But I seemed to get everything sorted out ok in the end, I got an order number certainly even if they did charge me £100 holding deposit because I moved recently....

Daft buggers.

As I've been saying for a week or more, there's no stock.

No pre-pay, no white iPhones, very few 16Gb iPhones, less than 45K iPhones in total for the whole of the UK for launch week.

As for O2 fucking up the launch/ordering process - quelle surprise. The full details of the tariffs were only signed off on Friday, 4 days after they originally planned to start taking pre-orders.

i always wondered why everyone complains so much about O2

this is the first i've been with them and, upto yesterday, i'd had no complaints at all

but to be caught unawares that there would be a stampead like this is just ridiculous. did they really expect people to get the text message this morning and think to themselves "well that's nice, maybe i'll log on this evening when I get home and put my order in"?

i'm hearing that people have called the customer services up, but have been told that upgrade orders can only be placed online, they won't even allow you to do that in the shop on Friday!

I'm >this< close to just buying a new one and getting a new number instead of smegging around with this upgrade process.

I was on the site @ 8.20 and had to try 5 times, but managed to get an order confirmation...now heres waiting to see what/if anything arrives on friday!

o2 Ireland seem to be a bit confused about the whole affair aswell. They were taking pre-orders as of last Tuesday. I was the 2nd customer in the door and was told they didnt know how to order it on the system yet. Was then told that if I wanted to put down €50 deposit that would guarantee me the phone. Went back later that day and they had several hand written A4 pages of people that had given over €50...didnt fill me with confidence.

for an hour. What a horribly complex process. I login, then I have to type my phone number ( I just logged in, its on the screen!!) and then it texts me a code ( except it didn't the first dozen times) and reloading gave a remedial screen which asked for credit card details before crashing. It also warns that it will need my account number ( I JUST LOGGED IN. YOU KNOW IT ALREADY). And then it broke completely. I wasn't even offered a phone number. Why not click "Yes I want it and put it on my next bill?", Or stagger then texts they sent out this morning?

is the way the have dealt with existing iPhone customers. If someone was prepared to pay £269 (or latterly £169) for the version 1 phone, I'd say it's a pretty fair bet that they are nailed on to buy the new one at £99. Therefore (if you work on the principle that these customers' loyalty should be rewarded), homes have already been found for the first 200,000 or so of the phones to arrive. The pricing has been common knowledge for a month or so. Why on God's Green Earth could they not have been nice and calmly taking upgrade orders for the past few weeks and making sure they were in a position to have all the upgrades lined up and ready to go on Thursday night. If this is not logistically possible, they could allocate customers to particular stores for collection. For example, I live in Macclesfield, so I would have been quite happy to have been told to go and pick a reserved phone on Friday from o2 (or indeed CPW) in Macclesfield.

No, wait. Maybe their bedlam approach is more sensible.

iLoveiT

Can they turn off the WiFi if you use too much of your own data?

So I get my text just after 8am and I try and order.

I get to the point where I have entered my card details and 4 times it says there has been a problem - please try again later!

Now its been in maintenance mode since 9.30!!

Is this O2 hyping up the situation or is their upgrade site really FUBAR'd?

Really annoying!

I started the process at about 9:05 and never had a single problem. My order has been confirmed so hopefully i'll recieve one on friday :)

As another point, I was interested in getting the phone in white, but was never given the option, it just defaulted to black. Never mind i'll be happy either way.

Same here. I went on about 9.40am and ordered the 16Gb £30pm iPhone with no problems at all... got an order number and everything...

I guess this is one way for o2 to get all their potential customers to request their PAC codes. Also a good way to measure the initial "interest" in the phone.

..got me fooled

They won't even offer me an upgrade until the last month of my 18 month contract, next february. I imagine something shinier will have caught my fickle eye by then, was willing to give them money for it, unfortunately they're unwilling to take it. I'm sure someone will...

Daft buggers.

Does anyone have any confirmed information that the "Unlimited" data usage includes the 3G network? The upgrade page I viewed this morning had an option for Bolt ons and started talking about Data bolt ons?!?!

I "ordered" one at 0854 this morning, went through without hitch. I haven't as of yet received any confirmation via email, however.

their order forms were up too for abotu 20 seconds then it all went pete tong and went back to the info page thats beent here for weeks :(

I got the text at 8.45am and tried right away. It took a while for the site to get to the application form, which I filled in, but on clicking send just got a page telling me there was a problem and to try again. I went round this loop several times over the next 45 mins (when I actually managed to get that far) then eventually got the maintenance page, which has been up ever since.

I've seen three different variants of this page. Two of them want a form filling in, but the 3rd wants me to enter my phone number so it can text me an upgrade code (which I've now got) but is worded as if it's starting again. The text message says to enter the upgrade number onto the screen to continue, but there's no field to enter anything into, and no link to follow to go to the next stage. It's really confusing. O2 have really stuffed this up.

I tried a few times this morning, then the site fell over and was just going to a "maintenance" page ("Hi there, we've broken our site because we are stupid and didn't realise that thousands of people would log in at once. We'll be back later. Hopefully"). It claims to be sort of back up now, but I'm not getting anywhere further than the first page where you enter your number to get the upgrade code texted to you.

I run a few really noddy websites and before I try and plug 'em anywhere (and that reminds me - www.scareports.com !!) I run the simplest of load testing so I can see how much they can handle before buckling - not that fussed whether its the web server, the database, bandwidth or whatever - but just an idea on how many concurrent users the site can handle. It's really not that difficult that, if I were to have a list of 10000 people who wanted to use the site and that I know it can only cope with, say 2000 "simultanouesly", then DONT TELL EVERYBODY TO VISIT THE SITE AT THE SAME TIME.

And yes my frustration is partially because that o2 refuse to ship the phone to my office ( I'm not taking a day off just to get a phone delivered to my home) and that my order crashed half way through and now it just tells me that they wont sell it to me as I'm outside the UK, even though I'm sitting here looking at the drizzle of the square mile right now...

