I spent a portion of yesterday morning in line in front of the Apple store in the Mall at Green Hills attempting to buy an iPad 2. To be honest, I never thought I would be doing that in my life anytime soon, but because this was not a fancy new device for my personal use, it makes a bit more sense that I was where I was.
You see, my wife runs a call center at a university, and she if given a budget in which to work with. One of the things is using awards as incentive to help the callers do a better job. She is giving away to the winners, an iPad 2, an Xbox 360, and a Kindle. Now, maybe it's just Deja Vu, but I swear I already typed that recently. I even looked at my recent posts and I don't see where I would have, but if I have, I'm sorry to repeat myself.
Anyway, there I was outside the Apple store at 7:30 a.m. when the store, nor the Mall technically opens until 10:00 a.m. We were seventh in line, which I felt was pretty solid. We were looking for a specific model of iPad, so it had to be that one or bust. You see, this Apple store told us on Saturday that they only get a certain amount of iPads in a shipment daily, and they never know what's going to be in the shipment, so you just have to show up at 7:30 in the morning if you want a shot at getting you hands on one. No other details, just show up and wait. Wow. Well, we showed, and all they had was the 64 gig WiFi, the 64 gig, AT&T and the 64 gig Verizon versions. We wanted the 16 gig WiFi only one. Bummer!!!
I'd have to say this is either brilliant, or fucking stupid, I can't tell. But the argument towards brilliant seems to be winning in my mind. You get people showing up at your store three hours before it actually opens to wait for your one specific product? Talk about build a buzz. (Let me clarify, the timeline for our wait wasn't that dramatic. We got there at 7:35ish, the store was due to open an hour early at 9 a.m. A lady came out and told us what she had for sale at 8:30, so we really only stood there for an hour or so.) On the other hand, you're jerking around your loyal customers, asking them to wake up super early and wait around, just to tell them their Princess is in another castle, so to speak. Plus, these iPads they're buying are a minimum of $500, so it's not like you want to permanently piss these people off.
I don't think that what their doing is wrong, I thing that the Apple company could really do a better job of making something they're selling so fast and advertising so hard. But really, it's not that big of a deal. If you want one bad enough, you'll jump through enough hoops to get one. So this morning we were set to go try again, but when that alarm went off, we both said "fuck that" and reset the alarm for 8. I couldn't sleep so I got up anyway and fed the dog and started writing. So maybe we'll try again tomorrow. Maybe we'll try on Thursday, Friday...Who knows? I think It's fun, waking up and heading out entirely too early in the morning. It's something new and exciting!.
You see, my wife runs a call center at a university, and she if given a budget in which to work with. One of the things is using awards as incentive to help the callers do a better job. She is giving away to the winners, an iPad 2, an Xbox 360, and a Kindle. Now, maybe it's just Deja Vu, but I swear I already typed that recently. I even looked at my recent posts and I don't see where I would have, but if I have, I'm sorry to repeat myself.
Anyway, there I was outside the Apple store at 7:30 a.m. when the store, nor the Mall technically opens until 10:00 a.m. We were seventh in line, which I felt was pretty solid. We were looking for a specific model of iPad, so it had to be that one or bust. You see, this Apple store told us on Saturday that they only get a certain amount of iPads in a shipment daily, and they never know what's going to be in the shipment, so you just have to show up at 7:30 in the morning if you want a shot at getting you hands on one. No other details, just show up and wait. Wow. Well, we showed, and all they had was the 64 gig WiFi, the 64 gig, AT&T and the 64 gig Verizon versions. We wanted the 16 gig WiFi only one. Bummer!!!
I'd have to say this is either brilliant, or fucking stupid, I can't tell. But the argument towards brilliant seems to be winning in my mind. You get people showing up at your store three hours before it actually opens to wait for your one specific product? Talk about build a buzz. (Let me clarify, the timeline for our wait wasn't that dramatic. We got there at 7:35ish, the store was due to open an hour early at 9 a.m. A lady came out and told us what she had for sale at 8:30, so we really only stood there for an hour or so.) On the other hand, you're jerking around your loyal customers, asking them to wake up super early and wait around, just to tell them their Princess is in another castle, so to speak. Plus, these iPads they're buying are a minimum of $500, so it's not like you want to permanently piss these people off.
I don't think that what their doing is wrong, I thing that the Apple company could really do a better job of making something they're selling so fast and advertising so hard. But really, it's not that big of a deal. If you want one bad enough, you'll jump through enough hoops to get one. So this morning we were set to go try again, but when that alarm went off, we both said "fuck that" and reset the alarm for 8. I couldn't sleep so I got up anyway and fed the dog and started writing. So maybe we'll try again tomorrow. Maybe we'll try on Thursday, Friday...Who knows? I think It's fun, waking up and heading out entirely too early in the morning. It's something new and exciting!.
No, it is not fun. I love my Mac, and I love my iPod, but Apple does a shitty job when they have new stuff coming out. You are far more patient than I am, because I would have been like "f- this business, you can take your iPad and stuff it up your you-know-what." But then again, I tend to be a little surly in the morning.
ReplyDelete