[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Palm Pre Pioneers Snap Up First Sales here

[SeanH]

It was Saturday morning here in Charlotte NC, I was in front of the Best Buy at Lake Norman before the store opened waiting for my chance to finaly purchase the Palm Pre. Others were there before me but luckily only about 10 or 15 people. The store opened and to my shock they had a total of 8 phones for sale. How do you launch a product when you don't have product to sell? I know it's only one store but I also checked another Best Buy a few miles away. Same story. I think this will be a great phone, but this is how you lose to competition. Poor execution of sales which leaves the consumer disappointed. Get it together Palm and Sprint!

[jbjtkbw00]

It was highly advertised that there would be shortages. I even read beforehand like 2 weeks ago that stated most Best Buy stores would have MAYBE a half dozen. The fact you saw 8 is pretty impressive. Most of the stores here in Orlando had around 4-6.

[kirasaw]

Get a clue people Palm needs money! they have poured all their money into the PRE hoping and praying that it is a miracle. They have begged and borrowed and took on idiot investors who shoot off their mouths to the press and make Palm look silly. They could only take a chance on building so many PRE's ahead of launch - what if things went badly and they got stuck with a bunch that they have no money to pay for them! Buying a PRE is more an act of trying to save Palm (and to some extent Sprint) from impending failure. Look at how they are charging for the PRE - making the customer send in a $100 mail-in rebate (I guess Best BUY is paying the rebate on the spot and waiting for Palm to reimburse them). