Is Apple lying to me about a new iMac or are they just inefficient?

The Zen of Supermarket Queues

Ordered a new 2011 iMac on the 6th of this month and today is the 17th, there was a delay of three days because of having to pay through bank transfer. SInce that transfer has gone through at least one week has gone by and still I have no news of what is happening to my order.

I am not a very patient person and I used to get annoyed when it was time in the supermarket to join a queue and it always seemed that whichever queue I joined there would be problems up ahead and I would end up waiting longer in a queue than the previously shorter to one right next to me. Now I just go join any queue at random and listen to some music or a podcast on my iPod or my iPhone and chill out and don’t worry about it. But I still can’t help but get a little bit miffed when I am made to wait for something longer than is necessary. On the Apple website when ordering the Apple iMac 2011  it says that it will take it two working days before it is available to be sent and the details of two working days stayed the same even though I ordered the iMac new, with an English keyboard rather than a Spanish keyboard from the Spain Apple web store.

So each day at the beginning of the day and also at the end of the day, I look at the account to check the Apple order status  for the Apple new iMac and click on the link which says follow this order and each time I get a estimated delivery date of August 22nd, 2011. When you consider the order was made on the sixth, for the life of me, I can’t understand why it should take you so long to be able to find an iMac of standard configurations and put in an English keyboard. The only other items added to the order is a Magic Trackpad, again a standard item and AppleCare. It should not be too difficult for them to find the details of an Apple Care to stuff inside the box of the new Apple iMacs.

Paying with Bank Transfer

I do wonder if the delays are due to other factors, such as the fact that we paid by bank transfer which went to Apple via an operation called WorldPay. The order did change from being ‘in revision’ to being ready to send after three maybe four days, so that I know the bank transfer did go through okay. The other possibility is that this adds more time because Apple want to wait for an specified period of time to make sure there is nothing wrong with the payment, but they don’t say anything about that at order time. They would rather have it a blamed upon inefficiencies in the transit process.

I did try to pay with credit card but due to the amount the credit card would not let me pay. I maybe could have rung the bank or the credit card company to tell to authorise the purchase, but that seemed like more hassle at the time. I expect if I was in a shop doing a physical purchase I would not have had the problem with any of the three cards we tried to use.

Educational Discount

One more possibility why there are delays with having the iMac sent out could be that the item was ordered through my wife’s account with Apple because she is a teacher and is able to buy the iMac with a discount. It is quite a nice discount of around €130 and definitely worth taking and maybe that means Apple want to have it sent out after a specific date. I don’t know – I am just guessing as I sit here wondering where is my iMac Apple computer.

It would be interesting to know if anybody else has had a similar problem with the transit details of new iMacs . Why not leave a comment below if you have had similar difficulties.

Apple Store in Barcelona

I almost wish I had gone to the Apple Store in Barcelona to go to buy a iMac off-the-shelf, except maybe I would not have been able to get the educational discount or to have the English keyboard included. When I am at work during the summer I have to use a horrible Windows type keyboard with a Spanish configuration it is not so different and I get used to it, but there are one of two things that I’m typing, I would prefer most definitely to have an English keyboard. I don’t often need to type in the accented characters which are easier with a Spanish keyboard. If I do need accented key characters then I can use the on-screen keyboard or use the new facility within OSX Lion, where if you hold down a key longer it will give you options for accented letters in the same way as it works when using a keyboard on iOS.

Since making the order with Apple I have ordered 8 GB of memory from Crucial, which always been a good place for me to buy memory for my computers. Since I have only worked with up to 4 GB on any of my computers so far I’m expecting this iMac to really work very fast with the i5 processors and also with having this 8 GB of RAM installed.