In the UK? You're not getting your Surface tablet on the 26th

It started with an email on Saturday that went out to a number of customers in UK and Canada saying that the release date of Surface had changed to the 2nd November.

The story was that this email was sent out in error.

I placed the order for my Surface within minutes of the UK Microsoft Store going live. All this week, the order status on the site has steadfastly shown "2nd November".

I phoned them on Monday to clarify the delayed email, and again on Tuesday, and Wednesday to clarify why the date was still wrong. Each time I phoned the representative told me that it would be shipped to arrive on Friday 26th, Windows's general availability date.

I know a lot of you had done the same thing as I've had many conversations with Surface pre-orderers on Twitter this week.

This evening when I phoned I was told a different story - they will be "dispatched" tomorrow morning (i.e. the 26th), and will take between one and three working days to arrive.

On querying this, I got hold of a supervisor in the call centre there who shared the following:

- The information given by representatives during the week was wrong. Although they clearly told me "it will arrive on the 26th" on three occasions, what they actually meant by this was "it will be dispatched on the 26th".

- Your Surface, and my Surface, is currently sitting in Microsoft's warehouse somewhere in the UK.

- Tomorrow morning, trucks from UPS and FedEx will arrive at the warehouse and cart off the shipments to their own depots where they will go into the distribution system in the usual way. These are all "next day delivery" shipments, so they should arrive Monday. 

- Some time tomorrow afternoon or evening, a "dispatch" email will be sent containing a tracking number.

The supervisor I spoke to - who I must say was very helpful and shared information in a refreshingly detailed way - said that as far as he was aware all of the orders have been boxed up and are ready to go. If you have an actual order in the system, it should go out the morning of the 26th. Note: "should".

Another weekend with the iPad then...

What do you think? Post a comment, or talk to me on Twitter: @mbrit.

Image credit: Wikimedia. That's a picture is Lake Disappointment, by the way. I'm fairly sure that all of us disappointed UK Surface customers could fill this lake with our tears… *sob*