Being a small company it's quite beneficial from a cashflow perspective to finance our workstations from Apple as opposed to purchasing them outright.
With this in mind I picked up the phone way back in April and called the Apple store for business to get the ball rolling on what is usually a simple, painless process. As an existing business customer we've easily added new machines to our lease in the past and had them arrive at our door in less than two weeks.
I guess I've come to expect a level of service and responsiveness from Apple based on prior experiences. We'll, apparently Apple has switched external financing companies since our last lease addition meaning I had to go through the entire application process again. On top of that, our iMac was ordered just after the new iMac release which caused some confusion in what the sales rep referred to as 'the system.'
Finally, I received an email from Apple informing me that the order had finally been processed and would be shipping between May 27th and May 29th.
Great, not the best scenario, but it'll do.
Checking my inbox this morning I noticed an order status email from Apple telling me that shipping had been delayed with the new machine now arriving sometime between June 11th and June 17th.
In my opinion, the changes that have happened at Apple (the new financing company and the release of the new iMac) should not be felt by the customer making the purchase.
Apple should have all of my information on file ready to send to the new financing company and a new model release certainly shouldn't be a reason for a delay in order processing.
For now I guess we wait and hope the next purchase goes much smoother.