HP offering $50 gift card with the purchase of AT&T Palm phones 37
by Robert Werlinger Sat, 24 Jul 2010 4:04 pm EDT
HP has been selling Palm phones through its recently created wireless central online sales portal since it went live a few weeks ago, and the company is looking to sweeten the deal on already free-on-contract AT&T Palm phones by giving a $50 gift card, reedeamable on HP.com, with the purchase of any new Pre or Pixi Plus.
Source: HP's Wireless Central; thanks to drewburton87 for the tip!
37 Comments
Wow, $50. You could get a Touchstone OR one inkjet cartridge!
LOL or maybe some replacement back covers for the Pre so you find one out of the bunch that doesn't creak when typing!
intresting, I've never had that happen or heard of it but I'm gonna try with a few spare backs I have
Lol. But seriously, interesting sign of HP trying to move inventory. Free + $50 for the flagship device? You know something is close in the pipeline!
I think they overestimated the appeal of other phones on the new carriers and missed terribly on their advertising. I was hoping they'd bonus HP employees with a Pre and bring out a new phone sooner, but now I'll wait patiently for a completed phone and o/s.
Yes, you know why? Because VZW and AT&T never sold any of the Palm Pre, each time someone walking to AT&T and asking for Pre the personal guiding him to the IPHONE, and VZW taking him to Droid...not like Sprint.
That's sad when a company has to pay you to TAKE their phones. I'm not saying the Pre is a bad phone but they must be desperate to get rid of all their inventory. I'm sure ATT Palm Pres sales were less than stellar. I think HP wants to start fresh when they come out with the next WebOS phone.
I think if they came out with an all touchscreen phone that would be awesome. Maybe an EVO design but with only a 3.8 inch screen. Actually, I think HPalm should have 3 or 4 new models. One close to the Pre, one all touchscreen phone with a 4 inch screen and another one with a landscape slide out qwerty board with a 3.7 inch screen. If they came out with all those variants then they would cover all their bases. Come on HPalm, you can do it. Even if they came out with two of those I mentioned, they would sell well.
Well, they're paying $50 retail from their own store to sign a two year agreement with an overpriced carrier. It's a minimal cost, Hp.com is not a discounter and they are the wholesaler. And surely nothing will be $50 after shipping so it may help sell more stuff with the balance paid by the buyer. Nice plan with minimal cost and high perceived value.
"Redeemable" please, not reedeamable.
This is such bullshit. The early adopters of the Pre & Pixi on Sprint not only get hosed on the non-plus version in RAM and storage, but we get the non-wifi Pixi and have to pay full price for both devices still. Other networks are getting them free on contract, and now this deal? I feel cheated.
LOL, smartphone early adoptiontion occurred back around 2004, you missed that party by 5 years. And NO early adopter EVER cried about tech prices gong down, poser.
If it makes you feel better, I'll sell you my 386sx at half what I paid. You'll feel plenty unscrewed for just $1000.
I just got the new Tide detergent, that makes me an early adopter? Concepts get adopted, not products.
To make your argument make any sense at all, 386sx would have to be sold today at the same price it was brand new. You make no sense whatsoever. And by the way, the Pre and Pixi didn't come out in 2004; i wasn't talking about early smart phone adoption, I was talking about early adoption of a particular product.
Somewhere,somebody is trying to sell 386sx's for the same price I paid, but I'm still willing to cut you a break. Fine, $500 and I'll throw in a Certificate of Early Adoption to show your friends and rename it an i386sxx so you can be the earliest adoptor!!
So everybody that just bought the Droid X, is an early adopter? All the Iphone4 buyers are early adopters? I think of early adopters as working with unproven technology and doing things first. Try not to set the bar too low because you bought a device that let you front load apps by pressing a couple of buttons.
You can go Early Adopt the Pre + and get paid to do it! Hurry, supplies are limited, just not as limited as they'd like them to be. You're still not getting screwed so stop crying. They're not offering these rebates to Sprint customers. Sprint customers are still getting a much better deal than all the VZ and ATT buyers. Please whine about something of substance.
Launch Pre was unproven technology and doing things first. Having an inch of oreo wobble, no video recording, having a battery that was too small and would shut the phone off every time you closed the slider.. yeah that was early adopting.
Just like the people who bought the G1 were android early adopters, the launch Sprint Pre is the same.
Dont confuse "unproven technology" with poor build design and build quality or missing features. The Ford Taurus doesn't have a stick shift, that doesn't make its buyers early adopters. The iphone4 has a poor antenna design, that doesn't make it's buyers early adopters.
