The iPhone buying experience
Ok so I've been blogging about the iPhone and it's "apps" for a while now. After a lot of consideration and switching between Nokia and iPod touch, doing nothing and buying a 16GB 3G iPhone, I finally went for the latter. What a bittersweet experience.
We have no real Apple stores. They're called "Apple authorized resellers" and may look like an Apple store, but they're not. Because they are run by slow Dutch people (I get to that in a minute), and don't have geniuous bars, and can't seem to be of help unless you want to buy something.In the Netherlands, you can by an iPhone at T-mobile shops, or at the Apple store. At the T-Mobile stores, there are often no iPhones in stock. At the Apple stores (let's call 'em that, to humor them) the employees know nothing of cellphone contracts. Because I like the interiour of the Apple store better, I decided to get my iPhone there.
I went for the black 16GB 3G model, because the white one is just a bit to "girly", and is easy to spot 100 miles away for any bad guys out to steal iPhones. I came prepared with copies of my passport and old SIM card. The guy behind the counter went into the storage room to get one. Then something strange happened: a Parallels session was started up, and an Internet Explorer browser opened to show a HTTPS page at which we could fill in a contract form. It took ages to start up, and the T-Mobile "special registration form" was teribly slow. The Apple salesman was not very fast either, I had to correct him more than once because he didn't read the instruction on the screen. All in all I spent 37 minutes (measured) in the store to get everything registered and payed.
(I am still wondering why the T-Mobile registration page could not have been opened in Firefox or Safari on OSX.)
After a week, T-mobile sent a letter saying that my old number could not be ported. I called customer support and as it turned out, the guy at the Apple store still didn't fill in the form correctly (I wonder what he missed after staring at 2 html forms for 37 minutes). After being on hold for over 28 minutes at the T-Mobile helpdesk, they solved everything and my original number got transfered within 3 days.
So here I am, with an iPhone. Prepare to read a lot about it. ;-)