But on Friday afternoon, Verizon stores were unable to process any more orders for the Storm, because high traffic apparently had overloaded the system with ordering requests. A representative at the Verizon Wireless store in Framingham, Mass., said that the outage hit his branch at around 3 p.m. on Friday, with service returning one hour later.

In addition to in-store systems going down, Verizon's online portal for ordering the Storm went down: Clicking on the "Buy Now" button on the homepage will prompt a message telling you that the page you're looking for is unavailable.

"I guess they weren't ready to handle the capacity," says Lory Dix, a Verizon customer who had stopped by the Verizon Wireless store in Newtonville, Mass., on Friday afternoon to fix a problem with her current phone. "All the systems were down when we went there, and people were just standing around."

Demand for the Storm has been strong so far; lines of 50 to 100 people queuing up outside Verizon Wireless stores to purchase the device. Reuters has also reported that Verizon customers created a "ruckus" when a Verizon store in Manhattan ran out of the device. Over 200 people had been waiting in line since before 8 a.m. this morning, the report said, and police had to step in to calm things down. One New Yorker pre-ordered the Storm at both Best Buy and Circuit City, but when he visited local stores for each chain, neither had any devices left, nor did a Verizon store near Manhattan's Bryant Park.