The Man from Basildon's o2 shop says 'nahhh'

This buying-an-iPhone business is getting a bit annoying.

I’m accustomed to the great capitalist mode of operation. That is, I pay, they deliver. THEY being anyone who wants my business.

I specifically looked at the o2 website to check that their Basildon shop was one of the lucky few favoured with iPhone stock.

“They’ll probably only have iPhone 3G 8GB models,” warned fellow SMS Text News contributor, Ben Smith, this morning.

“Ah that’s fine,” I said, pointing out that I’m quite comfortable swapping data around. 8GB is enough, I reckon.

And if it’s in stock, well… so be it.

But it’s not in stock in Basildon:

How totally embarrassing. It’s mega-embarrassing walking into a shop and, standing next to some bod buying a Motorola, asking if there’s any iPhone stock — and receiving a negative response.

In today’s hot shot communications age, how utterly appalling does your inventory infrastructure need to be when I can’t query it live to see how easily I can give you money?

Boring.

Next.

I even went into the Carphone Warehouse. But I changed my question and used, “When will you be getting iPhones in stock?”

See what I did there? Reduced my disappointment level, assuming they had nothing in stock. I can’t be disappointed now, can I?

“We get deliveries on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said the chap behind the counter, in his most effective ‘computer-says-no’ voice.

Right.

So, how should I use that information, Mr Salesman?

Dear me.

You’d think it was costing them money to retail them.