Like this wouldn't happen: AT&T canceling orders made "in error"


Reader Matthew just confirmed our worst fears: not only was the pre-order experience at Apple and AT&T a big pile of poopfail, they’ve started cancelling “orders made in error.” Why in error? Well, presumably because things have gotten so fouled with eligibility in their systems that folks are getting knocked out of the pre-order queue.

Here’s the email Matthew got today:

Your recently placed AT&T Premier order was cancelled. If you believe your order was cancelled in error, please call us at 1-866-499-8008 Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

Web Order Number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Thank you,
The AT&T Premier Team

Matthew writes:

Upon contacting AT&T this morning the representative said that this is a known issue happening to a good number of customers and that they currently were waiting on management for help resolving the issue. Apparently their computers are rejecting orders because it tries to say I’m not eligible for an upgrade but the CSR could plainly see on the account that I was eligible. Their only solution for me was to try and call back in 3-4 hours to see if anything new has transpired. Obviously I was upset at this and I just hope that AT&T does something to resolve the issue. As it stands I’m out my iPhone 4 order and if I want one I have two options: 1) Stand in line on Thursday 2) Order from a different option and not receive the phone for another month.

AT&T wrote back, saying to us:

Some customers who ordered online did not receive their order confirmation from AT&T yesterday, so they placed a second order. These customers can rest assured their order has been placed. We simply balanced out the system on our end to reflect a single order. We are emailing these customers.

Anyone else seeing these messages?