Buying an iPhone 3G

Alan Forkosh (apparently) - 07:31am Jul 14, 2008 PST
via email

I joined the mob buying an iPhone 3G on Saturday afternoon. Here are
some notes on the experience:

The line appeared fairly short, spanning about 3 storefronts in
downtown Walnut Creek, CA. However, it took about 4 hours to actually
get into the store and purchase an phone. Shortly after I joined the
queue, an store employee walked down the line and informed us that
they were out of black 16 Gig models but had a good stock of the other
2 models. A bit later, another employee took of census of what people
were intending to buy. We assumed that if inventory was doubtful, they
would have warned us shortly afterwards. Also, employees twice offered
bottled water to those of us waiting and a local restaurant passed out
menus and offered to deliver. The people around me were quite friendly
as we discussed phones, options, and life.

When I got to the head of the line, I observed that only a small
portion of the store was reserved for phone buying with red-shirted
employees at the door letting those in with other business (I went by
another store on Sunday and there were separate lines for iPhones and
normal business). I was eventually escorted in by an employee who
asked me which model I wanted (again informing me that there were out
of black 16's. He also asked if I was interested in a case and quickly
determined my general billing status status (current iPhone owner with
AT&T). WHen he returned with the iPhone, he started the processing on
the handheld processor that Apple Stores use for payment. All was
going well (he did wnat to see a picture ID and the last 4-digits of
my SSN were asked for) until he checked my account and saw a notice
that he suspected arose from a corporate account. I told him that I
had had a discount from Cingular and AT&T given to employees of my
company but had to forego it when I got the iPhone. Apparently,
however, the relationship (but not the discount) were still noted on
my account. It took 2 phone calls and a wait on hold to resolve this
with AT&T. From his manner, I could tell that I was not the first
person with that problem that he had processed. I've seen other
reports of similar things happening (cell phone companies had been
quite generous with corporate discounts), and this could have
accounted for a good part of the slowdown in processing. I lay this
one on lousy record-keeping at AT&T.

After getting that resolved, processing went smoothly. I was again
able to keep my current voice plan (that is more limited and cheaper
than any currently available plan). After processing my credit card,
we went over to an iMac with a iPod docking cable to activate the phone.

I should note that, as I had predicted earlier, the sales tax of 8.25%
was based on the unsubsidized price of the phone ($499 rather than
$299) and came in at an effective rate of 13.77% instead. It was noted
that the activation fee of $18 will appear on next AT&T bill.

Alan Forkosh Oakland, CA
aforkoshmac.com