Horrible first experience buying an i-phone

I have never bought an i-phone, but my son wants one for xmas. I went to the Tygervalley i-Store today, only to wait 15min before any consultant came to us. I wanted to trade in his current phone, and the consultant said that they need to run diagnostics on the phone to give me a price. After waiting another 15 minutes she told me that the system is down and that I have to come back again. She couldn't give me an ETA of when the system will be fix, so I had to come home. How can such a big company just tell you systems are down? Where is the backup system. They should know that today is probably one of the busiest shopping days and have contingency plans. Horrible first experience buying an i-phone.