Procuring an iPhone 3G on launch day is absolutely as hard as you might imagine. It’s been a rollercoaster of a week, an experiment to see what people will go through to get their technology fix. I was lucky, but many weren’t.

“ Monday July 7th, 8am. New email; O2 now accepting preorders. 8:34am my order is placed, I have a confirmation email. iPhone 3G will be delivered on Friday before 10am.” …was that too easy?…..

Monday

O2’s website worked flawlessly when I used it, but for many it just collapsed. Users were left wondering whether their order had gone through, and were pulling their hair out. By the afternoon the website was closed to pre-orders. iPhone 3G sold out.

Tuesday & Wednesday
Tuesday and Wednesday saw fever pitch speculation over on the O2 forums. Many users had orders in-progress, some [seemingly] failed orders were suddenly appearing, and others were having orders randomly cancelled. We weren’t happy lambs.

The mood was lifted when orders started to change from “in-progress“ to “complete”. I had a sudden addiction to the O2’s order status page and the refresh button.

Thursday
By Thursday we were flapping, many orders were still “in-progress”. Speculation was growing. Why hadn’t our order status changed? did O2 actually have enough stock to fulfill it’s preorders?

I spoke to O2 customer services on three separate occasions during the week and their staff were always polite and helpful. They reassured me the iPhone would arrive on launch day and I wouldn’t be disappointed.

By 5pm on Thursday it was clear it wasn’t going to happen. A final call to O2 confirmed it; they couldn’t fulfill my order and weren’t sure when they would be able to. Their website was talking about availability “by the end of the summer”.

Carphone Warehouse To The Rescue: At 5:15pm I phoned Carphone warehouse and explained my plight. It was a long shot. Their reply? “No Problem”, they would have an iPhone 3G delivered tomorrow …… and do you know what?…… They weren’t joking. I placed an order at 5:15pm on Thursday and received it at 8:30am Friday.

Thoughts
It’s been a difficult week for O2. Nobody is entirely clear how many preorders they took, but there were a lot. Many have criticised O2 for raising expectations and dashing them. It was always going to be hard for O2 to cope, but IMHO their order system should have been capped. They should only have accepted pre-orders for phones they could deliver. But could anyone really have coped with the insatiable demand? probably not.

“Was the iPhone 3G worth it?” don’t ask silly questions!

UPDATE: I’m disappointed to hear that my Carphone Warehouse order may have been fulfilled at the expense of other CPW users who ordered on Monday! in the same way that my 8:30am order with O2 on Monday was passed over for later orders placed at 1PM. Come on guys its not that difficult!

When my new Siemens KG39NA90GB Fridge Freezer arrived on Thursday morning, it would be fair to say I was more that a little impressed. Aesthetically its a stainless steel marvel, and in terms of engineering? well it had to be fantastic….its German for goodness sake.

Unfortunately my excitement was short-lived. After waiting 24 hours for the gasses to settle I finally turned her on last night. For the first 20 minutes all was fine, she was making a quiet humming noise….
…… Then she got angry and started making this noise. If you listen to the complete track the silence in the middle is when I open the fridge door. Now I’m not a fridge engineer, but I’ve got a fairly good idea that this isn’t right – especially when you’ve spent £900. Whatever happened to quality checks?

I phoned John Lewis this morning and they have arranged for an Engineer from Siemens Bosch to call out on Monday. The guys over at the UK White Goods Forums think its sounds like the evaporator fan may have been dislodged during transit or it is hitting some insulation.

UPDATE: It was the evaporator fan, it just needed reseating. The engineer from Siemens Bosch was very helpful and fixed it in 5 minutes. Its be fine since!

In a bizarre turn of events Virgin Media has joined forces with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to harass customers that the BPI claims have illegally downloaded music tracks using Virgin’s Broadband service.

Up to 800 warning letters have been sent out to customers by Virgin with the warning “if you don’t read this your broadband could be disconnected”. The letter is part of a wider ‘three strikes and your out’ campaign by the BPI and has left some Virgin customers scratching their heads wondering whether they are paying Virgin Media for an internet service or a ‘re-education’ programme.

The move has been widely criticised, with some talking about ‘a PR disaster’ and ‘biting the hand that feeds it’. Whilst other ISP’s, including the Carphone Warehouse, have sent the BPI away with a flea in it’s ear, Virgin appears to have readily ‘offered-up’ it’s customers, sparking more privacy fears and concerns over loyalty.

This latest debacle comes as yet another blow to Virgin Media’s reputation following the Phorm fiasco, in which it was revealed that Virgin planned to sell its customers browsing history to the advertising company Phorm, Inc.

Whatever Virgin Media’s intentions, this appears to be advertising gold for the UK’s other ISP’s.