What was your iPhone Duo preorder experience like?

Happy iPhone Duo preorder day!! Actually, after reading Threads and BlueSky, it’s not a very happy day for many. My feeds are full of people who planned on being the first to mash that buy button at exactly 5:01/8:01 am and be on their way with a launch day delivery or pick up — only to have issues and see their delivery dates slip out to not just weeks, but months. I checked a few minutes ago and delivery estimates are in January or later.

My experience was similar to the frustrated masses. I woke up 10 minutes before preorders were set to go live, grabbed my coffee and sat down at my battle station. I’d pre-filled my order information on Monday, as Apple suggested, picking my device (Midnight, 512GB), trade-in and selecting my payment info.

The Apple Store app on my iPhone was the first to load the store and it immediately asked me to authorize payment using Apple Pay, with an Oct. 23 delivery date. HECK YEA!

I double-clicked the side button on my iPhone, let Face ID do it’s magic and then I received an error message. It was something to the effect of “Please add another payment method, you don’t have enough money on the gift card.” Huh?

I tried again. And again. Each time with my Apple Card. Same message. So I switched to my debit card, just to see the same thing.

Then an error message popped up and I couldn’t do anything in the app at all. I had the website pulled up on a couple devices as well, and it wouldn’t let me past the once cute but now annoying screen telling me how they appreciate my early morning energy.

Around 16 minutes after preorders opened, the website refreshed and I was off to the races. The initial page put the delivery date Dec. 1-8. I rushed to check boxes and fill in the info, but by the time it came to click purchase it was pushed back to Dec. 8-15.

Frustrating.

On a whim, I decided to check AT&T’s delivery times and to my surprise they were a full month earlier than what I’d just booked with Apple. So, I ordered there as well. They even offered almost double for my iPhone 15 Pro Max trade-in.

So as of right now I have two iPhone Duo preorders, one set for delivery mid-November, the other mid-December. I’m very likely going to cancel the Apple order, but holding on to hope that it gets moved up.

Anyways, what was your preorder experience like? Was anyone actually able to get through for launch day delivery and/or pick up? I‘m starting to think nobody did.

UPDATE: After sharing this on across all the socials, a couple people mentioned that Best Buy still had stock for launch day pick up. I canceled my AT&T order and have successfully placed an order for 10/23 pickup at Best Buy. Here's hoping they don't let me down.