Gary Cregan

So today was the day in Ireland. iPhone 4 was released in shops even from 00:01 with 3.

So I woke up at 7.30 and was ready for the website launch at 8. And at bang on 8 o clock there we go, iPhone shows up on the site. Now as expected (a phrase coined by one of the lads on the o2 community forum) the website got hammered. And it started to strain…

I got to the main page, added the iPhone to the basket and proceeded. The website hung for a few seconds which worried me. But it did move on thankfully. I saw on the forums that this was happening and the solution was just to wait. So I did. The second page went perfectly. But then we hit the payment page. After entering my details the website hung again, this time for 15 minutes. I knew I had to wait but then it started throwing errors. I cant remember the first error but after which I could not replace the order. I just kept getting “A problem was encountered with the operation that you tried to perform, please try again later”. And that was that, out of stock in less than an hour. I dont blame O2, it was my own fault for trying the online method! Should have went to the store. After reading through some more forum posts, I can see that O2 stock will be kept until the end of August for its existing customers only, which is nice! So I’ll just wait for the next batch.

However, in my impatient ways, I did try Three.ie who have loads of them and will deliver next day! Plus the phone is only 110 on a similar plan to O2s. The process was easy enough, although I found the sales rep very pushy. I kept repeating the prices to them to make sure that I was spending exactly the right amount of money. She said, and I quote, “I am 200% sure” but obviously lies. I get a phone call a few minutes after placing the order asking for €200 more than originally agreed upon. So when I questioned it, they said “Well you have to pay it to get the phone”. So I politely declined. I will wait for O2.

At the end of the day I am happier (once I kicked my impatient selfs ass!) because O2 seem to have a MUCH superior customer service team. I found the Three team very deceitful and INCREDIBLY pushy. O2 have an amazing community on the forums and the phone service can be good at times, I will admit I have had good and bad experiences with it. So hopefully next week we will see a couple more phones on the upgrade  store or in the shops and I will get one then.

To everyone who got a phone, I hate you all just a little bit