No iPhone 4 for You!

I’ve got a pretty sad 15 year old son who is using his own money to buy an iPhone 4. Unfortunately, there’s no iPhone 4 for him and here’s why…

When pre-ordering/reservation time came for the iPhone 4, I happened to be at the Mall of America (MOA) Apple store. After an hour of attempting to consummate my order, I gave up thinking I’d try again later that afternoon when I had to return to MOA.

My daughter snagged one as did I that day. My wife was traveling and I ended up ordering one online for her a few days later. When iPhone launch day came I was able to get my pre-order and buy a second phone activated for my wife. Thinking I still had one on order for her—and we’d get that one and activate it for my son—I was dumbfounded to get an email forward from my wife today within which Apple stated there was a problem and they couldn’t ship and to call AT&T.

AT&T was clueless on how to help since the phone number attached to the incoming iPhone was the same as my wife’s…and you know Apple is trying to restrict the gray market or people buying multiple phones and that’s why it was cancelled.

Being reasonable, an Apple fanboy, someone who owns far too many Apple products and once worked for the company, I figured it would be trivial to change the phone number on the order and have that device be “attached” to my son’s phone number.

Not a snowball’s chance in Hades my friend.

After half an hour on the phone with Apple customer service, the “contract” I “agreed to when pre-ordering” was “non-transferable”, even though *I* am the primary account holder for all four of our family iPhones, my son is a minor (without a credit card so I’d have to order for him anyway) and that I could give them whatever they required to switch just the phone number.

Basically telling me to go pound sand, the order was cancelled. So rather than get his new iPhone 4 on July 14th, he’s back in the queue for an August 3rd delivery. I understand that Apple can’t make exceptions when selling/activating millions of devices, but this seemed so easy to do that the end result is me pissed off and my son one sad little guy.

Thanks Apple.