I bought two new pieces of consumer technology this weekend. One, I returned. The other is now on display in the middle of my living room.
I bought an iPhone from the Apple store on Friday night right after 9 pm. I cancelled the next morning given that it would take 2 – 4 weeks to ship and they’re readily available at all six Apple stores near me. Plus as predicted all is not going smoothly with activations.
On the other hand, I decided it was time for a Wii. The last console I owned was an Atari 2600 (not counting my PSP). I thought that enough time had passed since the Holiday 2006 shortage and I could just walk in to any big box retailer and buy one. Wrong.
How can you get one? I think your best bet is to call your local electronics retailer and find out what day they usually get stock. You can call the night before, usually after 6 pm, to find out if they actually have any to sell the next day. If so, show up early and queue; the numbers I hears were typically 4 – 7 units per store. BTW we found a Best Buy that’s newly opened – it’s on the bestbuy.com site but not listed in general searches like Google Maps – that helps too.
Kind of backwards…but makes me wonder. Maybe Apple/AT&T should have staggered the release of iPhone supply in order to stretch out demand, increase desirability, and better handle system loads…