I had the morning off, and thought I'd check out the launch at the Fido's flagship store downtown on the off chance that the line was not too bad. As expected, the lines were nuts! At 8am, there were around 200 people on one side of Ste. Catherine at the Roger's store, and another 200 people on the other side of the street waiting to get into the Fido store - so much for a boycott! There was no way I was going to be able to get in (I had my 14 month old son with me), but I hung out for a while to see how it went.
Within 45 minutes, maybe 50 people had gone in and there were still around 200 in line (due to new arrivals). At this point an employee came out and said they were out of black 16GB iPhones and almost of of the white 16GB models. I highly doubt all the people in line were going to get any iPhone, and at this point I left.
On the way back, I checked out a couple of small Fido dealers in my neighborhood. At one (Action Page on Decarie), there were like two people there before the store opened at 10am. Both of these guys were turned away because Fido was only opening new contracts on launch day - no iPhones for existing contracts (I'm sure there was a lot of confusion on this, and a lot of annoyed customers). I could have snagged an iPhone here with zero wait (I would be opening a new account), but they only had 8GB phones and I think I'll hold out for a 16GB model.
I went by another small Fido dealer (CelTel) on Victoria to see if they might have any 16GB phones, and had kind of a weird experience that I will relate in a separate thread (basically I was the first customer of the day, and the sales guy rather rudely told me they had sold all their iPhones yesterday).
Another small Fido counter at Plaza Cote-des-Neiges also had a number of 8GB phones in stock, with no line other than one rather angry guy being told he could only get an iPhone for a new contract. This store did seem to be having computer problems - might have been related to the fact that they were trying to install iTunes on PC's running XP and Vista. Not surprisingly the staff have no clue about Mac's.
So the wait at the 'flagship' store was nuts, but I easily could have had an 8GB iPhone without waiting in line at two Fido dealers within blocks of my home. In the end (having wasted enough time on this, although it was an interesting morning and my son had a great time ripping up Fido brochures), I just called Fido to set up the account and they'll ship the phone to me whenever (next week maybe?) I took a $45 voice plan (400 minutes with unlimited incoming calls) plus the $30/6GB data promotion. Also had to pay the annoying extra fees for caller id and voicemail. It aint the US, but I can live with it. Wonder when the phone will come?
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