HP Pre 3 punters peeved as expected price cut is a no show HP attempted to sell off the remaining stocks of its Pre 3 WebOS smartphone last week, but eager anticipation that it would do so at a dirt cheap price were not met, much to annoyance of a number of Reg Hardware readers who were told they'll have to cough up the full price. Having sold its TouchPad tablet for just £89 the …
its a dangerous gambit on HP's behalf.
The price cuts for the touchpad to induce demand, showed that at the original price of £300-400 no-one thought they were worth the money.
Rumour of <£100 and people figures its WELL worth the money, so as you mentioned reserve at full price (even pay at full price)...to ensure bargain is obtained.
However, HAD HP not followed through with its price cut, I'd state my house on 95% of those webos devices being returned the following day.
I know thats what we planned to do with ours!!!.
If they try the same strategy with the palms and not follow through with a price cut, they will suddently be left with an ass load of stock they cannot shift, and more so, people will want MORE of a guaranteed bargain before shelling out the cash for them a second time.
Wouldn't be it far easier, not to mention less consumer-rage inducing, to sell those tables at below price in the first place?
Additionally, that "f'ing loads of WebOS users" comprises the people who persuaded themselves to buy WebOS material out of the rejects bin. How many are that and do they care about whether WebOS?
HP probably thought "ah, no need to discount the Pre3 now, we had *loads* of sales of that tablet thingy we sell" completely forgetting that those sales were driven by the price cut and the price cut only.
What they should be trying to do is working out how to sell these things cheaper, as they obviously do sell at lower price points.
What I heard was that Carphone Warehouse snapped up all of the stock as a job lot, and decided not to sell cheap PAYG/Sim Free phones, but instead to do cheap contract offers.
You can now snap up a Pre3 on a £10.50/month contract from them (with the potential for cashback from Quidco or Topcashback), which makes it a cheap contract smartphone deal, although admittedly not nearly as cheap as the rumoured standalone pricing.
HP obviously decided that rather than take out various other e-commerce sites, struggle to keep their own store up, etc, they'd just get rid of the lot in one go and be done with it. I'm surprised that people haven't picked up on CPW having them quicker though... (the sister site e2save also has them but no better deals).
It was stated on the HP website that they expected a significant price reduction. I phoned to pre-order one at the beginning of last week (because the site was down) and the chap at the end said they would be reduced and bundled with accessories. I've not been able to get back in contact with them by any means since, and I've not had any communication from them at all despite their website claiming that they've been contacting people.
I seem to be one of the the few people who wanted one of those phones even before the price cut, but sadly I've been beaten to it by hundreds of people who intend to resell them on the ebays for twice the price. *sigh*
The rumour of a Pre 3 price drop was leant more credibility on Friday when the HP web site itself changed the SRP to £69.99 inc VAT. It has remained like that since Friday 26th which kind of suggests something is afoot (or the webmaster is having a chuckle at our expense). See this http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF05a/215348-215348-64929-3352590-3352590-5105303.html
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