The email went out at 7:36 (atleast that is when i recieved it) i checked the website and it was down for maintenance, I checked back at around 8:20 and it was working again and I managed to get my order in for a 16GB and I have just checked back to see what is going on and that option isn't actually available anymore, seems like a bit of a mess really, you would have thought they would have been a little better prepared

And no 16GB ones? I mean, WHAT?! I dont know. What a pullava!

It was working again - briefly - but now it's keeled over again.

I reckon that O2 ignored all the pre-registrations and just looked at the way the first launch played out - no queues (honest ones, not stage-managed ones) outside stores, low demand, slow pick-up - and figured that it would be the same this time round. Quite possibly they figured that although was loads of hype last time, there was ne real surge and that it would be the same again.

What's the chances that when the third iPhone comes out* they'll look at today's antics, figure "OMG We'd better spend bazillions on extra capacity to cope" and, since all people really wanted was 3G and GPS in the first place, there will be minimal demand again and they'll have wasted all that money and effort...

*Since Apple call each iPod by version, eg iPod 2G, Nano 3G, what will they call the 3rdG iPhone, since the iPhone 2G is already called iPhone 3G...?

Selected the iPhone and tariff I wanted, and apparently my baskets empty.

I try again. I get told I have *two* items in my basket on the sidebar, click on the basket link, and get told my basket is still apparently empty.

Tried with IE. The same.

Who coded the O2 site? Retarded monkeys? Could someone explain to O2 that the whole point of buying stuff online is, well, the ability to actually buy stuff...

Go somewhere else, if you could!

Paris cause she couldn't get one either!

So the shop seems to back up and running now - after being told i had 2 items in my basket (after all teh times i hit the Add to basket button in frustration, it seems that they have no 16GB iphone available at any tarriff online.

Its sucks! Get real O2!

iHate - Cos you'd nnever foind M$ doing anything like that......um ok maybe you would..

Thought I'd made it through this time... even got as far as getting the upgrade code text, and a page with pretty little iPhone pictures asking me to select either 8GB or 16GB and a tariff.

But the next step leads straight into the Form From Hell that I was getting earlier this morning, which in turn led to its badly-formatted clone, neither of which have the option to order a dock, etc. That form, after a couple of minutes' worth of a loading whirligig, led to the message "There has been a problem with taking your order. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please try again."

Not getting that "valued customer" feeling here.

Which'll just about explain my earlier difficulty. No 16GB, no sale.

You all laughed at them when they fully staffed the last jesus phone launch, which completely fizzled. And now youre moaning cos theyve learnt a lesson and arent doing the same for the second coming? IS there no keeping some people happy? Its the same as the last one for gods sake. Its just a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, doesnt have sat-nav and does have a shit camera. Why on earth would anyone get any more excited than last time?

No problems for me at all.

The site has been down for everyone else I know who is trying for hours now.

there are now no white or 16gb available to order, well that just sucks rear end, seriously what morons at 02 thought there wouldn't be a rush on those?

I got into work at 8.45, checked my email, clicked on the link, went through the order process and got the confirmation without any problem.

I just wonder if one will turn up on Friday.

..so for the umpteenth time I try and order.

It takes my crd details then falls over!!!

So I try yet again

The site is down for maintenance for the 2nd time!!!

GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YER A**E O2 AND GET SOMETHING RIGHT FOR A CHANGE AND STOP MESSING US CUSTOMERS AROUND!!!!

I got up the point where they were going to confirm my order and their site fell over again. Next time I'll finish my transaction before notifying my colleagues. I blame their extra two connections for causing mine to fail!

"And that every time someone registered their interest, they ordered in an iPhone for them. Yet they didn't anticipate today's demand."

hmmm guess someone forgot to tell them there was 2 versions of the iPhone, i'd expect most people to go for the 16gb.

I've got a Nokia handset on O2 and am about 2-3 months away from the end of my contract. I phoned O2 CS to ask if I could upgrade to the 3G iPhone when it launches and they said yes.

I went into a O2 shop on Saturday and they told me the opposite, I can only upgrade in August, 1 month before my current plan runs out.

They really need to get this straight, especially because they're making their existing customers suffer. New customers who want the phone will probably get one with no fuss. The usual story.

have they had to create a simply ordering form. One that knows that i'm already logged in and one that doesn't ask my twice for all my details. What a complete shambles.

Still trying to order one at 11:40!

Well I got a bit further than my last post. Problem number 1, they've not tested their upgrade process using Apple's Safari browser. On a hunch, I tried using Firefox 3 instead of Safari. Having put my phone number in again and got a second upgrade number sent to me this time I got a screen with a field in it to enter the upgrade number. So I did, then got the same details form I've already filled in like 10 times. Dutifully filled that in; it thought about it for a while then dumped me back at the form page again. So I filled it in again, waited, and then got an error with an error code. So I reloaded the upgrade page and this time it jumped straight to the form page again. Filled it in AGAIN, then waited, then got another page which said: "There has been a problem with taking your order. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please try again".

Arrrgggghhh !!!!

And why the hell haven't they got this working with Safari. It's an Apple product. Don't they think there's an outside chance at least some Apple customers might actually use Apple products to buy it. Unbelievable !!

I the maintenance page for a couple of hours, and hit refresh every few minutes, however I have now successfully ordered my iPhone to be delivered on Friday, and taken the day off work to wait in for the courier! w00t!

I called the UK Apple store last month and asked when they would start selling refurbished iPhones as I noticed they were carrying a lot of other refurb stock.

The chap I spoke to said they have stacks of refurb iphones in stock, but they couldn't sell any yet, but to keep watching the Apple store website as they "might go on soon".

'I "ordered" one at 0854'

Did they charge you an arm and a leg to call that number?

The issue is that o2 don't want you to upgrade - they'd rather use the stock to get new customers through the door - they have your existing monthly subscription anyway, they won't gain anything by supplying you with a new handset.

