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On O2’s iPhone upgrade system

If you’re only allowing people to upgrade online and you’re encouraging every single one of them to visit at the same time, it might be an idea to check that (a) your website works and (b) it can cope with the demand.

Just a thought.

73 replies on “On O2’s iPhone upgrade system”

Never! That’s like having staff who aren’t rude and understand the product…

I have to admit that (despite me hating them), o2 are not the worst offender in that category.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, a few weeks ago…

“Hi! This is a text to tell you that the new iPhone is almost ready to go. Reply by SMS and we’ll reserve one for you for the first week, and charge it to your bill. You won’t have to do anything except wait for the courier! Yours with love, O2. Not morons with a terrifying hard-on for over-engineered Javascript and pointless AJAX shit since 2004.”

I’m now on my tenth upgrade code. You’d think they’d have a separate page for entering codes and requesting them, wouldn’t you?

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Speaking to Carphone Warehouse’s press office earlier, demand is 10X that of the first-gen. But given O2 had a pre-registration system, demand shouldn’t have been a surprise. It’s pathetic.

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It seems that new customers aren’t having any problems, but upgrading ones are fecked. Good customer service, that.

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I would of thought given that existing customers have already been using iTunes that the upgrade option should be built in there.

Just spoke to O2 customer service about something else, and the girl was saying that their systems are basically melting with iPhone demand. As David’s said by email, they really shouldn’t have opened their doors to all-comers without catering for the pre-reg crowd first.

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They’re out of 16GB ones now (on the online ordering page for new customers that works perfectly). Twats.

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Well I just want an 8Gb since I only keep a small selection of music on my iPhone and not once have I ran out of space in the last 7 months or so. Going to try again.

the girl was saying that their systems are basically melting with iPhone demand

And the world spaketh as one:
“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.”

13 upgrade codes, still no dice.

I think the thing that annoys me most is O2’s bullshit language. Exactly how is this a ‘special, early upgrade’ for existing users? It’s the same time, it’s the same tariff, it’s the same price phone. What’s this about ‘an extra thank you for your loyalty’ when it’s quite literally ‘thank you’.

AARGH! O2!

Yeah, the copy makes it particularly annoying. 16th invite currently timing out.

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Fuck me! I finally got through after a mere 17 texts.

*crashes at final confirmation*

Fucksocks!

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That’s when I decided to give up. It also refuses switch cards without an issue number, which isn’t helpfull.

The furthest I’ve gotten is the bit where you click to add a phone to your basket and instead get a full-screen blocker graphic and hear a scream of frustration that may have come from you.

The comments on twitter have been amusing. My boss is arranging mine so I’ll leave the stress to him while I write up code documentation, which is the most fun for once! ;)

Still no luck on the actual order page, but finally managed to get the Form of Failure to process. At least, allegedly. I’m not sure I entirely trust it.

Same here. Most insightful messageboard comment I’ve seen so far: “O2 are a big gay”.

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It’s a conspiracy and I’ve just worked it out.

Nobody got an upgrade. The people claiming to have done so on forums are fake. This forces all current users to resign themselves to the fact that on Friday they’ll still have at least two weeks to go. Their intention was to jailbreak their old phones and ebay them. Unfortunately the apple fanboy cannot possible wait at least two weeks using the 1.1.4 firmware without a new phone, so will upgrade to 2.0, which complete buggers the jailbreaking function and therefore locks all current gen iphones to o2 for ever and ever and the second-hand users are therefore forced to either get o2 contracts or pay-and-go sims with the data bolt-on as there will be absolutely no non-o2 iphones in existence without resorting to grey imports.

Genius.

Unfortunately for o2, they couldn’t think of an implementation of this plan that didn’t make them look like morons.

apparently the EPIC FAIL forms will be processed manually in the next 48 hours. I read it on the Internet so it must be true.

I’ll be stunned beyond belief if they even bother sending me a note to say “Not a chance.”

It’d be nice to know if stores would be able to do upgrades though, one way or the other. Seems like every part of O2 and every store has a different story.

