I was hedging my bets and had Verizon's page open and the iPhone page open on another tab. About 5 till, I started refreshing and the Verizon Pre-Order button appeared about 2 minutes till. I take it their click was a little fast as compared to Apple's clock. I jumped on the Verizon site and had my order in by 2 minutes after the hour.
I kept checking the Apple store and they still had not gotten the site up for me when I decided to go to bed.