I pre-ordered and got my phone through Best Buy, and from Best Buy's end of things, I really have nothing to complain about. My wife and I were both getting phones, and we were doing the BOGO deal with opening a new line on AT&T; and my wife was having to trade in her device and pay a small amount of it off to upgrade, so to make sure this all went smoothly, we decided to do the pre-order in store. Pre-order part went fairly smoothly, we got a call on Thursday to set up a time to pick up, set it for 5:00, after we both got off work. Other than being a little time consuming, mostly because of setting up a new line and such, everything went smoothly from Best Buy's end.
That being said, the whole $99 bundle thing has me fairly unhappy. I understand that it was limited quantities and such, and I did pick up my phone a little later in the day. If I had missed out on the bundle because of picking up my phone later in the day, I would have been disappointed, but I wouldn't have been upset. However, based on what I can tell, even if I had been able to get my phone as soon as the store opened, it wouldn't have mattered. I'm not really upset with Best Buy, I can't blame them for following the rules. I am upset with how it was handled by Samsung, but I don't think they are trying to screw people over, I think they just handled it poorly. First of all; 50,000 units for a phone that had that many pre-orders is awfully low. I understand that this was supposed to be a limited thing, so they weren't going to do it for everyone, but 50,000 still seems really low. Second, and more important, they needed to handle the registering for the Bundle differently, so that people who were lucky enough for whatever reason to get their phone before the official release date didn't have a huge advantage over those who had to wait until the official release date. Either not allow registration until the official release date, or hold a certain amount for availability on the 21st, or something. As it stands, Best Buy was advertising the $99 Immersive Bundle (I was given a sheet when I picked up my phone that told about how to do the promo, and the Bundle was obviously still listed on there); and very few, if any, Best Buy customers even got a chance at the bundle, because it was gone by the time the store opened.