I carried out a controlled experiment yesterday. I started my iPhone upgrade to iOS4. I then went and bought a new car from Ford. It took me less time to do that than to upgrade the iOS, at a ratio of 3:1. It took me 4.5–5 hours to upgrade the iOS, and 90 minutes to buy a new car…
The Discussion section of the paper on this experiment may not get past the reviewers, on account of snark…
I upgraded to IOS 4 yeterday too. I started at 4 pm, at work, and I left the office at 4.50. I didn’t buy a car – perhaps there is some kind of interaction between them?
It only took 30mins for me… Weird. Is your phone a 3G or a 3GS?
3G. I think the testing was done on 3GS…
No sympathy. You waste your money on a car when you could be upgrading your iBling.
When my iPhone/Pad/Person has wheels and a 2 litre engine, then I will get rid of the car…
Congratulations on the 90 minute record!
I lease my cars so we go through the renewal process every two years. What we do is decide on which car to buy – that usually takes about two months of sporadic discussions (sometime vehement!).
Then we visit three dealerships in our area and ask for their very best price. When the bids are in, we phone the winning salesperson and ask them to draw up to contract and we’ll be in to sign it and arrange delivery.
That last part should only take a few minutes, right? Wrong.
Every single time we’ve leased a car, the salesperson fails to have a contract ready to sign. They always have to fill out the form in front of us and try to sell us a bunch of “extras.” Then they have to clear everything with the sales manager while we sit in the office playing games on our upgraded iPhone. This can take over two hours.
That’s why we will always do the upgrade *before* getting a new car.
I think that they are in a rather competitive market right now and it is the EOFY sale. It might not work so well at other times…
Why don’t you make winning the bid contingent on having the contract ready? If the contract is not ready when you walk in the door…auto-fail!