Crap planning, crap management.
The issue is that o2 don't want you to upgrade - they'd rather use the stock to get new customers through the door - they have your existing monthly subscription anyway, they won't gain anything by supplying you with a new handset.
Hell, the submit button on their upgrade form is set to redirect you to a failure page, it doesn't even try and submit it.
This kind of crap service is exactly what you get when you hand a company a monopoly - existing iPhone owners will upgrade eventually, it's not like they can go anywhere else.
I wouldn't blame anyone for buying a French iPhone and jailbreaking it quite frankly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
