I picked up an iPhone in San Francisco.
In the queue at the store was mostly Europeans and Antipodeans, which doesn’t bode especially well for AT&T I guess. Invalidating the warranty was much easier than I expected. :-)
When I checked my email I found a message from Apple asking me to rate the customer service I got at the store. Obviously they had matched my credit card details to my previous purchases through the online store back here and got my address that way.
Their service in store was fine, but their CRM system is weirding me out a little.
Meanwhile, Budget let me down and didn’t have any GPS units left when I picked up my rental car, so I’m really loving having Google Maps built into the phone. I would literally be lost without it.
I bought an iphone in San Fran right when they came out last year (pre sim unlock) and it was a straightforward purchase. When I went to buy another for a friend in December, they had put restrictions in place - you needed US credit card and sign up for a plan on the spot.
I recently bought another from the San Fran store last month (all purchases & attempts were from there) and now they have eased the restrictions up to using a credit card to buy (I used cash for my first purchase).
Obviously sales took a huge dive when they tried to crack down, forcing them to ease the restrictions a little.
All this makes me wonder, just how large is the iphone ‘grey market’?