14 DAY TRIAL // AT&T and Apple were hit during the past two days by a wide range of issues related to the availability of iPhone 4 in the United States, and it seems that the problems continue. Following the push-back of ship date of units pre-ordered after Tuesday, June 15, a series of reports regarding security issues with customers' accounts emerged, and newer complaints on the matter showed that the issues were far worse than AT&T admitted in the first place.
Some of those who tried to secure an iPhone 4 in advance have been redirected to the accounts of other users when trying to log in to AT&T's website. Initially, the carrier said that the problem might not be too bad, and that no credit card information was compromised. But customers say that things are actually as bad as they can be, and that users did have access to credit card info when accessing the account of another customer, Gizmodo reports.
Moreover, there are some who report being charged for iPhone devices they did not order, or those who say they received confirmation of orders they did not place. In the end, both AT&T and Apple faced a great deal of issues with their servers, mainly due to the large number of people trying to pre-order the handset, and things got messed up badly. To make sure that it can sort them up, AT&T announced that it halted the pre-orders for iPhone 4 (via Engadget).
“Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we're suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we've already received,” the carrier announced. “In addition to unprecedented pre-order sales, yesterday there were more than 13 million visits to AT&T's website where customers can check to see if they are eligible to upgrade to a new phone; that number is about 3-times higher than the previous record for eligibility upgrade checks in one day,” it added.
One of our readers says that an initially successful order placed for the iphone 4 was canceled for no apparent reason. Another order was accepted, but the device is likely to ship with delays, as previously reported on. “I look on the AT&T website and I have a different order number and the phone is ordered and my bank account was deducted the $315 for the phone,” our reader stated.
When it comes to the shipping date for iPhone 4 units pre-ordered so far, those who will head over to Apple's website will notice that it has been pushed back to July 14. The handset was initially set to arrive on June 24, but the large amount of ordered units determined Apple to delay their shipping. According to the company, a number of 600,000 iPhone 4 devices have already been pre-ordered.