I ordered the 16 gigabyte black version to replace my 3G, using AT&T’s online pre-order form. The experience there wasn’t great. Due to understandable outages based on demand, I had to try many times throughout the first night of availability in order to place my order. After refreshing the page while keeping entertained with something else, I finally got through, and placed an order instead of seeing their pesky “server busy” error messages.

I thought, “Great, I have my pre-order in. Now to just sit back and wait.” This wasn’t quite so.

Upon placing the order, I noticed that AT&T requested an authorization on my debit card for the price of the phone. This was expected; I needed to pay them. What was unexpected, however, was that two days later, the authorization had been removed. I literally had 200 extra dollars in my bank account, and didn’t know why.

Fearing that, like many customers, my order had been canceled, I tried to contact AT&T to see what happened. I first went the ‘no-human’ option and tried sending them an email through their web interface. There, I ran into this. Oops.

Resolving that the human option was the only way to go, I called up AT&T, and to my surprise, was given a lovely lady in the Midwest who told me that, “AT&T has double-charged people due to errors in their system, and in fixing the double charges they had removed people’s single charge.” She said they were in the process of correcting all charges, and that she would put it on her personal calendar to follow up with me at 1 p.m. sharp on the 25th.

I was happy. She confirmed that my order was in fact being processed — it wasn’t canceled — and she took the issue personally in order to follow up with me. Of all things, I must commend AT&T for their customer service. She was a gem.

But back to the iPhone. I waited, I was excited. I watched the tracking number as it shipped via UPS from Texas to Tennessee and finally to New York. I got home after a doctor’s appointment on the 23rd to have the iPhone in my hand and ready to use. After a bit of confusion reading AT&T’s quick start guide, I had the phone restored from a backup of my previous device, and was using it as if nothing happened. Kudos to iTunes and Apple for such a clean upgrade.

Fast forward to today. Checking my debit account, I still don’t see a charge. I see the account dwindle down as I make smaller purchases, but there’s still a happy bundle of money sitting there for AT&T to grab. It’s like Geico’s Kash: It’s theirs, staring at them expectantly from outside their kitchen window. From a business perspective I’m confused on how this would happen, and the giggly kid inside me wants to scream, “software bug in conjunction with human error!” But I don’t always get what I want.

Regardless, I’m not the only one who had this experience. I made a couple posts on Twitter to find others, and at least one other person received the same reward:

From @MrJakk: @timothyjcoulter Nope. Checked my bank statements today. Says shipped, but no charge…

Are we edge cases, or a large loss for AT&T that has currently gone unnoticed?

In any case, when I receive the call from that lovely lady from the Midwest tomorrow at 1 p.m., I’ll let her know that I haven’t been charged. Though I could keep the $200 as profit with the iPhone in hand, I at least owe it to the company for following up, if not for letting me ditch the heat, the stress, and the long lines.

UPDATE, 6/25/10: I woke up this morning to find a charge on my account. It seems like they’ve finally fixed it. Good for them.