Apple iPhone 4 Pre-orders Kick Off in America, Sorta

From DailyTech: Well, today is the day that iPhone junkies around the world have been waiting for -- today is the first day that Apple is taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4. However, trying to order an iPhone 4 from Apple's website this morning has been an exercise in futility.

The Apple Store came online for pre-orders around 4am EST, but was quickly bombarded with requests. Many people trying to get an iPhone 4 were greeted with error messages or notices stating "Please wait while we access your AT&T account information."

After a few hours of errors and polite messages, Apple took the site down around 6am and put up its friendly "We'll be back soon" Post-it note. Since that time, it's been up and down for the past two and a half hours. Currently, the site is down yet again.

To add insult to injury, those looking to get their hands on a white iPhone 4 can't even pre-order it from Apple (or anywhere else). Apple apparently doesn't have enough stock to satisfy demand, so it's just going to make folks wait a while longer before its makes the white 16GB and 32GB SKUs available.

Folks who go through AT&T's website to order an iPhone 4 are having better luck grabbing a pre-order (sans the white models), but there's yet another hitch that could stop some customers in their tracks. Some people with AT&T Premier accounts aren't even able to order the iPhone 4 because it doesn't show up in their list of available phones.

The only option is to call up AT&T and have them temporarily disable your FAN#. By doing this, the iPhone 4 immediately shows up in your list of available phones, but you lose your monthly discount on phone service (this discount can range from 10% to 20% or more for some customers). However, it could take up to two billing cycles for you to be able to add your FAN# back to your account to get your discounts again.

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