Hell, the submit button on their upgrade form is set to redirect you to a failure page, it doesn't even try and submit it.

This kind of crap service is exactly what you get when you hand a company a monopoly - existing iPhone owners will upgrade eventually, it's not like they can go anywhere else.

I wouldn't blame anyone for buying a French iPhone and jailbreaking it quite frankly.

Nice email from O2 on the 30th June telling me it was time for an upgrade.

Nice text message this morning telling me I'm not.

Nice lady on phone telling me that I can't upgrade until the 23rd July regardless of what the mail said.

Chances of there being any stock left then? Pretty damn low!

Ah well. Perhaps it's time for a change of phone number anyway.

It does seam that their servers have had a meltdown. I filled in the form around 9:45am, only for it to crash out on the payment screen - it seemed to dump the hex of a JPEG to screen then give up. Refreshing after that resulted in the maint page appearing :s

I just called O2 and they are totally overwhelmed - big queues. Think I'll give up and try my luck at an O2 store on Friday instead.

shop.o2.co.uk is working again, but you can only order 8GB iPhones now.

Beeen trying unsuccessfully to get onto the site, but clearly demand was overwhelming them.

Now however the 16GB has run out, the site is fully accessible! Shame that I'm not interested in an 8GB model.

Not impressed.

"Its just a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, doesnt have sat-nav and does have a shit camera."

Erm, it does have sat-nav. Well, it certainly has a GPS receiver, anyway.

But you're right, on the whole - it's not that big a deal.

My phone went off with a text from O2 at 08:42, I headed straight from my bed to my PC, got straight on the site...and I still haven't managed to get an order in.

Looks like all the 16GB are gone, and possibly the 8GB as well. You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be at my local O2 store on Friday to raise some hell if they won't let me upgrade there and then.

i've been debating - do i get an iPhone and bear wiht the misery thatis O2 or do I get the new Blackberry and have the pleasure that is Vodafone..?

well.. who the hell would want an 8Gb iPhone really..??? O2 are idiots. come to think of it, apple are idiots for not letting everyone sell them.

An iPhone on Vodafone... i can but dream.

Go get a BB... it'll work better and you wont have to talk to O2 - bunch of 18 year old chavs in a call centre anyway

I dropped into an O2 shop in Dublin City Centre near the end of June and was told that I could pre-register from the 1st of July, which I duly did. They assured me that leaving the €50 deposit would secure an iPhone on the day of release. I did ask if they knew how many they would be getting so that they might limit the number of pre-orders only to be told that 'it wouldn't be a problem'.

I didn't quite believe them then, and I believe them less now!

Oh, and if you think the UK tariffs are a bit much, even if you sign up for the €100/month tariff you still only get 1GB data included, O2 ireland aren't supporting the visual voicemail feature and the number of minutes and texts included are appalling in comparison with what UK customers get.

Commited jobsatarian here,

Tried my order a 7.30 this morning and credit card was rejected as I hardly ever used it.

By the time I phoned the credit card company and got the card cleared the site was down. by the time it came back up there were no 16gb models :-(

I hate Jobshovah now!

and it's finally ordered. What are the chances of getting it on Friday though...

Noticed the email about 11.30, clicked through and it processed order straight away with no problems. Confirmation emails came through shortly after.

I've been hitting the site for just over 2 hours now (since 9.30) - and have got to the 'choose your phone and tarrif' screen twice and it keeps crashing out.

what an absolute joke - once you get sent the code, they should switch you onto another box instead of continuing to run you on this overloaded server.

very very cross as an upgrade customer!

I was told by a CS person this morning that as I wasn't eligible to upgrade I could buy one at cost, £300 for 8gb and £350 for 16gb and just have the Iphone part as a bolt on instead of the Unlimited web I already have !!

BTW - I went straight though to business CS (option 2) @8:45

OK, I saw all the fuss about the site being down and went to look for myself. I thought I was in for a treat, because it was working.

Then I discoverd the lack of 16GB availability. I had to show a lot of restraint to not just make do with an 8GB model.

One possibly worrying (though minor) consideration is O2's statement that the 'black 16GB iPhone' is not available. I was under the impression that the 16GB model was exclusively in white.

Damnit, I want the bragging rights of a white iPhone!

Just in case anyone's wondering - CPW's shop is selling them and seems slightly more stable. Just in case this helps anyone.........

Any of you whingers stopped to think that Apple may have given O2 a certain amount of phones for launch and that is it?

And the people who can't upgrade till the end of their contract? read what you sign for godsake, you signed up to your current deal and were happy at the time.

wierd - on the macrumours site someone reported that they'd had no luck with Firefox but the first time they tried it on Safari it went straight through without a glitch

i've been reloading and entering my details non-stop now for 4 hours

if the rest of you could just STOP trying to upgrade your iPhones for 10 minutes it'd give me a chance to get my order through the system. thanksverymuchverykindofyou :-) :-)

Honestly, O2 are trying to do many of you a favour by making you stop and think before piling yet more of your hard earned onto the collection plate in the church of Apple. Can you really criticise them for this? This fuss makes the linux fanboys and the scientologists look quite rational....

IDIOTS!

It's an APPLE iPhone. APPLE.

You don't think that one or two users might be trying to connect using a Mac?

People who ordered phones today with no problems -- you guys all using Firefox, or IE??

Got the email at 8:30 this morning. Ordered my 16Gb iphone at 9:10 am this morning without any problems. Roll on Friday - shame I can't just pick it up from a shop to avoid courier problems.

Nice lady in customer services says the website's titsup and will be rebooted at 3pm. My order got all the way to the end and then I got kicked back to the original page with no comfirmation. Apparently that's quite common.

I completed my order just fine at 11.30am ish. Seems to be OK so far. I am a new customer and they didn't ask me for a deposit or anything when I ordered. The only down side is that I have had to end my O2 boycott .... I will miss you Vodafone ..

