ICE Fouls Up iPhone 4 Launch

With competition looming on the horizon ICE continues to fail to get its act together, this time with the sales of the first iPhone4 handsets in Costa Rica. On Wednesday thousands of hopefuls lined up at 25 ICE branches throughout the country with the expectation of getting their hands on the hot selling device, but they were disappointed although not surprised.

Although trying to blame Apple for the lack of devices, the truth is that ICE announced the sale of the iPhone4 with a great deal of publicity, asked users to sign up in advance and were unable to meet the demand. Local media carried the news of client's disappointment throughout the week and the number of devices sold became a state secret, according to Diario La Extra. In the beginning ICE announced that they had 11,000 devices in stock, and that 1200 had been issued the first day. Channel 7 news reported a waiting list of 16,000 clients.  But later a press release stated that due to "terms of our contract with Apple" they were unable to divulge specific figures on sales. 

La Extra interviewed users, including Alejandra Zepeda, who came with cash in hand, at ICE's main office in Sabana Sur. 

“They told me that there were no telephones available, they hope to have a shipment arrive over the weekend.  I jumped through all the hoops and they told me that they would call to tell me when I can come. Since it is a government agency I expected something like this to happen." she said.

Other frustrated users stated that filing the paperwork alone took an hour, not counting time spent in line in the first blustery days of the rainy season.  Yancy Villalobos commented, "We've been here since 7am and they have not helped us, the application takes an hour and they said they would give us a rain check for Friday or Monday if they could not see us today."

Now that the horse is out of the barn, ICE is closing the gate.  They recommend accessing www.grupoice.com in order to process a pre-application.  The client may enter all details about their intentions to use such a rare device and include the credit card information they would use in the case ICE deigns to bless them with an iPhone.  After some undefined period the lucky few will receive a communication from ICE telling them to come pick up their new terminal and initiating their payment plan which runs from 16,435 to 39,278 colones per month ($33 to $80), excluding the cost of the device.