What I can’t understand is how one Carphone Warehouse outlet in Wexford can process the sale of an iPhone by just taking details and doing it later, while other outlets (in my experience O2) can’t? Is it because they are being unreasonable or unwilling to do so?

I got the impression that whatever the guys were doing over the phone was server dependent – so they couldn’t have done it on the Saturday.

That’s how it seemed from my side of the counter anyway.

Does this mean that the O2 Experience store were being selective about who they sold iPhone too, as they could have sold out on the Saturday if they followed they same practices as they did on the Sunday?

As for the treatment in the CPW, that’s disappointing. I can understand your frustration.

I went into CPW the Thursday before the 3G phones launched and asked if I could pre-order. No, they said, but we’ll put your name on the waiting list and you’ll be the first to get a call when the new stock comes in. I was a little sceptical when the guy scribbled my details in a ledger – so I called twice more over the next couple of days to find out when the new stock would be in and to make sure I was on the list.

As we now know, the new phones wouldn’t come for weeks, but I had been reassured repeatedly that I was near the top of the CPW list – and so contented myself with waiting for the phone call with the happy news.

Man, am I a sucker.

After hearing that some of the O2 stores had got stock in, I went into the CPW to ask what the story was. Oh, they said, our management have scrapped the waiting lists – it’s first come first served from now on. Of course, they didn’t think to actually call the people whose details they’d taken in good faith to tell them this, the feckless gimps.

Then on the Saturday of the great O2 server fail that Alexia described in her first iPhone post, a CPW person told me, yes, they’d also got iPhones in but the management had snapped them all up for corporate clients – at which point I swore never to darken the door of CPW again.

As it happened, I staked out the O2 Experience store for two hours on the Sunday morning after the server fail and managed to be the second person into the shop. As the online registration form was down, the staff had to call a line to register the phone manually – so it only took and hour to get registered (pity the poor people back the queue, which at this stage was well out onto the street).
Still, I emerged a satisfied customer – my black 16Gig gripped tightly in my feverish paw.

And my, how it is full of Shiny. I’ve had a great user experience with it so far – only one minor hitch switching between 3G and wifi, which I corrected via a quick noodle around a help forum and resetting the network preferences.

Certainly worth the hassle getting it. Not that this in any ways excuses the cackhandedness that Apple, O2 and CPW have shown during the 3G launch. Hassle does not good customer service – nor a loyal customer – make.

The second email complaint did get a lovely email back from Paddy, who promised me that the store I had issues with would be in touch with an apology, that was a week ago and still nothing, more can be seen on that on the O2 forum where I was asked to keep Paddy informed.

As I said before I joined esat digifone the day the launched and have not moved since, but the iPhone fiasco really got to me it was like I was being penalised for been a bill pay customer, not been able to order online, needing an upgrade to even avail of the iPhone the list goes on.

I agree though the staff in O2 stores are appauling, and after getting my iPhone from the Carphone warehouse I have promised never to shop in O2 stores ever again.

That’s where mine was.