The Home of Ben May, Hervey Bay, QLD, Australia. Personal Blog of Ben May, Hervey bay

Being an iPhone connoisseur, I really have no choice but to upgrade my 9 month old iPhone 3G to the latest iPhone 3Gs.

My first, and to what I thought was the most logical step, was to ring Optus and enquire about upgrading an iPhone mid contract.

As I was only very early into a 2 year contract, I knew there was going to be a cost involved, which there was, Approximately $600 – which was fine.

I was told that there was going to be a 5 day delay for shipping, so I rang my local ‘YES’ (Optus) Store, and asked if they had any 3Gs’s in stock, which they said they did.

I asked the Optus Sales consultant if I could just go into the store and get the phone, as I don’t really want to wait that long.. I was told, to just wait for it to come, as it’s easier that way, and will just be easier for everyone..

Taking the consultants advice, I agreed to the terms of the contract re-negotiation, and was told that the phone would be delivered to me on Monday  (Being told this on a Wednesday).

I then sold my 3G iPhone to someone, and swapped that phone over on the Friday before I got the new 3Gs. Monday, expecting my phone, I got a text from Optus, saying that there would be a 2 – 3 week delay on the new phone..

In the mean time, I was using a Pocket PC – HTC Diamond, which was a good phone, 12 months ago, but compared to the iPhone, it’s just useless.

After about 3 days of fighting with the HTC Diamond, I was at the local Optus store and asked if I could do the upgrade there, they said Ofcourse.

The next day, I rang up Optus, Canclled their upgrade, went back to the store, got the deal done, handed over the phone, and hey presto, DONE. That hour.

This whole dilemma was rather concerning to see that the Online/Phone consultants at Optus would rather keep me waiting from 1 to 3 weeks, for a new phone, when right at the onset of the investigation into the upgrade, I could have been advised that the upgrade was possible in store, and saving me, the customer a lot of time. The Optus YES store, representative told me that it would have most likely been because Optus make a greater commission if they do the sale online / over the phone.