This is soo bad. Can't buy it instore and the upgrade "site" has blown up so many times with the spinning dots of death...

Thousands of mugs who ordered an iPhone the first time around are desperate to shell out more cash for another one.

It's just a phone. Get over it. It's not going to make you better at your sales/marketing job and it's not going to make you able to attract women without the rohitnol you normally rely on. Get back in your BMW M3 and go drink branded spirits in Hoxton.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shoreditch+twat

I have now put my debit card details into a form, that every time it appears, is different.

Once I got a proper screen, with select phone, select tariff, since then have just been re-entering into this silly form

Hope to god it hasn't taken million entries x £99!!

Madness I tells ya.

Got a 16GB iPhone ordered from CPW with no problems... well my card was declined the first time but no probs when I tried again!

And I can pick up from my local store, happy days indeed!

"One possibly worrying (though minor) consideration is O2's statement that the 'black 16GB iPhone' is not available. I was under the impression that the 16GB model was exclusively in white."

YOU

CANNOT

BUY

A

WHITE

iPHONE

IN

THE

UK.

Better?

O2 site says PAYG not until later this year. Carphone warehouse site says not til Christmas. That certainly puts a spanner in the works of my plan to unlock it and use 3's HSDPA for only £5 for unlimited data per month.

I just want to check that no money has been taken from my card as I've not been able to get all the way through after putting my card details in?!!

What a POS web app that upgrade site is - not content with sending the stampeding hordes in at the same time ('we're only a comms company, why would we have any expertise in capacity planning'), we're presented with just about the most ungraceful web 2.0 interface ever deployed - the spinny dots of timeout death have no failover OR fallback, so if you are unlucky enough to have a timeout at any point in the ordering process you have to go right back to the start, and get a new upgrade code texted to you! WTF?! This point alone must be doubling or trippling the apparent load on their servers.

Just spoke to a lady at o2 who says they have stopped taking pre-orders as the website has stopped functioning, she says she doesn't know when the site will change to reflect this, just that they are looking into it.

As for getting an iPhone now, you just have to ring up on friday with everybody else and just hope that you get through.

Just to confirm she said that they only have limited stock aswell, because apparently they didn't know how many people would want one!

Well, that is what they would have said had I bothered to call them this morning after trying several times to get an order in. What kind of complete numpty thought that there would not be a flood of response to the offer? Did they really just expect a few hundred people to try and buy?

It is things like this, in the beginning of the 21st century, that drive me to complete despair for us all. These captains of industry cannot get the simple things right, yet they expect - and get - huge salaries and bonuses for acts of gross incompetence.

As it happens, I'll be content to sit it out with my iPhone 2G until the hiatus dies down in a few weeks time. Meanwhile I can occupy myself with MobileMe, an altogether much more attractive proposition than the iPhone 3G and with none of the O2 bollocks that we have seen today.

When I can walk into a store and buy one over the counter I will. Until then, you lot, its all yours.

Icon selected sarcastically. Today with O2 certainly was no joke.

Against my better judgement, I just ordered the 16GB iPhone on the £45 tariff from Carphone Warehouse.

Earlier today the website was saying out of stock; the headline was order now, get delivery on Friday, but the small print said "8GB only". Then it changed from "out of stock" to "preorder" and the small print said !8 and 16GB".

So I ordered one. God only knows what will happen next, presumably something will go wrong quite swiftly. O2's systems may have fallen over, but better to not allow orders than to accept thousands that they can't fulfil.

I'm not overly impressed with their choice of business partner here.

http://shop.o2.co.uk

worked first time after spending ALL day on the lousy www.o2.co.uk site

Glenn

Or at least that's what the central iPhone nicecustomerservicelady told me: http://www.allaboutiphone.net/2008/07/16gb-upgraders-fear-not/

Fingers crossed then.

I finally got my order through for the 16GB iPhone (didn't get a choice of colour though). Received the following message:

Thank you for your order. We are processing this and will contact you if there are any complications with the details you have provided.

No confirmation number on screen, by text or email though. :(

Site still experiencing problems but there are still phones left if you don't mind having the smaller storage ...

O2 have just ran out of stock for the iPhone so those people who have managed to order int he last 30 minutes still may not actually get an iPhone.

Apparently, we will get an email within the next 24 hours that will either provide a despatch date if successful, or advise to go to an 02 store on friday to get an iPhone at the upgrade price. I don't know why the initial text message did not just say that rather creating this panic as I know that my local store will not have queues.

Received my email from O2 at 7:40 this morning, first attempt at 8:20am...

11 attempts later I had my Order confimation for a 16Gb iPhone 3G.

Interestingly my order number is 0200018*8 so does that mean that only 1800 or so orders have been processed up to 1pm ?

So they're taking orders again!

I just got "Thank you for your order. We are processing this and will contact you if there are any complications with the details you have provided." from the O2 upgrade site, so they're now happily processing orders for a phone they've run out of.

Excellent :-/

Paris, 'cos I'd rather look at her than an iPhone :)

That's what upgrades.o2.co.uk now resolves to......

Now their website says that they are sold out on line.

So much for being able to pre-register your interest to ensure you get one when they are available.

I eventually managed to get through to the point where I made the final click to complete my order. Result; order rejected after a credit check. Since I have an income of >£150K, no debts, net worth of ~ £900K, set up the DD from an account with a private bank and tried to use a debit card issued by the same bank to buy the hardware I was more than a bit hacked off. Conclusion: O2 is a synonym for "bunch of stercophagic onanists". Apple's association with them cannot be good for Aplle.

What a waste of a day, i have 9 upgrade numbers on my phone from stupid text messages but that's it...

Shame it was such a mad scramble to get through the damn order process seeing as i've been trying since 9:30 this morning...

Still, i'm sure the service once i get the phone will be top notch! ;)

I thought I was the only one with problems.

Got the email at 7:37, tried to order at 8:05am, all the way through to step 5 and submitting the summary and got "Unable to process your order, please phone telesales on blah".

