iPhone 4 Orders go Missing in Australia

The iPhone 4 was released to Australia late last month, and like so many people I placed an order with my iPhone provider Optus. This week I thought I would give Optus a call and see how the iPhone 4 order was going, I was shocked to hear that my iPhone 4 order doesn't exist!

Reminiscent of the iPhone 4 / AT&T pre-order debacle in the US, I decided to hang on the phone, wait, re-call and call again to clarify what was going on. There wasn't a thing Optus would do. Simply put, there was "no record" of me calling them and placing the order, no notes on my account about me asking to upgrade the iPhone 4 order.

I wasn't going to take this sitting down, and after having experience in a call centre and customer service departments in previous jobs, I knew something wasn't quite right. When I hot footed it into an actual Optus shop, the customer service was a little more productive in getting answers. It's amazing how big an angry customer can look in person ;)

The customer help call centre was adamant there was no order made, end of story. However at the Optus shop the story was different and there were notes on my account detailing a change of "contract request code", which is some internal word that indicates the iPhone 4 order was placed.

So the order was placed, "how is the order going", I asked. It isn't. The Optus iPhone 4 order was cancelled by their system, and there's no explanation the customer service guy could give me. Optus, or rather the customer service shop, admitted the fault. For some internal reason the order has been cancelled.

Ok, I'm a reasonable man, I asked Optus to reorder the iPhone 4 and I'll wait again for stock. But here's the painful bit, Optus won't reorder a new iPhone 4. That's right. They are not taking rain-check orders for the iPhone 4 because customer service have been told not to take orders.

In retail business you only stop taking retail orders (and money for that matter) when you have no idea when stock will arrive. With the words "No idea", I mean something like 6 months or more. So what is happening to our iPhone 4 orders being cancelled at Optus ?

I still don't know exactly why my iPhone 4 order was cancelled, deleted, wiped, however I know I'm not the only one. In the short distance of iPhone 4 friends I have, one has also had his order cancelled, and appears for the same non-descript reason. That's a 100% order failure rate, and we placed the order days apart leading up to the iPhone 4 release on the 30th of July.

At the end of the day it's about accountability. It's unfortunate for Optus that I found out before they told me, and that I'm also not the only one. I never received a call, message or SMS about the error and with delivery day tomorrow or some time very soon for many iPhone 4 Optus orders, I suspect this is going to a big disappointment across the nation for many.

My resolution to this is a small discount on my existing 3G contract. What it means though, is I'm going to buy the iPhone 4 from Apple directly, and get a prepaid SIM card from another provider when my contract runs out.

If you haven't already contacted Optus, give them a call and check if your order is still there.