Has online ordering worked for anyone?

Question

Over the past day and a half, I've been attempting to order my 3GS online via Apple.com. But every time I get the "must go to Apple store" message... so today I went to the Apple store.
Talked to the greeter and she said it had to be done online, as they can't order it in the store for me (WHAT?!) and the website must have been down when I tried to order it, all twenty or more times I've tried. I figured "oh ok, this is dumb, but I guess I will wait for the website to work again" and decided to try it in store, and guess what, it worked! Because I didn't want to stand there for 15 minutes or how ever long, I decided I would go home and try to order it. To my surprise, when I got home, it still doesn't work.
Maybe it's literally down all but 5 minutes of the day, but I don't think that can be right. I have never had a problem with the Apple store until now. Is anyone else having this issue or is it just me?
Going to call and complain to Apple in an hour or two if it doesn't work again, but I'm hoping it will start.

Answer 1

Interesting variety of experiences. We have a family plan with shared minutes and texting. I kept trying to order a 3GS for just one line and got through the process to varying points about 30 different times. Some of the time I would get through the majority of the process and then I would get "an unexpected error occurred, please try later." I was going to give up. On Wednesday night at about 6 CT, I decided to try one more time and for some reason that time I was able to get through the entire process and order my phone. I picked a data plan but it didn't give me an option to pick a text plan. The confirmation that I received on the order just said "no text plan chosen". That would be correct because I didn't need to choose one, I already have an unlimited text plan at the family account level for all five of our phones.
I just looked at my ATT account again and it still shows that we have an unlimited family texting plan at the group level covering all of our phones. I didn't change any of that in order to get the website to accept my 3Gs order.
While this is not meant to be a scientific explanation in the least, my suspicion for the issues is that the ordering system is simply on overload from how many people are trying to order phones. I don't think it has anything to do with what kind of plan you are on, whether or not you have family text or anything else. I think the fact that you can't complete the transaction when you are trying to is simply because the threads into the system must be its capacity to complete as many simultaneous orders as it can. I think you just have to keep trying until you hit your window of opportunity. I just think I was in queue at the right time when another transaction finished and mine was able to bump up to the next step.