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A technical glitch in Apple's online storefront won't allow residents of Boxted, Essex to get new iPhones and other hardware.
More specifically, residents of Boxted, Essex are finding themselves unable to order iPhones and other devices from Apple's website because the ordering system thinks their addresses are P.O. boxes.
The online storefront is telling customers that deliveries cannot be completed, frustrating some residents, The Daily Mail has reported. Apple doesn't deliver orders to P.O. boxes.
One resident, 43-year-old Celine Driscoll, said she was able to complete her order by having the iPhone delivered to a local store instead of her home.
"I spent more than an hour going around in circles on the Apple website. It was so annoying and such a massive waste of time," Driscoll said.
Another resident said he actually decided against buying an Apple product after being unable to order from Apple's website.
"I was pulling my hair out as I could not get the process to complete even though the finance for the phone had been arranged on the same website," said the resident. "I ended up going to Tesco and buying a Samsung instead — I was that annoyed."
Boxted is a village near Colchester in Essex, England. As of writing, the population of the village was 1,400.
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11 Comments
Heh, not far from me. Strange bug.
Easily fixed but still sloppy. Is this a new bug from excluding all addresses with 'box' in any part of the name or has been the case since Apple first prevented postal boxes from being allowed?
That is funny. Kind of like the farmer in Gay, Georgia, whose application to the USDA for some sort of program keeps getting rejected because it has the word “Gay” on it, and their system is programmed to reject “offensive” words.
The P.O. Box thing is likely due to Apple gift cards being used to send untraceable money by mail. As such it is a favorite of scam artists. If Apple and other companies made gift card funds fully traceable, it would pretty much end most online scams. Apple does not want to do that because it would obviously create a dent in its business so for now they are making small changes like banning P.O. boxes which will make it a little bit harder for scam artists to get their money.
It annoys me that they won't deliver to P. O. Boxes, because, as I'm no longer allowed to take deliveries at work, I have to arrange to take the day off to wait around for a delivery (in store pickup isn't always available, either). But this is just odd. Just looking for the word "Box" in an address doesn't make much sense.