I feel your pain
All this par for the course on pre-orders these days. the only company able to maintain SOME control over the process is Apple, and even they have had some major snafu's. There are so many dependencies with distribution when you sell 3 million devices in 37 days. Stuff can, and does go wrong.
What hurt the most was that AT&T went from exclusive purveyors of the Note 1 to being next to last in terms of getting the Note 2 into peoples hands. As for "no rhyme or reason" regarding what order people get these that is also SOP, no matter if you are talking Best Buy, AT&T, whoever. Even Amazon had a Pre-Order blow up (Asus Transformer Prime) and had to send apology out for hundred, if not thousands of canceled pre-orders.
If you think this is bad, you missed the Transformer Prime Pre Order. How bad was it? Buy ended up treating me to a Prime AND sent me $50 to boot.Don't count on AT&T doing the same LOL! If pressed AT&T will do
something for people that got delayed, such as a credit of some type - as long as you don't mind a 45-90 minute call and asking them to "make it right" which really seems quite petty:
"Other people got THEIR TOYS, but I had to wait X # of days to get MY toy. Now give me $100 credit and I will stop crying" I can say this simply because
I am one of those obsessive freaks that check status updates constantly & take time from work to go home and snag my Fedex Package from the porch (would YOU feel ok knowing your $800 phone was sitting on your front steps?) So yeah, I am as bad as anyone. Shamefully guilty of gadget gluttony.
By the way, I have an 11/2 Pre-order on the way for tomorrow. Before you direct ALL your hatred at me, know that I had a Pre-order on the 27th, and one on the 29th that I canceled when they took the full amount $320 out of my available balance (debit cards SUCK for Pre-orders) Whats weird is after changing me at one point nearly $900 for 3 separate orders, now it is on the way, and all the holds or whatever have rolled off. and I have NO charge on my account. You can be sure THAT will change.
Sigh I have got to get a new passion, like rock collecting. This is too stressful, LOL