Tried again and got the same thing.

Phoned the number, not open till 8:30 - first bit of great planning.

Phoned the number, got through and spent the next 20 mins on hold whilst the CSR talked to telesales only to come back to me and tell me that because of my circumstances the reason I got that message is because I can't order one until after Friday. All they had was my name - no address/phone number anything. I was phoning from works phone so they didn't have a linking phone number.,

I told him that didn't make sense since the preorder email had gone out this morning, he told me that was what he was told that if that message has come up theres a problem and I'd have to wait until the 11th. He said it was something to do with me being a new customer and not an upgrade.....clueless.

Out of interest, I decided to try a different credit card for the £59 charge, it went through to the mastercard thingy, password in, sorted.

The original card I used doesn't use verified by visa or anything, I phoned the bank and they could see no declined transactions. Definately a problem with O2's payment system.

So I have an order number, the order is in-progress and my credit card balance is showing £59 less available funds. They've taken the money - will find out in the next 24 hours whats happening.

My order number starts 0013 so I wouldn't take too much notice of them at the moment and what they mean in regards to getting your order.

Super.

No it doesn't (resolve to 0.0.0.0). However, it does have a CNAME pointing to akamaiedge.net. I strongly suspect Akamai are not going to be using this as a case study ;-)

Paris 'cos she could run a web site better.

So I've been tryingto get this damn thing since my text turned up at 7.30.

I go to the 'confirm you address' screen twice and each time it crashed but I did get a 'Thank you for you order... blar, blar blar' on the failover.

Just rang O2 to check it's all good and they tell me sorry, my order didn't go through. I'll have to try my luck on the day at one of their stores.

I'm >that< close to cancelling my O2 contract and buying an LG from Vodafone.

Idiots.

Each time your attempt to pre order the iPhone fails, the £99 (or whichever option you're taking) is still deducted from your account.

I've been told by O2 that this will sort itself out however you might want to double check that you've not paid them £1100!

Doubtful that order number you have refers to an exact amount... My order number looks nothing like that :/ It's a number prefixed by "on-00" and is a figure in the millions.

I've noticed that most of the people who have succeeded say they were notified by email, which I think means they are new customers, as I was notified by text to my iphone. Does that mean that most of the stocks/web resources were allocated to new customers, not upgraders?

Hmm, way to keep people loyal o2.

Absolutely crazy!

I got my o2 upgrade code PIN at 08:18 this morning after waiting for the site to come online, managed to get half way through the shop to the check out and the site crashed. Been trying all day long, mostly through the "failover" URL which errored every single time (literally HUNDREDS of times) and finally got an"We are processing your order" message about quarter past two this afternoon!

Seriously, they had better go through these orders and match them up to when the upgrade codes and work out who actually was "first come" because I was at the site at 8AM and I want my iPhone 3G on Friday!!!!!

Really annoyed. But hey I have the last laugh, it may *only* be a 16GB 169pound iPhone for me, but I am responsible for the company contract with o2, last year it was over a quarter mil, this year we'll go to Vodafone.

FU o2.

just tried once again to discover the following:

"Due to huge demand for iPhone 3G we've run out of stock online.

Come back on 10th July for more information"

http://upgrades.o2.co.uk/maintenance.html

i have iRage now

Where is O2 when Apple stop holding their hands for launches like this...nowhere if you ask me! This has been the most pathetic product launch I have ever seen. I jumped online at 8.03 to place my order and firstly received a completely different website to the one I got at 10:30 but it didn't matter...both failed and on more than 15 occassions for me between 8.03 and 14:15 when I suddenly noticed a Sold Out maintenance page.

As an existing customer who queued for the first one at the Apple Store, I am pissed off. I asked to be notified when the phone was available for purchase and received the text message at 8:00 this morning. I have tried the entire day and phoned customer services three times who told me there were problems with the site but it will be back up and running around 2pm. Well I don't call a sold out maintenance page "up and running"!

They are also spewing such cr*p now about them not expecting the demand to be so high etc etc. Come on! As other posts have pointed out this is just terrible planning. What makes me more angry is that they aren't pulling phones that were previously allocated to stores to support online orders from existing customers. We are the ambassadors of the iPhone and have been their guinea pigs and this is how O2 is going to treat us?!

I for one hope someone else gets the next exclusivity contract for the UK because for the first time in 4+ years I am very disappointed by O2 and their customer service.

o2's utter incompetence and complacency over this has been truly staggering...absolute bunch of muppets.

Have a look at the o2 forums for a truer picture

Unbelievable ... to all the phone-addicts. : GET A LIFE !

I will contact the betty ford clinic. We urgently need a new programme to wean people off of these things.

carphone warehouse still has some black 16gb phones, just ordered mine for delivery on the 11th :-)

Ordered one on the business tarif this morning, about 10:00am, with no problems.

I tried (unsuccessfully) to upgrade to 16GB today. The user experience was quite possibly the worst I have ever received!

Worthy of one of Bill Gate famous usability email rants: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Apparently O2 online is quite good: http://www.o2.co.uk/abouto2/pressroom/uktelecommunicationscompaniesrankedonhowtheytreatonlinecustomers

NOT!

They can't take orders, that's what the problem is, and O2 IT have until the 10th to fix it. Otherwise they'd say check back after 11th, not check back on 10th.

Clearly, upgrade stock is separate from new customer stock, and O2 pay a different price for it.

Just possibly, O2 may get this sorted. Here's hoping.

I'd love to upgrade my 16gb iPhone to the new one but since we've until Oct 11th to get the deal and theres obviously no 16gb on sale whys everyone in such a rush to get one right this very second? Surely alot easier and alot less hassle to wait until say 2 weeks time when the staff will have some idea what they are doing, the website won't be overloaded and they might have figured out that folk want 16gb phones and started taking orders for them?

Paris as she always wants it now.

Ordered one just after 8am this morning on an iMac using Safari with no problems.

