Leave it to AT&T to somehow manage to tarnish its reputation even further. If you were like me and plenty of other people, on Thursday night before iPhone 5 pre-orders went on sale, you stayed up until 3 a.m. in the morning on the east coast (or midnight on the west) to be one of the first to pre-order Apple’s newest handset and ensure that you will have yours delivered on Friday, September 21st, the day the phone is officially made available. According to one AT&T representative — get this — because we ordered it so early, it may ship later.
Sebastien Page of iDownloadBlog said that because Apple’s website wasn’t working in the wee hours of the morning because of high traffic, he decided to go to AT&T’s website to pre-order instead. Now he found out that his decision may have bit him in the ass. “According to the woman I spoke to, some orders placed on AT&T’s website before 9am on Friday won’t ship until September 21st. That means that those orders will ship on or after September 21st,” he writes.
Page is understandably furious as I would be. It seems as of now that this issue is only affecting people who ordered their iPhone 5 through AT&T’s website. I pre-ordered mine on apple.com at around 3:05 a.m. eastern or so. My order status still says “preparing for shipment” though I was able to find that the expected delivery date for mine is still this Friday once I checked UPS tracking with a reference number, so I’m hoping that’s when I receive it.
If you are one of the unfortunate people who ordered through AT&T’s website in the morning, I truly feel for you right now. There is some hope though — Page says sometimes representatives don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, so the issue might only affect some. Leave a comment below if you’re having a similar experience.