BlackBerry Storm Launch Roundup
Today was the day the BlackBerry Storm finally appeared in Verizon retail stores and it brought in a Cyclone of customers eager to whirl away with the first ever BlackBerry touchscreen. Unfortunately, they were in short supply.
In the Baltimore/DC area there was one uber-geek I know (ahem) who showed up uber early and was 8th in line out of about 35 people. There were only 10 in stock and others walked away with only a promise that their shiny new Storm would be shipped overnight delivery. Keep those fingers crossed.
But in New York, NY homey don’t play that, reports Reuters:
More than 200 people had waited at a Verizon store in mid-town Manhattan early in the morning, many of whom were turned away after it ran out of the new phones less than an hour after opening at 8 a.m. The angry customers caused a ruckus and police came to restore order.
Really? BlackBerry Storm fans caused a ruckus? I didn’t realize calculator watches had tazers equipped these days. All in good fun… All in good fun… if my New Every 2 was up I would have been one of the geeks in line for sure.
I wonder how many stores actually had enough Storm in stock to serve all the willing and able customers? How about you… did you get the Storm trouble free or were you one of the houligans at the back of the line plotting the riot?
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The "shame on you verizon" is for not telling the people who were waiting for a salesperson that the computer crash could take hours to process one customer. I guess so much for FIOS, verizon made the mistake of not offering the STORM online two weeks before the release like they did with the DARE, it might of taken some traffic off their server today.
Don't let anyone BS you, a company like verizon or Apple expect a big turnout, you would think in the year 2008 that one of those college boys, you know the one with all the alphabets next to their name, would prevent a system crash, or, who would have been prepared for a heavy traffic flow.
The verizon store by me was a joke, i called verizon and complained of their managing of the verizon store procedure, and for not informing the people of their system problem until after hours of waiting, and only then being informed by the salespersons, hell, i wouldn't waited, i'd come back next week, verizon thumbs down on the storm release.
I did have an opportunity to play with the storm while waiting, i might just hold on to my DARE.
We scheduled the Blackberry Storm release for a mandatory account update day. Customer Service was able to activate phones quickly...but stores could not.
It does suck...
Right now, Verizon Wireless has messed up on a few other things, this is one of the minor ones.
View one of the other threads I posted...
The "shame on you verizon" is for not telling the people who were waiting for a salesperson that the computer crash could take hours to process one customer. I guess so much for FIOS, verizon made the mistake of not offering the STORM online two weeks before the release like they did with the DARE, it might of taken some traffic off their server today.
Don't let anyone BS you, a company like verizon or Apple expect a big turnout, you would think in the year 2008 that one of those college boys, you know the one with all the alphabets next to their name, would prevent a system crash, or, who would have been prepared for a heavy traffic flow.
The verizon store by me was a joke, i called verizon and complained of their managing of the verizon store procedure, and for not informing the people of their system problem until after hours of waiting, and only then being informed by the salespersons, hell, i wouldn't waited, i'd come back next week, verizon thumbs down on the storm release.
I did have an opportunity to play with the storm while waiting, i might just hold on to my DARE.
We scheduled the Blackberry Storm release for a mandatory account update day. Customer Service was able to activate phones quickly...but stores could not.
It does suck...
Right now, Verizon Wireless has messed up on a few other things, this is one of the minor ones.
View one of the other threads I posted...
Anyway, no matter what the cause of the computer crash, people need to be informed of a possible long wait because of system problem.
I'll give you a synopsis of the procedure the store implemented the day of the release and my encounter. Times are approximate, but it was a long and frustrating day.
The store had a line outside the door when they opened, i went to the store an hour later, 11am, then verizon was adding names to a call list and telling them they didn't the how long of a wait, maybe an hour, and allowing a 20 minute window to respond back to the door after be notified.
i returned to the store on my own an hour later to see how things were going, the door person said about 45 minutes a hour, so i went for lunch and returned again on my own just over an hour later to see how the list was progressing, or in this case regressing to my name, the door person said half hour 45 minutes, mind you all times were approximates, i understood this because there's no way to pin point an exact time to people.
I returned again just after 2pm and i was told according to where my name stood on the list my wait was around 15 minutes to a half hour, keep in mind the store manger/managers were standing within the door way, so i returned to my car and sat, i got a phone call, the person on the phone said to return to the store and i would be NUMBER 17 inside the store waiting for a salesperson, so i got out of the car and returned to the door thinking to myself that verizon should go through 17 people pretty quick considering what i seen earlier from the doorway, numerous sales people at counters with customers.
So i was let into the store and waited, standing around playing with the displayed STORMS, this was around 215pm, at 315pm I APPROACHED a verizon person to find out so info because I seen salespeople standing around with no customers, only then was i informed of the mess, the salesperson was also frustrated, he only sold 4 phones since 10am, people who did receive the STORM were at the counters for hours because the Computers needed to access people’s accounts kept crashing, then the computer would come back up for a few minutes, and then crash again, this process went on all day according to the salesperson. I was wondering why people were at the counters kind of lame going through the process.
Now looking at my encounter with verizon that day, do you think somewhere along my communication with them, they could have said something about their problem, and inform me that I could end up waiting 5 or 6 hours for a phone because of the computer crash.