… at 8.20am, thinking I’ll pick myself up an iPhone, which is Sally’s present to me for my 30th birthday.

I arrive to find about 50 people in a line which turns out to be for the iPhone. Okay. So the Apple store opens at 8am. Good to know.

I jump in the line and wait. And wait. I calculated our rate of movement at 6m/hr. The line was about 25m long. Luckily, I made ‘friends’ with a bloke in the line and he saved my spot while I went for a coffee. Then I went to look around the store. Then I did some stretching in the foyer of the building opposite. Then I went for a wee.

That took about 25min off the 3½ hour wait.

I get toward the front of the line at about 11.30am and realise that there are actually three lines. There’s one for people buying the iPhone with Telstra, one with Vodafone and one for Optus. I’m in the Optus line with half of Sydney, and there’s no one in either of the other lines. You could have just walked in and out with your iPhone in 5 minutes if you wanted to go with either of those providers.

The reason for the large Optus line and non-existent Telstra and Vodafone lines is that Optus has the pick of the plans. As far as I know, Australia is the only country in the world where you can buy the iPhone from any one of three providers, but there may as well be only two, since Telstra’s entry level plan gives you 5MB of data per month for an additional $5 and then charges you $1/MB after that. Breathtaking.

So my plan was to go with Optus using their pre-paid option. I’ll let you look at the detail if you’re interested, but here’s the gist: Optus are the only providers offering pre-paid, and they’re also saying that you can get the phone completely unlocked after spending 6 months with them OR paying an $80 unlocking fee OR spending $80 on pre-paid credit. That’s what I’m after.

Along with their startup bonuses, including 1GB of extra data plus some talk time, as well as unlimited data in the first month, we’re looking at a seriously good offer. After you’ve burnt through that first $80 of credit, you’ve got yourself a totally unlocked iPhone for use on any network on any plan, with Three, Virgin, Vodafone, or anyone else.

My plan was that by the time I’m through that first $80 (or not too long thereafter), I would be looking into some cheaper 3G plans, made cheaper for two reasons:

• the providers feel that they’ve hooked all the suckers they can for the expensive 24 month contracts and start to offer lower plans to new customers who didn’t/couldn’t buy in at the start, and

• more and more people are using 3G services, which brings data pricing down.

So that was the plan. Back to the line.

I finally reach the front of the line and a perky girl in a sky-blue t-shirt comes up and invites “Mr Bathgate” to head up to the Optus sign up people on level 1. I’m introduced to Brendan, who’s one of about 20 Optus employees working flat-chat signing people up. There are five Vodafone employees surfing the web.

Brendan gives me a 16GB black iPhone in the box and a cute little bag (huzzah!) and I sit down to sign up with him, holding my 100pts of ID in my hot little hand. He asks me which plan I’d like to join and I say I’d like to go for Optus pre-paid, please.

“Oh, we’re not doing pre-paid,” he says. Sorry? “We don’t have any pre-paid phones.” Pre-paid phones? It’s the same phone, right? He shrugs and asks which plan I’d like to sign up to. I shrug and ask to speak to his manager.

His manager comes over looking harried. Brendan explains the problem and the manager tells me that they’re all out of stock of pre-paid iPhones, they sold out really quick. I ask, aren’t they the same phone? “No, they’re a different phone.” Okay.

I tell him I’ve waited three and a half hours in the line and that I wasn’t told that pre-paid wasn’t available. I had looked it up on the website, looked at the options, chosen my preferred one and come in to sign up. He says that on previous days they’ve had people walking up and down the line telling everyone that there’s no pre-paid available. I tell him that what happened on previous days doesn’t really help me. I’m a bit rude at this point. He looks annoyed and then shrugs and says he can’t help me. I shrug and tell him I want to speak to his manager. He says he’ll get him on the phone and walks away.

While we’re waiting for the manager’s manager, Brendan looks up the pre-paid pricing page for me. I had to direct him to it because he hasn’t had anyone ask about pre-paid iPhones yet and all he knows about it is that they aren’t doing the pre-paid thing at the moment. We read through the options and he says, “Yeah, it doesn’t say anywhere that it’s available.” What? I say, “Dude, it doesn’t say anywhere it’s not available.”

“Oh yeah,” says Brendan. “Good point.” I explain bait and switch, and that this pre-paid thing doesn’t seem malicious, but it still sucks.

The manager comes over and tells me he’s still trying to get through to his manager to ask him about it. I ask if I can speak to him on the phone. The manager says, “My boss isn’t going to speak to you on the phone, he’s a general manager. He’s too busy.” Keep trying to get through, I say.

Five minutes later, at 12.25pm, the manager returns and tells me that his boss is coming to the store and that he’ll see me. Sweet.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a bloke turns up who obviously runs the show. He comes over and introduces himself. He’s Ben Murray, general manager of sales for Optus. He sits down with me and talks me through what’s going on. He says that he’s disappointed that I wasn’t told about the situation while I was in the line. I ask what the story is with the different pre-paid phones, and here’s what he says.

Apple sends the phones to Optus to sell. (In this case, Optus employees were working in the Apple store, rather than in an Optus World or whatever). Some of those phones go straight to Optus stores and are put on plans. Others go to the Optus distribution centre and are modified to become pre-paid phones. He doesn’t go into details, but he doesn’t seem to be yanking my chain.

The original batch of iPhones for pre-paid were sold out at Optus stores by 12pm Friday last week, the first day of sales. Optus are hoping to have a new batch of pre-paid phones ready by the weekend (19, 20/7), but that will depend on Apple shipping them the stock by Wednesday (16/7), which is not looking highly likely. At any rate, sometime next week, the pre-paid phones will be available again, at which point they will sell like hot-cakes. (No duh).

When you sign up for pre-paid you can port your existing number and the $80 of credit thing is correct for unlocking the phone. After that you can put any SIM you like in it, but it must be re-tethered through iTunes each time a new SIM is inserted. I’m not sure what that means.

I ask what he can do for me. He says he’ll take my details, have a pre-paid phone from the start of the next batch reserved for me, and send it to an Optus store of my choice for pickup. I ask for a lower-back massage as well. He can’t help me with that.

I finally walk out of the store at 12.45pm, having been there for about 4½ hours. No iPhone, but satisfied that I’ll get one next week. That’s probably a good thing, since I’ve got an essay to write.

What’s the moral of the story?

• The Optus pre-paid phones are still the best (and only) bet in terms of getting an unlocked iPhone

• Always push this kind of thing up the food chain
• Junior sales staff vary in how much they care for customers. Low-level management hardly care at all, but middle to upper-level management, like Ben Murray, often care quite a lot, because they have enough politic to bear customer relations in mind, but not enough direct contact with customers to make them jaded and aggro.
• Shop early at the Apple store. Really early.