[MrHawaii]

Sorry for not posting yesterday, it was pretty hectic. I was one of the lucky ones who experienced the computers not working.

I arrive at the store at about 7:30 and I am about 12th in line. They opened the doors at 8:30 and by about that time there were 20-25 people in line. There were about 8 people working on a register to ring us up so they were letting customers in 10 at a time. 8 to be rung up and 2 to be browsing the demos I guess. By the time I got in it was about 9:30, that wait in itself would have been fine because everyone was polite and professional. They had coffee and doughnuts (Starbucks and Krispy Kreme at that) for everyone. The manager was waiting with us outside and checked everyone in before hand. He even passed out some flyers and brought out an EVO for us to check out.

So I get in at 9:30 and I am looking at the phones and enjoying my doughnuts and about 9:45 I get called to be serviced at the counter. I speak with the rep, go over all account info. They show me a few accessories and I decide the ones that I want. Then we go to ring it up and that was when all the fun started. I guess we were about half way through and rep says, "I'm sorry, but my computer is running very slow." We wait a bit to see if her pc would respond, but it does not. Her manager comes over and they try to check it out but still no such luck. They decide to try and reboot the pc and that does not work. Slowly around the room the other workers are saying that their computers are not working. This was around I would guess about 10:15ish.

They try to troubleshoot further and I guess they were calling the IT or tech department. I guess other stores were experiencing the same issues. About 11:15ish they apologize and ask if I could comeback and they would everything for me. They say they will call me when everything is ready.

I decide to go and have some lunch and since it was a nice day in Hawaii I order it as takeout and decide to go to a beachpark nearby and eat my lunch there. So I have my lunch browse a bit of PPCGeeks at the beach and I get a call about 1:00 saying I can comeback. They warn that the computers were not fully working so wait time would be awhile.

I arrive about 1:20 and as warned the store was swamped, they weren't doing the line outside anymore but were still continuing to check people in. I check in, sit down again and this time they have some cookies, chips, and soda pop. Everyone is busy doing their thing, they even had a table where two techs were assigned to show customers some tips and tricks. (I thought that was pretty neat, probably not anything that we don't already know but I am sure it would be beneficial to the general user.) I get helped at about 2:30 and like they said their computers were still not fully working. The rep had to call into customer service (since probably other stores were doing this that wait time for customer service was longer than usual) to activate my phone and fill out a manual receipt by hand. That took a good 45 minutes. The rep had to then do my credit card with a manual machine (you know the one where you swipe it with the carbon paper and it makes a loud noise), I haven't seen one of those in years. Call in the credit card authorization, which took about 45 mins. Turning on the phone, transferring my contacts, putting on screen protector and case took another 20 mins.

At that time, about 4:30 which was about 9 hours from when I first arrived at the store, I was a proud new owner of the first 4G phone in th US. And ready for a cold beer! So my experience could have been better, but I am sure this device was well worth the wait. I commend the staff for remaining polite and professional during their their time of adversary (I glanced at the stack of manual receipts my rep had done and told her I probably would have gotten a cramp from writing all of those). As they say, the sweet doesn't taste as sweet without the bitter.

Oh, when I was leaving they were saying that they think their computers were beginning to work again. I R O N Y !