Now into the afternoon on the East Coast of the United States, Apple and AT&T are continuing to experience massive difficulties accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 4. As we noted earlier, Apple's own site has been throwing up errors for much of the day, but the primary problem appears to be AT&T's servers, which have reportedly completely collapsed under the deluge of requests.
Gizmodo has been staying on top of the issues all day, sharing reports of AT&T stores resorting to pen and paper for taking down customer information or even closing all together. Some customers have even reportedly attempted to log into their AT&T accounts only to find themselves viewing account for information for other customers, creating significant security concerns.
Customers hoping to bypass the frustrating online experience by calling in by phone to Apple to place their pre-orders are finding that Apple isn't accepting calls at this time, refusing to put customers on hold due to the crush of customers trying to place pre-orders. Even when Apple was taking calls, customers spent as much as three hours on hold before being told that there was nothing Apple's representatives could do until AT&T's servers are brought back up.
Meanwhile, customer frustration continues to increase, with both Apple and AT&T taking heat for the issues. While Apple has been known to struggle to keep up with launch-day demand for its products in the past, today's issues seem well beyond the scope of its usual congestion. Certainly the need for so many customers to interface with AT&T's systems during the pre-order process is a contributing factor to the difficulties, but it remains to be seen whether the issues stem from Apple and AT&T being woefully underprepared to handle the load or if customer demand has been significantly higher than the companies anticipated.
