A Canadian iPhone 3G launch day experience
Got up early this morning to ensure a spot near the front of the line of my local Rogers dealer for the iPhone 3G launch. I was a man on a mission. That mission, was to secure a black 16GB iPhone 3G for myself, and a white one for my wife. Things got off to a bit of a rough start, as it was raining, a bit cold and otherwise miserable. Dropped my wife off at work and got to the Rogers dealer by around 7:30am. The upside of the crappy weather is that it was apparent when I got there that nobody really wanted to stand in the rain. So I was the first person there.
I had staked out the establishment the evening before to confirm they had received their iPhone 3G shipment. My earlier recon mission was a success, arriving just in time to catch them moving several nondescript boxes from the trunk of a car into the store. Further interrogation revealed they had received 25-30 8GB units, and 5-10 16GB units. This was all I needed to know.
So I was fairly well prepared this morning. I had an umbrella, windbreaker and a little folding camping tri-pod seat (I don’t want to call it a stool, because of the obvious homonym which is just begging to have a joke made of it). There I waited patiently for the store’s 10am opening. In the pouring rain. After about 30 minutes of waiting, one other soul pulled up and got in line behind me, but then got discouraged after 20 minutes of soakage and left. At maybe 8:45am, another guy showed up, immediately followed by a third who had been waiting in his car for probably the last half-hour, but decided that being warm and dry was more important than being first or second. I guess he drew the line at being 3rd.
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait that much longer as three employees showed up at around 9:20am, and agreed to let us wait inside after I asked really nicely (desperately). Rather than keep us waiting until opening time (10am), they got started at 9:30, which was a smart move, considering that by this time there were now probably 8-10 people waiting behind me, and things were not going to go smoothly, as you’ll soon see…
So they brought out the two 16GB iPhones I asked for, got the account transfer completed for both mine and the missus’ mobile numbers while I carefully opened the boxes and inspected the iPhones for any obvious visual defects. While they were attempting to ‘unbrick’ the white iPhone by connecting it to their PC running iTunes, I was miffed to see that my black unit had a small hairline crack leading from the headphone connector on the top. Memories of my experience buying the first iPhone in Buffalo came back to haunt me as I asked them to go and grab a replacement unit for me before they allocate the last one to someone else. It turned out they only had around five 16GB units in total. Everyone in line behind me was waiting for the 16GB model. Some poor schmuck just lost his chance of walking out with what he was hoping for…
They were still having no luck unbricking using iTunes on either of the two PCs in the store. They told me they were pretty sure I could do it myself at home, so I packed up the wife’s iPhone and told them I’d do that. I just had to wait while they transferred the account activation over from the iPhone with the crack in it to the replacement. This is where my luck got worse. Rogers dealer activation website was now inaccessible under what surely was an insurmountable load of requests to activate new iPhones.
They retried several times, and then said, “no problem, we’ll just call it in.” BZZZZZZT, sorry, try again. Now, the Rogers dealer activation phone line, which they had no problems getting through to minutes earlier was returning a busy signal. But not just any busy signal, that fast busy signal that tells you that not only is the Rogers PBX system sitting in a corner in the fetal position sucking it’s thumb, but the Bell telephone circuit which feeds it is lying next to it unconcious and drooling. Sigh.
So the result was, I had to leave my iPhone in the store so they could try activating it again later. I took my wife’s with me so that I could attempt to unbrick it in iTunes myself at work. The whole process thus far took around an hour and twenty minutes. In that time, only one other person had walked out of the store with activated iPhones, the guy who was behind me in line. Had my first iPhone not had a crack, I would have been the first. I really felt for the 15-20 people who were now waiting in the store to get one, and getting impatient. The store had resorted to filling out manual activation forms and telling customers to come back to pick up their iPhones later.
To unbrick, or not to unbrick, that is the question
As soon as I was able to do so, I connected my wife’s white iPhone into my MacBook Pro and launched iTunes to see if I could ‘unbrick’ it. It showed it was trying to connect to the iTunes Store, but after a minute or two, failed with the following error:
“We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occured (-4).”
I found reports of others having the same error, so figured I’d keep trying, as someone had reported success after about 15 attempts. After probably 10 attempts, it was partially successful, having unbricked the iPhone, but not completing the registration process in iTunes, so it wasn’t allowing me to sync the device with iTunes. I was OK with that, since I didn’t want to sync it with my Mac anyway. I just wanted to get the iPhone functioning.
I went back and picked up my black iPhone 3G from the store mid-afternoon, figuring that the store should have worked out it’s technical issues and/or the servers and customer service lines should be less stressed by then. When I got there, they had already taken care of activation with Rogers but explained that they still couldn’t unbrick via iTunes and that it was an issue with the iTunes Store being overloaded. Not a problem I told them, since I was successful in unbricking the first iPhone myself, I figured I’d get mine working with a bit of perseverance.
Coincidentally, as I was walking in the store, I ran into the guy who had been second in line this morning, who hadn’t been able to unbrick his two iPhone 3Gs. I recounted my experience and suggested he just keep trying and it should eventually work. He didn’t seem too happy, but at the same time was relieved and thankful for the information.
After getting back with my own iPhone, I had a bit more luck getting it unbricked than for my wife’s. It still took close to 10 attempts to finally get through (getting the same -4 error message as the first one got), but when it did eventually work, it let me get through the full activation/registration process. Once complete, I selected my syncing options, and was finally syncing all my contacts, calendars, mail accounts, music, photos, podcasts, videos and applications. It took a while, as expected (I sync’d about 8GB of content), but otherwise had no issues. Mission accomplished.
I couldn’t help but wonder to myself and out loud in the store, why on earth did the stores insist or bother trying to unbrick the iPhones in-store if customers could do it themselves at home? This would have reduced the wait times for customers waiting in line, and gotten customers home a lot quicker, even if they couldn’t use their iPhone right away. I guess if the process had worked as planned (and the iTunes Store hadn’t buckled under the load), it would have only been about a 2 minute process, and customers would be able to start using their iPhones immediately. I’m guessing this was one of the complaints that Apple had received from the previous iPhone launch, but it’s a good example of how the best intentioned procedure can end up backfiring if not implemented or planned properly.
The takeaway for Rogers and Apple
While we might cut Apple a bit of slack considering how large a product launch this was (it launched today in 21 countries) and even Rogers (they’ve probably never had to deal with a product that was in such high demand on day one), it’s a perfect example of why a lot of companies choose to do staggered product launches. Apple compounded the problem by not only releasing the iPhone and iPod touch firmware 2.0 the same day, but also launching the App Store the day before. So on top of the hundreds of thousands of new iPhones being sold and activated today, you had possibly millions of original iPhone and iPod touch owners hitting the iTunes Store’s servers as well to get the latest firmware and download the new mobile apps.
The official Canadian iPhone launch was a complete fiasco by any measure, and both Rogers and Apple have squandered a huge customer loyalty/satisfaction opportunity. Instead of blowing away customer’s expectations, they have pissed a lot of customers off. Most of those customers will most likely get over it, and once they have their iPhone in-hand will probably forget all about it or say it was all worth it because the iPhone itself will greatly exceed their expectations. The only thing that probably helped limit the amount of unhappy customers is the fact that the iPhone 3G was in relatively limited supply. I hope for both Rogers and Apple’s sake that these issues get ironed out tout de suite!
Add comment July 11th, 2008