Ordered through CPW this afternoon. I got an email confirming the order then an email saying that they were out of stock. Called them and was told this was normal as it had not come out yet and that I would get one on Friday (i opted for in store devliver). Did anyone else who ordered from CPW get the same?

Well not exactly a slick process. Got my email from O2 this morning letting me know I could order the iPhone. Great! Logged on to choose my 16gb model and then just about to complete order the site tells me to ring O2 Customer Services, Mungo on the other end of line tells me everyone is having problems and to persist in trying online.

At 11:15 I managed to order my iPhone but had to make do with the 8gb model. After lunch I went on Carphone Warehouse as I saw they were accepting orders for 16gb models, so thought i'd try that route and if succesful I could return the 8GB one to O2 under there 14 day money back guarrantee. Order went through but then got the email from Carphone Ware house, benefit from this was I could pick it up from my local Carphone Warehouse store on Friday: -

"Unfortunately, the item you ordered is temporarily out of stock. We do make every effort to ensure that only items that are in stock appear on the website, and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."

So I wait to see what happens with this, I bet I end up with 2 8GB models :)

you are obviously not a true believer

you've not felt the rapture of RDF from his holiness Jobs

:-)

c'mon, man, this is a technology news site - at least half the people reading this site are all early adopter techno freaks. if we wait till October then everyone else will already have the new iPhone too and we won't be able to show it off to anyone

or worse, there'll be something even better to get excited about and we'll forget all about the iPhone 3G

there is no future, there is only the here and now that matters

Sounds like the same o2 of some years ago that managed the following:

1. Left old packages on the old accounting system and could not manage or bill them properly

2. And so broke the linking of multiple phones & accounts, changing deals accidently.

3. Dropped free features by accident in the newer accounting system.

4. Never actually replied to calls or letters about misbilling as a result of 1-3.

5. Did give random credits presumably in response to 4.

6. Carried on getting it wrong even after issuing the mysterious credits.

7. Managed to bill for months after first account cancelled.

8. Took away my loyalty discount - a whole £1pm (not making enough calls?).

9. Put the price up the following month.

10. Managed to mess up the number porting for second account cancelled - making it take an extra few days.

Oh and for a low usage phone (which they really hated) - not like you iPhone guys - it cost less after 9 months on VM versus my contract even after paying them a proper price for a mid-priced phone.

I was on that crap site at 8.20 this morning, i got their stupid codes and put them in but would always just end up back at the first form, I have no 'order' codes, just 'upgrade' codes,

the woman on the phone told me that if I put the upgrade code in then it should be fine, that's obviously crap and now people ordering at 1 have got confirmations, yet someone who has filled everything out at half 8 this morning hasn't

first come first served my colon, o2 once again prove they're a shambles, and if this doesn't get sorted out I'll just jailbreak my 2g iphone and go elsewhere, I'm sick of this sort of $h!7 from o2 as it is

that should be 'unlock' and not 'jailbreak' im so annoyed I've even screwed something as simple as that up.

"Clearly, upgrade stock is separate from new customer stock, and O2 pay a different price for it."

Bzzzt, nope, they're just so inept at running a Telco that they only just got new signup tariffs on their systems to allow them to process credit checks for iPhone, and upgrades are still being processed.

... the Nokia N96.

Lots of SAD people that can't wait a few weeks for their iCrap...

Mine's the one with "Connecting People" emblazoned at the back.

Just checked back on this thread and am amazed at what I read. (well, when I say amazed, what I actually meant was "unsurprised knowing what a bunch of c*cks O2 are").

I ordered two 16GB before 9am this morning, one on the £30 and one on the £35 tariff. One with Safari on macbook, one with IE7 on vista, because I was filling in both at the same time. One for the Mrs and one for me, otherwise all details the same - address, account, card etc..

Got a confirmation almost straight away for the Mrs'. Mine got bounced to 'Risk and Credit' - presumably because we ordered two to the same address or something... so expect they'll be contacting me about that one.

So far not a bad success rate compared to most folks on here...

Still, it ain't Friday yet...

Tell them how badly O2 are hadling their product.

Failed miserably to place an order this morning, so sent a moaning email and got a stock reply about trying again on Thursday or going to an O2 store.

Emailed back to say that if they want my £2,400 a year of phone calls, they can call me when they have a phone for me.

I'll probably never hear from then again, which is fine. It would vindicate my decision not to bother running around after their incompetent asses.

Keep waiting, N96 is now pushed back to October.

The Internet can be downright mystical. I tried to order an 8GB iPhone as a new customer this morning, about an hour after the email landed in my inbox, not straightaway. I immediately knew the site was in trouble, and tried six times to get past the page linked to in the email, to actually place my order. No luck. I tried again half an hour later and got through!

I then had fingers crossed for the miracle of passing ever-more-stupid-these-days credit checks, which can, of course, see royalty marked as risky let alone ordinary people, but the confirmation came through about six hours later that my application was successful, and my iPhone order is now with the warehouse for processing.

I did order the £45 tariff, so can only wonder if the tariff people selected made any difference - ie, go for £35, you're not going to be put first in queue but if you go for £45 or £75, that pushes you up to the front. I very much doubt this 'first come first served' malarkey is genuine.

you not look at the o2 site last week and register then?

if you were eager for the device surely you would look?

its been up a while...

At least my N95 will last until then and I won't feel the sad need to buy a new shiny gadget because world and its dog think it's great (it isn't, you know?).

@Anonymous

Yes, we did look at the site and register - that's why we are all so pissed off.

O2 gave the impression that pre-registration would allow you a "first in the queue" type system, instead of the free-for-all debacle that actually transpired.

My first thought was, WHY? Why the hell are people bothered?! It is still a bloody iphone and that means it's not very well equipped and costs an absolute fortune. I for one am waiting for the new HTC slider, out in Sep which walks (thought I would be polite) all over this excuse for a phone.

Im really fed up with this Iphone hysteria.The prominence that ElReg gives it,1 is even more confounding. (FIrst time was bad enough).

