So I decided to upgrade my Nokia E61 and in the process get away from PAYG and return to a contract. As I don't have a company mobile, the new iPhone 3G tariffs from O2 in the UK look reasonable (especially for the included 'unlimited' 3G and BT Cloud wifi).

As with most things Apple, being an early adopter has some pros (as with any new technology, the sooner you have it, the longer before it's superceded -- that's a boy's-toy's argument but I'm sticking with it.

To mis-quote Squeeze: This morning at 6:50, I took me rather nifty and 60 minutes later I was 13th inline at the Southampton Apple Store (this isn't something I'm particularly proud, however for a bunch of good reasons, it was better to bite the bullet and get to the Apple Store early than face one of the phone stores later in the day).

Despite the fact that Apple Stores were refusing to confirm they were opening early, by the noise coming from inside the store and the black curtain hung up at the front wind, they clearly were opening at 8:02 just as the O2 store was 10doors up.

At 8:02 we all went in (the AS staff clapped and cheered as they will) and we waited. The first 10 or 11 were taken to iMacs to have their details put into the O2 computer (a gateway website running in IE under Parralls).

At around 8:40 a cheer went up when the first customer's credit check (we thought) was finally completed, but by 9:00 still no-one had left with a phone.

There was a very nice man from O2 (in jeans and blazer, no polyester shirts and tie for him). He was keen to let us know the problem was with the connection to Experian for the credit checks and there was also a problem with another connection to another O2 system which kept going offline.

At about 10:00 they started agreeing to let people leave with a reservations. At 11:05 they let us at the head of the queue know that O2 were going to powercycle (I doubt it) their servers. I suspect they were probably just going to restart whatever app was running on the servers, knowing the type of servers O2 run their business on(!) power-cycling would take quite a while and achieve little more than would a good old "init 6".

The poor AS staff no idea how long it was going to take for that to complete, so they wouldn't know when they would be able to eventually start taking people through the credit check again.

Meanwhile down at the O2 store (and no doubt at all O2 and CPW stores) they were able to get passed this problem because they could fallback to a pen-and-paper system. Because Apple were effectively operating as O2 resellers for the contract side of things, they were only provisioned with using the online system.

To the Apple Store's credit they were really good to everyone. Although there is a Starbucks just outside the West Quay centre, but apparently on H&S grounds the WQ staff wouldn't allow Starbucks to provide free coffee (they have a give-away quota for promotions).

So instead the AS staff worked the line with pen and paper, took coffee orders and made coffee upstairs in proper cups. Then the most appropriate wearer of an Apple Genius T-shirt turned up with half a dozen boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts (you can't beat KK's). This was a step up from the pre-packed blueberry muffin and bottle of O2 from O2.

Despite some very flexible management (from Sun's end -- e.g. the Boss) I finally left my place in the queue at around 11:20, with a reservation against a 16GB phone (seeing as all the O2 & CPW stores will now be out of stock!)

I'll be popping back just as soon as I have chance and they've got themselves sorted out!

If I didn't have a conscience, a 1PM LCT slot and a sharedshell appointment for a clearfault on an M5000 at 4:30PM today I may well have called it a proper holiday and not a re-located and combined lunch hours from the past few days and would probably still be there!

Crikey, it's only a phone isn't it?

BTW Well done to all at Apple Store West Quay for making the best out of a bad situation. And respect to the guy from O2 who had what it takes to be on the shop floor explaining (as much as he could) exactly what was going on. It was bad, but you handled it better than BA seemed to deal with T5!

In future though, Apple and their partners should really ensure they have a contingency plan. It might be embarrassing to admit you need one, but it's a whole lot better than not having it one in the first place!