How to bag an iPhone 3G tomorrow

O2 has published an iPhone 3G update ahead of tomorrow's 8.02am launch, apologising for the pre-ordering chaos and giving details of its current stock levels.

The key promise is that, "all customers who want iPhone 3G will get one by the end of this summer," which is a deadline that's already passed, judging by yesterday's weather in London...

Still, if you are planning on standing outside a store in the inevitable drizzle tomorrow morning (or just breezing into an out-of-town stockist later in the day when the fuss has died down, O2 has some useful information to avoid disapppointment – read them, and its apology for the pre-order shambles, after the cut.

• O2 and Carphone Warehouse (CPW) stores will have limited numbers of iPhone 3G this Friday 11 July.

• On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly). Sales of iPhone 3G will be limited to one per customer and two for business customers.

• Some O2 stores will open at 8.02am on Friday, others a bit later. Find out more

• If you do go into an O2 store you will need 2 forms of identification, a valid credit or debit card and proof of address. If you are new to O2 you will also need to pass a credit check if you sign up for an iPhone 3G contract. The average sales transaction processing time will be 20 minutes.

• Apple will be selling iPhone 3Gs in their stores, but please note that existing O2 customers can only upgrade in an O2 or CPW store.

• We are working closely with Apple to get additional iPhone 3Gs. These will be coming in on a weekly basis. We'll keep you posted on specific details by updating this web page regularly.

• We are currently out of stock of iPhone 3Gs via our on-line store, we'll update through www.o2.co.uk when more information becomes available.

• If you have an existing iPhone you can still enjoy many of the new features by upgrading your software to version 2.0 from 11 July through iTunes.

• We are sorry that we can't meet all demand as quickly as we'd like but we're sure that when you get your new iPhone 3G you'll agree it's been worth the wait.

O2 has also aopologised to customers who tried and failed to pre-order an iPhone 3G earlier in the week. It says: 

I am sorry that you had a frustrating experience in trying to order iPhone 3G. This note summarises why it happened and what happens now.

From the start, we felt it was important that people should be able to register that they were interested and be kept up to date with each part of the launch. As well as giving people the information they needed to get a new iPhone, it would give us an idea of how many iPhones we would need from Apple.

An amazing 200,000 people registered on the site. Apple can only supply us with a small proportion of that number to start with, but with weekly deliveries, we're confident that everyone who wants an iPhone will be able to get one by the end of the summer. Until then, we realise that some people will be disappointed.

The people who'd registered on our site had the chance to order an iPhone before anyone else. We let them know that they could do this by going online on 7 July and we made it clear that it would be on a first come, first served basis to keep things fair, as stock was limited.

Naturally, we made sure we looked after people already on O2 as well as new customers. And in fact the orders that we received were split 50-50 between new and existing O2 customers.

What went wrong?

Because we were so open about where and when you could pre-order your iPhone, the online shop was always going to be busy. We tried to prepare for this by increasing the online shop's capacity to 250 times its normal rate and testing it over and over again before the launch.

It wasn't enough. I'm really sorry if you couldn't get your order in. We weren't prepared for the speed and volume of people. I'm not sure any website could have been.

Thank you

Cheryl Black
Customer Service Director
O2

[ O2]