Hi all..

Well, I stayed up till 12AM EST to try and pre-order online. No luck. Tried to keep my eyes open as long as possible, but the last time I saw the clock at that point was about 12:35AM EST. I was frantically refreshing the page of course trying to look for that beautiful shinny “Pre-order Now!!” button to appear, but no luck.

Woke up in a cold sweat at 3:25AM EST like, “What I miss!”… Went back to my refreshing brigade and noticed on AT&T’s website, it now stated that you could pre-order the iPhone 4. Victory, right? Not really. When I went to the upgrade page for the iPhone, only previous models were there. Epic failure. But hold on, now the Apple Store stated that it was “Busy Updating the Store.” Surely this meant at 12AM PST (or 4AM EST), the Apple Store would spring to life and allow me to pre-order my shinny new iPhone 4…

Sure enough, as predicted, at 4:01AM EST, the Apple Store was back open for business. Please note, all the time I was sitting there pressing F5 (refresh) on the AT&T page unsuccessfully trying to get the iPhone 4 to show up. So I click on the Pre-Order button for the iPhone 4 on the Apple Store site and it asks me if I am adding a line or am a new customer. I say upgrading phone, so it asks me for my number, zip and last four of SS#. As I input this information, my palms start to sweat, it is 4:02AM EST and I am almost there! So I click Continue and it brings me to a page that says Retrieving your information or something like that. Finally it brings me to the next page, which shows some information about my current billing plan. I click next and boom, “Your Session Has Expired”!! WTH!!!! No way, I was only on this page for about two minutes (or less), how could my page expire?

No time to fret, must forge forward. I continue to open a new browser window just in case the expired session was cached and now I cannot even get beyond the page that says its retrieving my information. I work at this unsuccessfully, opening new browser windows, different browsers, trying a Macbook Pro, trying the iPhone 3G S browser, refreshing the AT&T page from 4AM through 5:15AM EST, again, unsuccessfully. Now I must get ready for work, so I run to the bathroom and take a 4.5 minute shower and run back to one of the many computers I now have running and try the Apple Store once again to be thrown an “Opps, something is wrong with the page you are viewing” error message. No way!!!

But there’s hope, a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I try the AT&T site once more to be presented with one new option, the Black iPhone 4, 32GB version. I hop on that baby, add it to my cart and complete the order, grandfathering my current unlimited data plan into that package (not giving that up!). They charged me the $18 activation fee, which I was told via text, would be waived after calling *639#, but I was not going to let this stop me, I could always call up and complain about the fee and have it waived at a later date. I entered in my credit information and the rest now resides in the future. It still stated that deliveries will be on a first come, first serve basis beginning on the 24th and will be handled by FedEx next day service. I am hoping I made it into the first batch. I am sure there were millions of others trying to do the same thing I did.

I just checked the Apple Store now (8:30AM EST), and it says it’s “Busy Updating the Store” again. The silver lining is that if you go to the AT&T site, they have both the Black 16GB and the 32GB available (as of now). I even tried calling AT&T to fix that $18 fee I got hit with and first they tell you they are experiencing higher than normal call volume. Once you try to get to the Customer Service Department, you are told that, “We are sorry, this department has closed due to an emergency, please try your call again later.” What’s the emergency? Their server’s are on overload? LOL..

Well, that’s my haranguing. I hope you enjoyed it. Good luck to you all, especially those that actually made it to the end of this long drawn out story. LOL..

Take care,
Nick