Short Wait for Long-Awaited iPhone at Midtown Manhattan Verizon Wireless Store

IPhone fever appeared fairly low-grade at one of the two largest Verizon Wireless stores in Manhattan early Thursday when doors opened on 34th Street for in-store sales of Apple’s 3G iPhone 4. Verizon had prepared for a much larger crowd, but most of the roughly 18 stanchions perched outside the store for crowd control remained stacked against a post in our 90 minutes at the store. When we arrived about 6:30 a.m., prior to the scheduled opening at 7 a.m., 14 consumers, many sipping hot coffee, stood in line braving 26-degree temperatures. The line was far shorter than we, and apparently Verizon, had anticipated.

"You never how many you're going to get,” Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Raney told us at the store: “We spent a lot of time planning.” Raney said 40 people were waiting when doors opened at 7 a.m. and she expected “a steady stream” of customers throughout the day. Those expectations were “typical for other stores around the country,” she said. Verizon’s 15 Manhattan stores had the phone Thursday she said, along with all Verizon stores nationwide and Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores. New York-area Verizon agents would get the phone in March, she said. A Verizon employee told us the midtown store had about 400 iPhones in stock Thursday. Raney only said: “We have plenty."

The first customer, a representative from the Howard Stern Show, claimed to have been in line since 11 p.m. the previous evening, anticipating a large crowd for the long-awaited device from Verizon Wireless. The following four customers said they arrived at the store at about 5 a.m. A few minutes prior to opening, Verizon Wireless staffers gave customers forms to fill out to facilitate the purchase process. When doors opened, staffers gave out bags with hand warmers and red Verizon ski caps, although the wait to get into the store at that point was minimal.

Manhattan resident Kareem Alibocas, 33, an existing Verizon Wireless customer, told us he was upgrading from the Motorola Droid X because “I'm fascinated by the iPhone.” He planned to give his Droid to his wife. Jake, 23, of upper Manhattan, who declined to give his last name, had already pre-qualified for the iPhone at another store last weekend, and chose the midtown Manhattan store for purchase because Verizon representatives told him that location, situated near Penn Station, Macy’s and two major subway lines, would stock the most phones. “I wanted to make sure I got mine,” he said. Upgrading from the myTouch on the T-Mobile network, Jake said he had been waiting “a long time” for the Verizon iPhone and planned to “get everything unlimited” on his monthly plan. “It'll cost twice as much” as he paid on T-Mobile, he said, “but Verizon has the best service, phone-wise.” A self-proclaimed “Apple fanatic,” he said, “the iPhone is everything. It’s like a computer."

Verizon staffers let in the first 14 customers when doors opened. We led the second round of shoppers and found friendly, but somewhat unprepared sales associates unfamiliar with much of the payment and activation process. Managers were in high demand for questions involving credit cards, cash transactions, number porting and phone activation. Our transaction lasted about 40 minutes.

The company did “staff up” for the day and also used marketing and internal people from other disciplines within the company for the iPhone launch, Verizon Wireless spokesman David Samberg said. “This is an all-hands-on-deck day for us.” In response to our question about turnout, Samberg said it was “going as expected. Our goal wasn’t to have people standing out in the cold,” he said, despite the hand-warmers. He noted the staffers talking to waiting customers so that when they entered the store, “we knew what phone they wanted and what plan they wanted.” He said transaction time has been “about 20 minutes” and “all stores are running at full capacity in terms of available salespeople to get people in and out as quickly as possible."

When we asked Samberg whether the modest customer turnout at the 34th Street store could be due to savvy consumers waiting for a 4G version of the iPhone, he said, “Apple hasn’t announced a new iPhone. Sure, they will at some point, but if you constantly wait for the next thing, you end up with nothing.” He wouldn’t say how many iPhones the company expected to sell either nationwide or in the New York metro area.