touchpad firesale starts the 20th

[pete_c]

John,

Somewhere in the SD threads someone had a similiar issue with either Officemax or Officedepot. That was that whole customer service thing I mentioned yesterday.

If you charged it; depending on your CC company; just dispute the charge until the matter is settled with Walmart. If you used a debit card / cash then I would call WalMart corporate.

 

[damage]

my first order via through hp academy has shipped! (placed 7:19PM PDT friday) second order still stuck in "item being processed"

 

[damage]

from @BrynaAtHP:
Home and home office store and HP Academy - part of the same store, & inventory. When Home & Home Office gets more so will HPA. No more SMB.

if you don't have an hp home & office or academy account and still want a TP, i suggest signing up for an account now before they have stock.

 

[Slates]

I tried to order one on HP through the SD process, so created an HP account then. The problem is I used the code SD provided, which was apparently for the Army! I want to change it to a pure home account but I have no idea how I can do that!

 

[JohnWPB]

Round #4 with WalMart... Resolved!

Wow, that was fast! After calling Bentonville Corporate, about an hour and a half later, the local store manager called me. They said the pushed the corrected price into their systems, and I can come in and square it away. The did it as a complete return, and then sold it back to me for $149, leaving the store with $369 cash in hand.

I hope someone can port over Android to it, but if not, I am quite satisfied with it as is. The color Nook reader at Walmart is $100 more than I paid for this alone Then add web browsing, email, photo album, and the number of app's available, which is not many in comparison, but good enough to justify the price!

I also am able to control HomeSeer no problem through my web interface, as well as XBMC. Those 2 alone, again making it well worth it.

 

[electron]

The threads on SlickDeals about this unit are growing so quick, it's hard to keep up. I wouldn't mind picking up a $99 unit, but it looks like you have to be REALLY quick once they are posted for sale.

 

[damage]

The threads on SlickDeals about this unit are growing so quick, it's hard to keep up. I wouldn't mind picking up a $99 unit, but it looks like you have to be REALLY quick once they are posted for sale.

i don't think anything else worthwhile is going to come up - except for hp home & office getting restocked some time this week. SD DDOS'd every single vendor that was found with TPs - except amazon - so i suspect hp will get destroyed since there's so many more people following the SD thread now.

 

[Slates]

OnSale is finally canceling orders. They have really destroyed their image with this touchpad frenzy.

I wish they would go ahead and cancel mine so I can officially give up on this effort!

 

[Monk]

Me too - I have a case I bought with it I will need to send back, cause it IS SHIPPING. Not a peep from them.

 

[pete_c]

I placed an order with Insight sometime around the "weekend"; it did show a "stock pile" of 800 plus HP tablets. I was able to get to the point of the CC info and the order page kept erroring out. I did it a few times and gave up. I did save a couple of quotes and went back to them yesterday. The quotes were there but when I moved them to a purchase order; the stock showed depleted.

Relating to the BB sale; I tried to contact BB and was on hold for about 20 minutes. They did send me 2 emails asking if I wanted to still get the tablets or cancel them. I just ended up writing to them stating that I wanted them delivered. Not sure if that will work.

Ah well; think there will be a whole bunch of folks selling theirs once they find out they are not Android or Ipads...

 

[Slates]

I called MacMall and convinced them to give me the OnSale order status/number. As suspected, it is cancelled. I can officially give up on the quest!

I know HP is supposed to get more in stock, but if they aren't doing any sort of pre-order, 1 per customer kind of deal, then they are just going to get crushed by inbound traffic once they announce. I don't want to play that game!

 

[Monk]

Just now one of my orders cancelled (for 2 of the 32GB). I have another order with them for 2 16GB that has not yet canceled.

 

[pete_c]

Just got my cancellation email from Amazon dot com for the two 32Gb ones that I ordered (separate orders). These two were ordered around 4 AM Saturday morning.

Greetings from Amazon.com,

We're writing to inform you that your order xxxxxxxxxxxxx from onSale has been canceled because the item(s) you purchased were out of stock. Please return and place your order again at a later time.

Our sellers strive to minimize canceled orders. We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. Your credit card was not charged for this order. If you have any questions regarding the cancelation of this order, please contact onSale.

If you're still interested in this item, please search for it again on Amazon.com.

We've included your order details below for reference. We've also included the URL for the item you purchased if you'd like to try ordering from another seller.

We value you as a customer and hope you will continue shopping on Amazon.com.

 

[Slates]

OnSale is going to get destroyed on Amazon once the link for feedback becomes active (3 days after cancelation I think)

 

[pete_c]

Here's a UK article relating to the HP Tablet.

£89 Touchpad Tablet: Did HP Mess Up Royally In The UK?

Many thousands hopeful Touchpad customers in the UK have been through an emotional roller coaster in the last few hours as stocks of the £89 tablet dwindled and disappeared altogether, with the likes of Amazon issuing cancellation emails that crushed the last hopes of those who were expecting their tablets to be shipped soon.

We are still baffled by the decision of HP to price the TouchPad at £89, a price that was certain to cause a massive spike in demand. Even at double the price, the tablet would have been snapped by the crowd and HP would have at least broken even (the bill of material of the Touchpad approaches $318).

Even more puzzling is HP's apparent reluctance not to allow all its retailers to sell all their TouchPad and Pre 3 stocks at the same time. The decision to literally line up retailers (starting with Dixons, then Comet, Staples, Dabs etc) proved to be an ill-fated one.

The result, as we now know, has been catastrophic for many of HP's channel allies like Dabs, Equanet or Insight as their websites got hammered by hordes of customers looking to buy the Touchpad and have potentially lost millions in sales during that period.
The other direct consequence was that it allowed a few buyers to get away with a steal while hundreds of others were left frustrated as Carphone Warehouse, then Amazon started to issue cancellation notices.

In addition, we hear that HP staff were not given priority to get hold of the TouchPad and ended up with 500 tablets to be distributed amongst 10,000 according to a source that remained anonymous.

All in all, HP could have exited the stage in a more graceful way, one that didn't have to end up with hundreds of bitter customers left utterly disappointed and so many profiteering from HP's largesse (there are nearly 400 HP TouchPad on sale on Ebay at the moment with the average selling price being £200).

UK