Here is my recent experience trying to buy an N810:

Ordered from Dell, Amazon, LetsTalk (nokias online distribution) and buy.com

Dell said 5-7 days on Dec15 and still lists me as "in production". They are currently promising to ship Dec28 (which would be 7 business days) but other threads posters have been told January.
Also, they shipped the minisd card in a few days but there is no sign of a partially shipped or split order in my online order status. The only way I can tell that it shipped is that I have it in my hand.

Amazon said "in stock" so I ordered one. Two days later they said "backordered until Jan9" They also shipped the minisd card right away, but they sent me a shipping email and explained the split order.

Let's Talk (Nokia's online store) said "In Stock and you'll have it by Dec 26" on the phone and then 2 days later it's on indefinite backorder. No ETA... until this morning when they sent a nice email giving an ETA of Dec19 (6 days in the past)

Buy.com says "In Stock and ships in 1-2 days"... no more news from them yet.

I ordered each with next day shipping, so I'll let you know who actually ships first and when it arrives.

So in conclusion:

1) These are hard to get! Must be related to a backorder straight from the factory.

2) The state of on-line retailing has sunk pretty low. "In Stock" appears to mean nothing. Certainly does not mean that anything is in stock. No offers to refund the next day shipping or anything.

3) I consistently get different stories from the web "order status" from when I call in to get order status. They show different dates and give different stories each time. I'm starting to take a "call three times and average the result" approach.

4) I may end up with lots of 2GB minisd cards

Yankee

I wonder if this has anything to do with the buying problems:

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Stor...16C9F98FD25%7d

A few sentences in you'll find the "Nokia Internet Tablet PC" (it's a PC now too?!) listed as one of Amazon's hottest items for Nov 19 - Dec 19. It may very well be that Nokia simply underestimated the holiday demand for both N8x0 devices.

I too ordered mine from Buy.com on the 24th of Dec, still no word just the good old "in process" words for my status. Could be the holidays I just hope I get an answer soon, I also ordered one from Dell about 2 weeks ago and it says est ship date Jan 4th. If Buy.com fails then I will just stick with Dell, kind of stinks since I was really hoping to get started on this device much sooner than that, oh well its worth the wait I am sure .

I have been waiting on my order from ca.buy.com since Nov 23. I got it at a good price too.. so chances are that I'll never get it

Warning - long blather.

I ordered from Amazon on Dec. 19, when they showed "3 in stock". Since that number didn't change all the rest of the day, I suspiciously called their support in India the next day and was assured that my unit was ready to ship. Four hours later I got an email to expect it mid-January.

So I ordered from Let's Talk, who said it was in stock. (They asked uniquely obnoxious personal questions to verify my credit card, but I was - er, motivated.) The web page showed my order ready to ship. Then a few hours later it showed back ordered.

After some sad experiences, I now check web vendors out on Bizrate.com and ResellerRatings.com. I never order from those with positives less than the mid-90's unless I'm desperate and they have a credible no-questions return policy. Based on that, I assumed that everyone else who claimed they had stock was lying. So I resigned myself to a January delivery and sat tight.

The next day I got an email from Let's Talk that my order had shipped. Go figure.

Waiting is no fun, but it'll be worth it.

Lying? Many online electronics retailers appear not to have physical possession of the merchandise they sell. They have (near) real time links to the inventory levels of wholesalers who actually fulfil the orders. This means multiple dealers are selling from the same stock, and when the supply is small it's easy for simultaneous transactions to attempt to reserve the "last" unit.

Maybe part of the problem is all the people ordering from 3 places and then canceling orders. It would drive any merchant crazy.

I ordered my N810 from Circuit City and had no problems. Their "in stock" seems to be accurate - the day I ordered they had it and a few hours later they were "unavailable". A few days later, they had them in stock again, and a little while later they were again unavailable. I've been watching their site just to see it go back and forth, lol. I'm not sure how many they get in stock at a time, but the website does seem to reflect changes at least. Shipping was also fast and I didn't pay extra - I ordered on Friday evening and had my unit on the following Wednesday (and it came all the way across the US!).

Just thought I'd share my positive experience.

I ordered mine from play.com December 4th, web site they said they would arrive in stock Dec 12th and I received mine Dec 14th.

I order a N810 from buy.com 12/25. They sent me my tracking number today 12/26. So they must have them and they are on sale with free shipping.

Allen