Sometimes I think things are never easy and this morning was no exception.
I decided I would jump to a new network when the iPhone 4 came out and after a dig around the shops in town I decided to queue at the Orange store.
I wasn’t planning on leaving the house until 8 am but had fallen foul of the collective paranoia on Twitter and a live image of queues on the St Albans web cam.
I therefore left the house at 6:30 and made my way into town.
The 02 shop was indeed queued out – around 70 people were there when I passed by. The Carphone Warehouse also had about 10 or so. To my surprise Orange had no one (well except a guy on a bench whom I seemed to queue jump cause he was asleep!)
So I queued and I queued and I waited patiently for the store to open at 9. Thankfully my companion had a good sense of humour and the people who arrived after us (about 8 in total) all had a common interest – gadgets!
Orange staff asked us what model we wanted and I got first dibs. I was quite delighted to hold a piece of paper which simply said “Number 1 – iPhone 4 32Gb”. Sadly my morning then took a turn for the worse.
The store opened and I was the first to be served – all my paperwork seemed ok, the system was running, I was happy but then… the systems ground to a halt. Orange switched to manual account checking and I had to wait an hour for a response.
When I got my response I was royally pissed off as neither my passport, driving license, Council Tax bill, Water bill or TV license were sufficient enough for Orange to let me set up a new account.
Their rules state your documents have to be within 3 months of the date of purchase and all of mine were dated end of April so I was out of luck by mere days.
Being a member of the 22nd Century the majority of my accounts are online and as this does not include address information I was stuck.
The Orange guys were very apologetic, offered to hold the phone for me so I could go home and try and find some other form of ID.
I didn’t find it. I had nothing. Thankfully Richard had a scan of our joint savings account so with a heavy heart I printed it and headed back to Orange. I was back in store by 11 and the sales assistant (JAck – I feel I know him as a brother), insisted he would do everything possible to get me my handset.
A call was made, systems delayed and a fax was sent to HQ – 45 minutes nothing.
My solace at this point was that all Oranges iPhones had been sold (they only had about 18) and three other people who were behind me in the queue had different problems.
The Manager stepped in and sent an urgent email to regional office which seemed to get the ball rolling.
Thankfully another 15 minutes later I was approved (as if there should have ever been any doubt) and my iPhone was being activated.
I’ve only just started playing with it as I left it to charge/sync this afternoon whilst I was working… My first impressions however are fantastic. The screen really does have to be seen to be displayed and regardless of all the scare mongering regarding the signal I have had no problems.
So I am an iPhone 4 User. My iPhone 3G is to be recycled (and help towards to the of my 4) and I am now using it at blisteringly fast speeds. I would even go so far as to say it’s faster than our iPad.
I have only taken test shots (this is starting to sound like a blog entry about my PEN!), but wanted to share them as the camera and the video are THAT good (even if the subjects are not).
So that was 6 hours of my life I will never get back – I mustn’t grumble though as I have my iPhone 4 and am more than happy with it ;0)
So I have tomorrow off. Jeff is here from NYC and we’re going to spend the day in London prior to the three of us heading off to Paris for the weekend 😉
Keith Tomlinson Photography 