Today is the day you can ‘pre-order’ an Apple Watch. The actual release date is 24th April. Their UK website still says ‘Available 24.04.15’. However there are no watches available for delivery on that date. A couple of models are showing 4-6 weeks delivery and all the others are showing ‘June’. That’s a bit vague, there are 30 days in June.
Apple Watch went on pre-order via the Apple Online Store at 8.01 am this morning, 10th April 2015. By 8.30 when I checked, delivery dates had slipped to 4-6 weeks or even later than that. An Apple Store representative told me today that they can not get enough couriers to deliver them all, so delivery dates have slipped a bit. What nonsense! 6 weeks is not ‘a bit’, and that is not the reason anyway.
No, Apple have got it wrong this time. They have set an availability date that is unrealistic for the level of stock that they have, which is way too low to fulfil orders now. They should have waited until they knew they would have enough stock. This way, announcing availability when there isn’t any, will just annoy customers who expected to be able to buy an Apple Watch on 24th April as promised.
Also, you can’t just walk into an Apple Store and try one on. You can look at them, they are in a glass fronted display table in the stores, but if you want to actually touch one, you have to go online and book an appointment!
If I want to buy a tin of Heinz Cream of Mushroom soup, I don’t have to book an appointment to go to Tesco to view the tin, then come home, order it from Tesco’s online store and then wait six weeks for it to be delivered! You have to do that if you want an Apple watch!
But I booked an appointment anyway; you only get fifteen minutes. They’re nice, lighter than I expected and just nice, but not essential and I don’t need one. That’s just as well as I can’t have one, at least I can’t have one on the date Apple told me I could. That’s not good customer service.
The other problem is, again this will be because Apple knew they had no stock, you can only order the watch from the Apple Online Store for delivery on an unspecified date; also you can only have them delivered by post. You can not buy one in an Apple Store and you can not have one delivered to an Apple store for you to collect, the website states ‘Personal Pickup is currently unavailable’. What a complete shambles. Why can you not buy Apple’s hottest product in its own stores?
Also, there is currently no date for availability of the Apple Watch in Spain. Apple’s Spanish website just says only ‘Disponible en 2015 – Available in 2015’. So If I’m in Spain, I can’t buy one there either. There is no date for availability in Spain because they don’t have enough to sell in countries where they currently are available, but aren’t!
If I were desperate to buy an Apple Watch now, which I’m not, I’d have to order one from the Apple UK Store, have it delivered to my UK address and then fly back to pick it up. That is NOT going to happen.
So nice watch, but terrible customer service and such a shame you don’t actually have any to sell.