This however, is dribbling arse matter:

“our open and honest communications approach with the registered community, exceeded even our worst case assumptions.”

I sent them a snarky message and got a reply a few minutes ago.

“We recognise that this has not been a brilliant experience and apologise for the obvious frustration”

Duh

Of course, artificially creating a shortage would cause lots of publicity and inflate the hype bubble…

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Damn, I put that between hilarious “conspiracy” tags and WordPress ignored ’em.

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People keep suggesting that, but it doesn’t make any sense. They’d have sold out /anyway/ given the buzz, price, and limited number of phones Apple’s rumoured to have sent in, so all they’ve really gained from this is looking silly and annoying a lot of potential customers.

Oh, indeed. Unless THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK etc etc etc.

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But a global shortage would make it look like there is a much higher demand and apple wouldn’t care that the local networks look crap.

“Thanks for your upgrade order. We’re currently processing your request and will update you shortly on its progress. When we’ve stopped laughing our asses off about your misplaced optimism.”

Apparently so. Whether it was quick enough to actually get a phone out of them remains to be seen – I’m not wildly hopeful about that – but they’ve upgraded the actual account.

(Or to be more accurate, they’ve /nothing/ed the actual account, since I left it the same as before)

Ah well, maybe there’s a chance my one’ll be processed too. Bugger-all happening so far though.

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I’ve not got it to hand, but the reply to my snarky email said something along the lines of if you haven’t got either an email confirmation or text message with an order number before thursday then it ain’t gonna happen.

I’m tempted to pop into o2 on my way to work on Friday. It’s not much out of the way and I’ll be around at opening time anyway. Huddersfield seems a bit underwhelmed by product launches. Still not sure if I can be bothered though.

I have an order showing up in My O2. Yay. No idea when I’ll get it though.

Need to get one for Liz now – she left her Sony phone in the back garden and forgot about it. And then it rained for a long time. And I’d promised to buy her an iPhone anyway.

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>she left her Sony phone in the back garden and forgot about it. And then it rained for a long time. And I’d promised to buy her an iPhone anyway.

Perhaps I just have a suspicious mind but lets see I’ve got this straight: First you promise to buy your wife an iPhone – then she suddenly leaves her current phone out in the rain “by mistake”?

hmmmmm….

BTW, the app store is looking quite good. Wasn’t linked from the front page of iTunes earlier (dunno if it is now) but you can find it by searching for something you know the name of, eg super monkey ball.

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Carphone Warehouse site is selling new (ie not upgrade) 3Gs *right now*.

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Pretty much every phone that has been capable of Java has had a similar app.

A lot of the store apps are the same as the jailbroken ones. Except you have to pay for some of them. The virtual pint of carling is quite silly. Facebook doesn’t work. Mophoto’s quite a good online gallery viewer. Shozu works well (something I missed from going to a non-java phone) Shazam seems to work really rather well.

Haven’t had the chance to really play with 2.0 yet. Seems OK so far.

I’m quite impressed with the implementation of shozu and shazam. Shozu integrates with Flickr and Facebook quite well and allows you to upload cameraphone picks. Shazam, once it’s identified the song, links to itunes to buy it or to the youtube video (if there is one).

The itunes remote control is seriously cool. As long as you’re on the same LAN it works. Almost no setup.

Sorry, geeking out a bit here. ;-)

Carphone warehouse had 2000 16Gb available for next day delivery. They all disappeared by the guy had finished typing my address.

@Flick – It does sound like christmas-time.

I’m not sure I see the point. IMHO You’d be better off (for the money) with a ipod touch and a normal mobile phone or get it on contract. Without the data-plan, the iphone is pointless. They’ll be full price – same as the original one is most likely – £270 for the 8Gb and £330 for the 16Gb. Pay-and-go tariff doesn’t include data so you’ll pay £10 per month for unlimited data and wi-fi. (Which kinda defeats the purpose of pay and go)

If you get the 8Gb on pay and go : 1 year=£390+call charges
on contract: 1 year=£460

The only problem is if you don’t want an 18 month contract.

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