So how many of these muppets who have not booked theirs' are gonna QUEUE up outside the Apple store in Regents street starting the night before ?? Or outside the O2 store for that matter ?

Will theTV cameras be there to record their travails and sacrifices ?? You bet!

Only in Blighty.

Nuts all!

Jesus bcos he knows mugs to whom to punt what is "a phone" after all!

That O2 were going to muck it up. Last time, fanfares and fake queues to try and build some momentum. Few cared and tons of unsold stock. This time, price it right, completely underestimate demand and cheese off your (few) loyal customers. Despite giving it the big licks for PAYG, announce that it won't be available until Christmas by which time petrol will be £50 a litre and a new mobile will be the last thing on people's minds.

Never been on O2 and now I believe I never will. Will await the hacked version appearing on eBay on July 12 and stick my Voda SIM in it.

Paris, because even she could organise a p*ss-up in a brewery.

If you think O2 *planned* to delay PAYG until Christmas, then you're crediting O2 with too much thinking ability.

I think you'll find the series of events went something like this:

Apple: We're launching a 3G iphone.

O2: OK, great, let us subsidise it!?!

Apple: OK, fine

O2: When?

Apple: There's 50,000 turning up on July 10th.

O2: Fuck.

Just spoke to the delightful Kelly at O2. Having logged on to the the site at 8:30 this morning I've been spammed all day with the codes for upgrade, I've got 8 at the last count.

Used one, but the site crashed when I clicked 'add to basket'.

Kelly says if you take your code along to any O2 store on Friday you will be given a free upgrade! Does this mean you also get to jump any queues?

The title says it all

O2 T5 like disaster

And I will just keep using my WM6 smart phone, as I am not keen on overpriced, inflexible fashion accesories.

Just got this back from O2 customer services.....

Hello Matthew,

Thank you for your email us and I'm sorry you haven't any response from us about the status of your order

Your order (on-*******) for the 3G iPhone 16Gb (Gigabyte) is currently out of stock. This means you won't receive order on Friday.

We made a limited allocation of iPhone 3G stock available for pre-order online, primarily for those customers that pre-registered their interest. Demand has been very high and we have now sold out of this allocation.

Please be reassured that for new customers, there will be iPhones available in store from 8.02am on the 11 July, although we again expect demand to be very high, so urge you to get down there early. All iPhone stock is being sold on a first come, first served basis.

Due to extremely high levels of demand, the O2 online shop is temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore the service as quickly as possible. You can go to your nearest O2 store to place an order for your iPhone 3G on 11 July 2008 from 8:02am. You can find your nearest O2 store by calling 0800 224 477 free from UK registered phones or by clicking on the link below:

http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/interfaces/retail/

We request you to reach the store earlier as demand is expected to be very high.

You can also purchase the iPhone from selected Apple and Carphone Warehouse stores from 8:02am on 11 July 2008.

For any further help, you can also contact our iPhone customer service team on 08706 072 302. They are open:

- Monday to Friday between 8am and 9pm.

- Saturday and Sunday between 8am and 8pm.

Calls to the above number are free from all O2 Pay Monthly mobile phones. You can also dial 2302 free from an iPhone to speak to our iPhone customer service team.

Please visit our website using the link www.o2.co.uk/iphone for the most up to date information on iPhone.

Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.

When you email us please provide: your date of birth, postcode and mobile number as it helps us answer your query faster.

...............................

Super :(

is that the same wm6 that web surfing is abysmal on and kept rebooting my old HTC smartphone every couple of hours? Thought so :)

(whilst I type this on my iPhone)

I did try a couple of times to order but figured it doesn't really matter as I don't live in a 3G area anyway, plus we get the same software on it as on the regular iPhone.

One interesting note is that apple are being very quick to remove any anti-o2 rants off the apple discussions site. They obviously know the shambles that o2 are, but are happy to rise above it and see the dollar signs in their eyes!

stop with your hating, the iphone rocks, in case you didn't know, I certainly won't be bothering with another nokia until they try something new, n95 has same ui as the nokia 6600 i had years ago! what are they changing other than the plastic the thing's in?

Got a HTC Diamond Touch as a work phone last week - since then my personal i-phone has been languishing unloved in my bag. Only problem with my HTC is it is on a Norwegian contract which means I am stuck with an incomprehensible OS (my Norwegian is limited to Tak and Skol). Still the interface means I do not need to understand too much of what is written and the GPS section is in English. Best of all my music no longer belongs to itunes - I' m free!

Certainly not going to be upgrading to the i-phone 3G now.

Mine's the one with headphones dangling out of both pockets.

Well working for one of the multiples which sell the iPhone, I can assure you that ordering over the website is just silly to be honest. Firsty all o2 and CPW stores will be opening at 07:02am on Friday to serve the unclean masses their "Jesus 2.0 phone".

Seriously though all this website rubbish can easily be avoided by getting off your arse and going to the shop and getting one over the counter, with the added benefit that the phone will be working from the moment you leave the shop.

As far as the tariffs are concerned, the unlimited data is subject to a fair usage which is being whispered at 3gb a month. If you run over then they can technically cut your 3g access off forcing you to use EDGE or GPRS. However dont quote me on that though because its subject to change as is everything to do with pricing in the mobile industry

"n95 has same ui as the nokia 6600 i had years ago! what are they changing other than the plastic the thing's in?"

Well, the underlying operating system has moved on from V2 to V3.2 in that time. Don't judge a book by it's cover.

*pats Nokia 6650d running Symbian 60 V3.2*

Steven R

8:02, not 7:02.

Having said they were out of stock, CPW have now automagically canceled my order... jokers...

