Baltimore: No G1s available at T-Mobile stores, but no lines either

With the iPhone, thousands stood in line, some for days, some in tents, waiting anxiously for the first boxes to be trucked in. How would the wait for the T-Mobile G1 phone be any different? Tim Conneally found out right away.

BALTIMORE (BetaNews, 11:05 am EDT) - I was greeted by a white UPS envelope leaning against my front door as I came home from walking my dog last night. It was nearly 9:00 pm, and when I had left the house no more than an hour before, no deliveries had arrived. How did I manage to get this package after e-mailing and calling the company with no response? How had I received my long-awaited Android G1 with absolutely no word from T-Mobile?

Flash back to the day pre-ordering began, when I filled out the form on the G1 site, deliberately selecting the brown model to wave in everyone's face. I entered my T-Mobile number and account name, and eagerly clicked on "Sign me up!" The next screen said I should check back for order status, which I did...daily.

After three days of logging into T-Mobile.com, the "pre-ordered" status disappeared and morphed back into the "Learn More" button, so I expected to soon find an e-mail from T-Mobile confirming the purchase. Nothing.

Another two days passed. Still nothing. I sent an e-mail to customer support to find out the status of my G1 to see if I needed to re-order it. No reply. By this point, the initial pre-registry had expired and the next batch of orders that were scheduled to arrive in early November were being taken. Rather than get the G1 after its launch date by mail, I figured I'd just go into the local shop and pick one up on October 22 and talk to people there who were also excited for the device.

It was a pleasant surprise to see the package waiting for me on October 21, though I couldn't help but shake my head at how it arrived before the order confirmation. To add to the confusion, when I opened the package, there was no receipt or packing slip, just the G1 in a box.

No complaints from me, as it was in my hands, installing loads of free apps and downloading Motorhead songs from the Amazon MP3 store.

Early this morning, T-Mobile's G1 availability announcement came across the wire, saying, "Customers can purchase and carry away the T-Mobile G1 at T-Mobile retail stores and select third-party stores in major cities where T-Mobile's 3G service is currently available...All T-Mobile retail stores will open early at 8 a.m. on Oct. 22 to give everyone the chance to experience and purchase or order the T-Mobile G1."

At least I could go and gauge the public's reaction by visiting a few local stores early in the morning.

Expecting lines, but not of "iPhonic" proportions, I visited three T-Mobile stores in Baltimore before 9:00 am. Each one was the same thoroughly depressing scene: lights dimmed, doors opened, bleary-eyed employees and not a single customer to be found. But that's not even the worst part.

There were no G1s.

Fortunately, the employees tended to be friendly and talkative despite having to clock in more than two hours earlier than usual to peddle a phone they didn't even have in stock. They all knew about the millions of pre-orders, and some had also heard of a store that was jammed with people already, though when asked, they couldn't say which it was.

When I told employees that my plans to buy a G1 this morning were thwarted by having one turn up unannounced, they usually laughed. But it turns out I was not alone. An employee of the Owings Mills location told me that the same thing happened to someone working at his store: A young woman pre-ordered her G1 and T-Mobile said nothing until it showed up.

I'm beginning to wonder if I received my Android phone for free, as even now, my T-Mobile account has not been billed, and my associated bank account has not either. If my situation, or one similar has happened to enough customers, this could be why the company retracted its 1.5 million pre-order figure and has granted everyone with a G1 free Internet until October 29, giving the company time to work out contracts and orders at its own expense.

Of course, the free G1 is just wishful thinking, but the question remains: if the device I received was somehow defective, and I went to exchange it today, would I be able to prove that I had even purchased it?

5:44 pm EDT October 22, 2008 - It looks like things weren't so dead elsewhere in Charm City. By 2:00 pm EDT, I had been to three more official T-Mobile stores, each presenting a decidedly different scene.

Located in a much more populous area in North Baltimore, the fourth store I checked out today still had a line of no less than 20 after nearly five hours and with four cashiers working. Unfortunately, the line situation was different from the iPhone launches in that all of these customers were actually waiting inside the store, and T-Mobile was not so keen on someone photo-documenting the event.

The T-Mobile stores I visited in shopping malls were both sold out, and reported doing so within the first hour and a half of business. Neither could disclose exactly how many they had sold, but an employee at the shop in the Towson Mall said it was quite a few.