The Next Web

iPhone activation causes problems: 6 hours wait in Amsterdam

Written on July 11, 2008 – 5:54 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Your blogger waisted six hours of his life on a friggin’ phone today. The only Dutch operator that offers the iPhone 3G couldn’t handle (Dutch link) the data load the activation process required. The result? Every single iPhone had to be registered by calling up the T-Mobile headquarters. When you take in account that all the iPhone-selling stores had to do this, you won’t be surprised to hear that waiting times to get a hold of a T-Mobile HQ employee were as long as 80 minutes. That crisis resulted in a very bizarre daily schedule for me:

The line at T-Mobile store, hope you dig my yellow shoes

7 am: Getting up - jumping on my bicycle to go to Amsterdam’s largest T-Mobile Store in the Kalverstraat.
7.30 am: Arriving at the store, a forty-year old Apple fanboy hands me a coffee. There are around 30 people waiting.
8 am: Store manager hands out numbers, there are only 35 iPhones available. Just enough for the people who are already waiting. I have number 24.
9.30 am: Store opens: first lucky seven enter the store.
9.35 am: System crashes. From now on it takes around 90 minutes per customer.
11.00 am: Most of the people who were part of the first round have left the store. 28 people and I realize we’re here for quite a while. Especially as T-Mobile employees help out four friends who have just arrived. When customers tell the store manager this, he acts like he has no idea of what’s going on.
12.15 pm: The store manager now makes the same mistake and helps out a friend of his. He then disappears.
1.00 pm: Finally! There’s my number. Let’s buy that shiny object.
1.45 pm: I’m lucky since the guy who sells my iPhone manages to reach T-Mobile HQ pretty fast. It only took me thirty minutes to buy the phone. Pity that I had to wait for five hours and thirty minutes to do so.

British O2 operator has also failed

O2 also suffered from technical glitches - causing waiting lines of 90 minutes. Mobile Computer interviewed visitors no. 2 and 3 at the London Regent Street Apple Store - who left early because the whole buying process took to long:

Update: there’s a new gadget around, called the iBrick.

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3g, amsterdam, Apple, apple store, iphone, iphone 3G, Kalverstraat, london, t-mobile

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Poor Mona Lisa: Apple takes over the Louvre

Written on June 6, 2008 – 11:03 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The line for the Louvre museum will get some serious competition as there’s a new touristic highlight coming up which might attract too many visitors as well. Apple enters the museum area with the opening of a new flagship store. Who will win? The faint smile of the Mona Lisa or one of Steve Jobs’ new shiny gadgets?

The upcoming store has something in common with the ones in New York (Fifth Avenue) and London (Regent street), it’s located at one of world’s busiest touristic hot spots. Every year, 8.3 million visitors stroll by. A large percentage of those people won’t be able to resist the wonderfully designed window displays of the 7,696-square-feet store.

When we - The Next Web team - harassed Parisian Web 2.0 companies during the Open Office Road Trip last February, Charles Nouÿrit from MyID.is took us to a bar in the Louvre. I remember that when we were enjoying the over-priced cocktails of Le Saut du Loup, we praised the rather impressive atmosphere of the gigantic building (see picture). I’m sure Jobs thought the same thing when exploring the new location for his next retail hit.

Apple, apple store, louvre, paris, retail, Steve Jobs

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