No doubt the underlying OS has moved on, but my point is that isn't visible to the end user - so why bother, my n93 would complain about running out of memory or something equally stupid on a tri-daily basis, far more than the 6600 ever did, yet this is a revised version or the same OS, and they certainly haven't bothered with working on the UI so what HAVE they done??, this is aimed more at nokia than symbian, as symbian have done the work to improve the underlying OS (either not doing very good job, or nokia not doing a good job making it work on their hardware)

The Leeds store is open from 07:02 on Friday morning

Tak and skoll are also the only swedish I know, I will have to visit norway next

You're all muppets.

I got my email at 7:40 on Monday, and happened to be online. I ordered a 16Gb iPhone with no problems by 8:22 and got a confirmation at 8:38 saying they would tell me if the order had been accepted.

By the end of today I still hadn't recieved the email telling me "it had been accepted" or any details confirming delivery (and the website update said it was "being processed") so I called. It seems I was too slow and although I placed the order and payment on my CC is "pending" there's no stock.

I've been told that I need to wait until the 10th of July to see if they have more stock and IF I'll be "lucky enough" to get one. 1st come 1st served? That's clearly not true.

I can see why its called the JESUS! :( phone now.

After not being able to order a 16GB phone through O2, I went to CPW. They've accepted my order and sent confirmation emails but I don't even know if I've passed O2's credit check yet.

I'm going to exercise a lot of patience, or wait until I can upgrade my N95 through my current provider (Three) to an N96 and pretend that I *never wanted the iPhone in the first place*.

O2 has taken my payment of £59 for the 16Gb iPhone, even after my 11 attempts on the 7th they only charged me once (thankfully).

Hopefully they will dispatch very soon.

:)

Same here - apparently "It should have arrived by Tusesday the 8th" and is out of stock (would have thought the 2 were mutually exclusive!). Using the online tracking just tells me that it is either "processing" or is "processed" (again, not sure exactly!). All I really know is that it isnt "Despatched", which is no surpirse as

a: Its not out till the 11th and

b: I selected Store Pickup.

So we'll see what happens. The payment is pending on my debit card, so I'd assume that means Ive been accepted to join the club?

N

Exactly the same here, their order tracker is rubbish! They've blocked the cash on my credit card too (i.e. had the amount approved but not actually taken it), so I'm just crossing things and hoping for the best at the moment.

I opted for home delivery, not sure if that'll make a difference. I'm unlikely to be in if they try and deliver on Friday though, so sod's law says it's bound to turn up.

You're not joking. I tried for ages on Monday and resigned myself to not getting through since had no order number. Figured I'd just try a store on Friday.

Today I get an email with an order number to tell me that it's processing (although presumably out of stock) and that I can check the progress online by clicking on 'view my orders' which doesn't appear when I log in.

So... who knows. Does having an email to say my upgrade has been successful mean that I now can't go and pick one up on Friday morning at a store? Or will one magically appear at my desk?

What a mess!

Well I'll update here if I get a positive response from CPW. I had to email them as I forgot to add my PAC code, and theyve certainly not volunteered any info regarding the order. I opted for store pickup purely because they wont deliver to my work address, and I cant get the time off at such short notice :S

So maybe if theyve pre-authorised your card your good :)

Received an email from 02 at 9pm last night stating that the iphone has been dispatched, interestingly there is a note that says:-

Please note that iPhone 3G orders will not be delivered before 11th July.

But will DHL take notice ? They picked up the phone at 9pm and at 1am the phone was at their main distribution depot.

I've had no emails whatsoever from the O2 online order system and customer services were adamant that they were out of stock and I would not be recieving a 16GB Iphone tomorrow. Even though there is a transaction for £59 on my credit card and I've had an alert from equifax credit watch which tells me O2 made a search against my credit file.

I've just logged on to the o2 store, checked my order, it still states in progress and it still states in progress....but, at the bottom of that screen I have a consignment number and a dispatch date.

Its coming tomorrow.

Arse from elbow. Difference. Not Known.......

Order status is now listed as complete and I just got a text from O2 which states "Sorry your experience on Monday wasn't great if you were trying to order iPhone 3G. Go to http://shop.o2.co.uk/info to find out the latest details".

No idea why I did a double post of "states in progress" in my last post, I got distracted.

So, after all the mucking around and misinformation from the email monkeys at O2's customer service centre wherever it is, I should recieve a box fom DHL tomorrow.

I'm happy with that.

I managed to get an order number on Monday, and called in the evening when I still hadn't had a confirmation email, and spoke to someone who said "yes I can see you have one" and that an email would be "sent out". I was happy with that.

Yesterday I'd still not received any confirmation email, so I emailed O2 and got this response:

***

Thanks for emailing us about your order for your new iPhone 3G status.

Your order number is on-0xxxxxxx and your parcel number is <blah>.

Your order was dispatched from our warehouse on 10 July 2008. It's currently with our delivery agent, DHL. You'll receive a text message one day before the delivery of your order. We'll deliver as many orders as possible on 11th July and then delivery may take up to 2 weeks.

***

Delivery may take upto TWO WEEKS??? Sounds like the may be scamming and pretending to dispatch orders and blame it on the courier till they can fulfil the order? I put in my consignment code into the tracking system and it can't find it...

Took me a while to work out, but go to "By Ident Code" in the Nextday section and enter your code there. It'll show up and will probably say same as me that it was collected at some ungodly hour this morning.

Yeah I've tried the 'on-xxxx' number in the 'By Consignment' as instructed in the O2 email and entering the JDxxx parcel number in the "By Ident Code" and nothing comes up...

How odd, have been on the o2 Customer Forum and everyone there says should be the JDxxxxx in the Ident Code thingy... Maybe they are fobbing you off then!

Yeah I've got the JDxx thing as well but nothing comes up.....hopefully it's just their tracking system that needs updated, as they've damn well taken the money!

Just tried my JD code one last time and it now says it was picked up at 09:44 !!

Also, under My O2 the Tarriff info has updated to: O2 35 on iPhone.

Order status still says "In Progress" though and I've not had any emails since I ordered it on Monday!

I'm also not in one of the scorched earth postcodes, so hopefully will get a txt before 6!