As I said earlier, I’m not a huge fan of hype but I was woken at 6:30AM by the rain so thought I’d go an see how many were queueing outside the York O2 store and see if I could get an iPhone.

I was astonished to see forty people in the queue! One guy had slept out all night (in the rain). Given that it was early and I had nothing better to do, I became the 41st sad geek inline. We were all men… what’s that say?

Whilst standing about, chatting about what we were going to get, a bloke walking past said to me, being at the back of the queue, “I work at Carphone Warehouse, we have a few in stock, and there’s only two people in line”. I followed him and now was number six in line for an iPhone. The rumour was the O2 only had 36 iPhones, so jumping ship seemed the right thing to do.

The right thing until the Carphone Warehouse people told us that all the phones they had in stock were “pre-ordered”, that people “had their names down”. I didn’t think you could do that… By now I’m starting to feel hype-shafted… The O2 website didn’t work, then it did, then they changed their minds and now some people were busy paying for their little black boxes.

Then a delivery van arrived, 5 minutes before the shop was due to open. We were all predicting a riot. Everyone is the queue was getting quite giddy by now. I was thinking that we should just mug the van driver…. but that would be wrong, that would be letting the hype get to you wouldn’t it.

When I got to the front of the queue… this happened.

The guy plonks an iPhone on the table, asks me my details and for a credit card number and we’re almost done. But I realise that I want a 16GB one. The choice is… I can have a 16GB one on Monday(ish) or an 8GB now, to take homw…. What would you do?

I decide to be sensible and wait for a bigger iPhone.

So we change my details and so now I’m about to buy a 16GB iPhone. But the phone guy says, “And your new number will be…”… What? I’m an upgrade customer (I did say)… Oh! He says… “That buggers things up”.

So now, my chioce is not to buy a 16GB iPhone (they have now ALL SOLD OUT) and go for the 8GB that I can take home now…. Except I now can’t. When I changed my mind (about 10 seconds earlier) the 8GB iPhone that I was about to take home has now been sold to someone else in the queue.

So now my choice is, cancel the 16GB and wait until they ship more into the UK…. or take the 8GB one and have it delivered on Monday. I didn’t want an 8GB one. I wanted a 16GB one… I’m in the middle of buying a 16GB but the SECOND I change my mind, it would go back on the system and it’d be gone.

Oh bugger.

So… if I wanted the 16GB one I had to buy it…. and get a new telephone number, which I really, really, really didn’t want to do.

Oh bugger. Oh bugger.

Then I had a brainwave. If I bought the 16BG one AND the 8GB one I could give one to Sophie (who really wants to get away from the horrible people at Orange). The only way I could be remotely close to getting what I wanted was to buy one as a gift.

So that’s what I had to do. After 3 hours in the Carphone Warehouse shop… I came out having bought two bloody iPhones!

“I’m not a huge fan of hype” my arse.

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