|
 |
Sprint's Got Your Number. Or Not.
by Paul McGoldrick
Sprint has not been having much business fun this past couple of years. They have lost subscribers at a high rate compared to other carriers because of service issues, although this is not the first time that they have seen their fortunes fall. Knowing people who have previously been laid off at the Overland Park, Kansas corporation, you get the feeling that their operations are not run by the best of management.
One of the hopes that Sprint has had in recent months was the initial exclusive handling of the Palm Pre (or Pré?), the phone that’s “thinking ahead for you.”
It is a fact that months after a new phone’s release, with the number of months depending on the success of the product, it starts to get discounted. The discounting started quite early for the Palm device, which is not good news for Palm, who also need some business success to happen after the virtual death of the PDA market (what a surprise that was…). Actually, on the Palm web site, there is a link to two Sprint sites – the service site and the Sprint Store site – indicating an offer from Sprint for the phone plus service agreement for $149.99.
That is rather contrary to the Sprint site, where the best price appears to be $200 after an “instant” $200 discount and a $100 mail-in rebate. (You surely have to be cautious, though, that when you try to price a phone, Sprint will not give you any information before you give them your ZIP code. Pricing by location, eh?)
On Tuesday, September 8, 2009, the day after Labor Day, Sprint posted an offer for a $100 service credit for buyers of a Palm Pre who ported their service and number to Sprint. The credit was supposedly going to be spread over three months of billing and the deal was going to be on offer until October 31 (or October 10, depending on what page on the site you went to). But, literally, hours later the offer was pulled from most of the Sprint sites with the company saying that it had been put into the system in error. The company also said that for any customers who had signed up already the deal would be honored.
What is not clear is how the offer would affect the price of the phone. Part of the small print in the deal was that the service credit could not be taken in addition to other discounts and offers. That doesn’t help the math, does it? Did the service credit replace the $100 mail in rebate? Did it cancel out the $250 instant credit? The permutations here suggest that the phone may have ended up costing an overall low $100 for a customer or a high $350. Very, very confusing. But I guess that as the offer has disappeared then it is no longer of much consequence.
The supply chain for the Pre has not been clean. There has been a shortage of product and neither Palm or Sprint has issued any indication of the volumes that have been moved. The phone has, until recently, only been available from the Sprint Store, although discount retailers are now seeing product coming in the door. That discounting is probably bad news for both Sprint and Palm, despite the Pre being expected to turn up at Verizon fairly soon, maybe in time for the holiday season.
But explain to me, please, why Sprint’s front page is also teasing the buyer with the not-yet available Palm Pixi, running on their webOS platform. Why would you want to give the buyer an excuse to delay a purchase until the next best thing turns up? After that explanation, please offer me advice on how I can respond to my daughter’s very sudden, almost religious, longing for a Blackberry? And why is the iPhone suddenly not the device of choice for a teenager? Something strange is going on… Can we blame aliens?
|
|
|
|
|
