I have heard a few people complain about Carphone Warehouse. To be honest I have absolutely no problems at all. This time last year on iPhone launch day I went in and they had sold out of iPhone 3G's. The guy at the counter said he would reserve one for me and it would arrive on Monday morning. Sure enough, I went in Monday picked up my brand new iPhone and left. I have only had one problem with my iPhone in that the mute switch came loose. After experiencing T-Mobile, I figured O2 or CPW would just end up sending it back to Apple for a couple of weeks and give me a crappy loan phone. So I went to the Apple website, set up an appointment with a "Genius" at my local Apple Store. I walked in, was served straight away, they gave it a quick once over, gave me a new iPhone, activated it and I was good to go. Even better than that I just put in my MobileMe information all my contacts, calendars, email and bookmarks were back which meant I could carry on as normal.

CPW are not unique all phone shops are pretty dire. While all of retail is going down the pan with people going online, Apple is still enjoying tremendous growth. Why? Probably because Apple offers a service, they offer seminars and workshops, they have their "Genius" people who seem to know what they are talking about, who genuinely seem to care about the products they are selling. They also have phones to test! You go into most phone shops and they just have dummy models and you have to ask a sales assistant to use the phone. I thought I would go in and test the T-Mobile G1, but you had to ask to try it but I thought best of it as I had no intention of buying it as I had another 12 months of my iPhone contract left. I should be able to go around and have a play around with a phone without talking to anyone. If I want to ask anything I will, but more often than not I won't bother because they will just give me some brain dead generic response they could employee a parrot for.

I do believe Apple's achilles heel is O2 and I wish there was more networks carrying the iPhone to get more competition. However, all phone network retail stores are stuck in the past. They should all take a look at Apple retail stores and so should PC World and Curry's and every other electronics retailer to show how retail should be done. Geeky and tech savvy people will keep shopping online, but older people and less geeky people are the ones that are going to benefit most and these are your most important customers and the biggest area for growth. Do things like workshops in store to help people understand these new phones and maybe once they understand them and make them think I need that in my life, then they will sign the dotted line. Simple really.