed, so there was never a real problem in the first place.

So if you want advice from a successful iPhone pre-orderer: relax, don’t let it interrupt your normal routine, and eat some cake.

Update: Sorry, first day preorders are sold out. Pretty much everyone who preordered after me is looking at  delivery on June 25th and later. Guess there was reason to be antsy.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Xavier Lanier

    06/15/2010 at 3:49 pm

    I don’t know what kind of black magic you pulled here, but I’m heading down to the bakery to buy a chocolate cake…

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