I had a disastrous experience with Affordable Mobiles after pre-ordering an iPhone 12 Pro - an order which I ended up cancelling. After finding a favourable deal with them via a comparison website, I phoned to enquire as to stock availability upon release of the iPhone 12 Pro. I was advised that if I went ahead and pre-ordered with them, I would receive the handset on release day - and that if I didn’t, it’d mean that there would be stock issues everywhere (not just via them). As such, on 18th October (two days after the pre-order window opened), I placed my pre-order and my upfront payment of £614.99 was debited along with their £2.50 holding fee. All security checks were passed, and the following day I received confirmation that my order had been approved. Release day (23rd October) arrived without any further correspondence from Affordable Mobiles (i.e. a despatch notice), let alone the delivery of the handset. Rather than being contacted by the company, I had to phone them to enquire as to the status of the order as I had no reason not to expect delivery when I’d been told I would. This is where my nightmare began - I was advised that they were experiencing delays, but hoped to receive stock in the coming days. This didn’t ever materialise, and it wasn’t until 27th October that they circulated an email to acknowledge the delays (and state that they were aiming to source the handsets ‘as quickly as possible’). Sadly, the majority of the ensuing two weeks were spent with me contacting them for updates, only to be told on each occasion that the expected delivery date had fallen even further back. The best that they could offer me was a £10 goodwill credit, claiming that these delays were global and not just being faced by them. To make matters worse, the next email correspondence (which wasn’t sent until 10th November) mistakenly notified customers that they would receive their order the following day (yet a date in August was referenced for delivery despite being in November). This certainly didn’t help their credibility. Upon phoning to query the email, I was advised that estimated delivery was in fact now as late as 1st December. The final straw was when, only three days later (13th November), I received an email stating that delivery would now take place on 31st December (30 days later than I’d been told only three days beforehand). Just as disappointingly, the tone of all communications came across along the lines of ‘keep waiting patiently for an indefinite period, and don’t contact us as we’re busy and there’s nothing we can do about it’. Whilst I’d like to think that I demonstrated patience throughout this debacle, I wasn’t prepared to wait another seven weeks (and however longer it’d end up being on top of that), having already waited four weeks to reach this point (in other words getting nowhere). This wasn’t simply a case of me being impatient - they had £600+ of my money. Simultaneously, I was losing resale value on my iPhone XS which I had agreed a fixed price on to be recycled, with quotes only being valid for 14 days (and values of older handsets like this consistently dropping). The icing on the cake is that this experience now affects the dates that I can upgrade in future, as my contract start date had been delayed by over a month. I cancelled my order with Affordable Mobiles, and on Saturday 14th November I contacted Mobile Phones Direct and placed an order for an identical handset through them, which arrived the following day. So much for a global shortage! I just wish I’d made this decision in the first place, or at the very least much earlier - rather than mistakenly putting my faith in Affordable Mobiles. Mobile Phones Direct should act as an example to Affordable Mobiles as to how to operate a business.x