OnePlus gets ready for a second round of pre-orders, talks about what will be different this time

After months of only selling its flagship phone via an invitation system, OnePlus finally opened the floodgates this October the 27th, allowing anyone to pre-order a phone within a 1-hour window. Naturally, what happens on such events is that servers just crumble under the load – it happened with Apple's iPhone 6 event stream, it happened with HTC's 50% off Nexus 9 sale, and it most definitely happened with the OnePlus One pre-orders, even though the company claims it had doubled its server capacity prior to the event.

OnePlus was quick to announce that it wishes to apologize to the fans who had no luck in getting the pre-order process to work all the way through, and what better way to do it, than host another pre-order party? That's right – OnePlus announced that there will be a second round on November the 17th, starting at 16:00 GMT (8am PST, 11am EST) and only open for 1 hour.

The company also outed some extra details about the pre-order process. Now, just like last time, if a customer places an order on an item that OnePlus has in stock – it will immediately be shipped. Otherwise – it will count as a pre-order and the customer will be cited an estimated shipping time. Invitation holders still hold priority over the new customers and wait times do not apply to them, but fear not – if one places a pre-order and then happens to stumble upon an invitation, they can submit said invitation to upgrade their order status and get a unit immediately shipped to them.

There has also been a small change in the way OnePlus handles customers' money – once an order has been placed, the company will reserve the payment with the buyer's account holder, but will not initiate a transaction until it ships the order. This should make things a little lighter on the pre-order process, and a little easier should one decide that they wish to cancel a pre-order.

And finally, OnePlus also wishes to “celebrate” this second round of pre-orders by “steeply discounting” any accessories that one bundles up with their One pre-order. Currently, the most attractive of accessories seem to be the Bamboo StyleSwap Cover and the JBL E1+ Earphones, so if you are placing a pre-order – make sure you check how much of a discount you are getting on those – might be worth it.


source: OnePlus via Phandroid