I have to say that I was very excited at the prospect of a new Apple product. So much so that I did pre-order an iPad. First I reserved it at the Apple Store near my house. Then I decided I would rather have it shipped. So I canceled that reservation and had it shipped to my house. Then I realized that I wasn't going to be home this weekend and there isn't an Apple store where I was going to be, but luckily there is one about an hour away. I made up my mind that I was willing to drive to go pick it up. So I reserved my iPad at the Baton Rouge store and when Saturday morning came, I got in the truck and headed that way.
When we arrived around 10, there was an obvious line outside, though I didn't think it looked all that bad. Walking up there were two separate lines, one for people with reservations and one for people just wanting to get one. The reservations line was shorter and moved more quickly. I think there were only 3 people in front of me when we got there. So they took my name and checked me in and asked me to wait a few minutes until there was someone that could work with me. When we were finally directed to someone, I was told that they didn't have any iPads to sell because a shipment was delayed for bad weather. And, while they had some when they opened, they had run out and weren't expecting the delivery until afternoon.
Being that it was 10am and that we had some things to do, we couldn't wait around so I was a little peeved. But, that annoyance faded quickly when Apple gave me a $100 dollars for my troubles and said I could come back in the afternoon to pick mine up. Sadly, they said it had to be before 3pm, which wasn't going to happen. I started getting annoyed again, until they agreed to put a later hold on mine due to the issues. So at this point I was down a couple of hours in my day, but I was up $100 dollars, and I was heading back to Baton Rouge later that evening to go to a party anyway.
When I arrived at the store again around 6, there was not much of a line outside, but there was madness within the store. I was really surprised that it was still crazy. So I walked in an waited for about 30 seconds before the woman from that morning noticed me and said, "you were here this morning for a reservation, don't wait, I will get you going." So she walked in the back got my iPad and rang me up. It was relatively quick and painless. I did ask if it had been like that all day and was told that it had gotten worse and that what I was seeing in the store at 6 was about as calm as it had been since that morning when they didn't have any iPads to sell.
I would be curious how many store this mis-shipment happened at and how many $100s of dollars Apple parted with due to the error?
All told, I am very happy with the purchase so far and am looking forward to playing with it a bit more since I really haven't had a lot of time to sit down with it yet.