Buying the Pre with plastic tracked slider and no video and half a battery when other phones had proven sliders and video and multiday batteries didn't make us early adopters, it made us schmucks. We were not adopters, we were technology foster parents to accept and care for a troubled youthful phone format, until something better came along.
I gotta go early adopt a waffle.
You can't seriously be trying to convince people who bought the launch day Pre that they were not early adopters. While a slider phone was not new at the time, webOS was (still is in some regards). Everything about the pre and webos was new and the initial buyers (myself included) were most certainly early adopters and most of us recognized that fact.
Early adoption is for concepts, not products. It's buying and using a technology that did not exist before. If someone wants to call a Pre buyer an early adopter, fine, I'm an international superspy.
And rule #1 of early adoption, never moan and whine about how much you paid. You can't be a penny-pinching dumpster diver and early adopter at the same time.
1st paragraph: Stop being silly.
2nd paragraph: I agree (sans the insult to anyone's profession).
There were internet linked phones, 3G phones, linux based phones, slider phones, GUI driven phones, touch screen phones, Palm phones, app installable phones, GPS phones...yeah, we're all "early adopters."
Gotta go early adopt a steak. Sure, there were steaks before, but this is a steak from a new cow! I'm the first adopter.
Ok. I won't ask you to stop being silly any more. Seems it is in your nature and thus a waste of time to request otherwise. Oh well. Here's hoping the readers of this blog can see past your...uhm...posts. Be cool.
Very noble of you. Us early adopters gotta stick together, its a complicated life being spoonfed applications from the app catalog and homebrew systems. A lot of complicated button pushing. LOL.
Blame Sprint. They are likely still selling the phone at a high cost because of a combination of returns and the fact that they offer lower cost plans. It still costs you less over 2 years to buy a Pre on Sprint than on Verizon or AT&T. You're just putting dishing out more money up front.
Besides, early adopters always get screwed on prices. It's the price you pay. It's like buying a $300 high end video card only to find out that it gets knocked down to $200 6 months later when the next gen stuff comes out. If you don't like that fact, then don't be an early adopter.
Both of your analogies are wrong. You are both saying "you pay X amount for new technology and then cry when it becomes cheaper in 6 months".. I'm still waiting for it to become cheaper.
Verizon had to ask MS to take back the unsold Kins. Wonder why AT&T can't do the same with the Pre.
MS should take them back. They killed the product just weeks after launch.
As a mac fan, if I were interested in AT&T's services or fee structures, I would already have an iPhone. If HP is going to continue developing Palm products, I hope they realize that AT&T's backyard is not the proper environment on which to focus.
Too bad I can't upgrade until june of next year. I"m just gonna have to go on ebay and grab one.
note.. The return cost is more than $50 bucks... So HP smart to pay a user to take a new palm phone vs. Paying ATT to return... Pure ROI strategy... THINK BUSINESS folks..
I knew they would have to pay people to take this two black turds home ROFL
Palm: The purchase HP keeps paying more and more for.
ATT and VZW don't care much for the Pre. Especially the people in store, they are moving their most popular phones (and I think most expensive)
Yet, I only see the Palm Pre mentioned in media under ATT or VZW. Sprint gets no love, their exclusive phone evolved on other platforms. I guess this could be Sprint's flaws in corporate relations?
Anyway, I am keeping my fingers crossed for a new WebOS phone that will blow the others out of the water. A man can dream, its not so farfetched.
I think most of the Sprint inventory is sold off now. The Plus's had great potential based on VZ's and ATT's boasting of getting the phones, but Palm naively perceived that to mean they'd be selling the phones, not using them for bait and switch. Silly Palm over built.
it could be ATT is having problems getting rid of the palm pre stock more then verizon, anyway at least you guys are getting such offers.
I dont know that I've met an ATT Pre owner yet. I've met quite a few VZ buyers. About 10x more Sprint owners.
Wow, the inventory backlog of Pre/Pixi stock must be huge for HP to be paying people to take them off their hands!
Could be, hard to tell. But Pre mindshare is pretty much nonexistent right now they're paying them in HP merchandise. So its just a value added perk, they're not actually out $50 per sale.
Or it could be that new hardware will be launched on At&T and HPalm is trying to help them reduce inventory.
Or it could be a contractural thing - "if we haven't sold X thousands of Pres by such-and-such date, you will offer $50 off accessories for newly purchased phones".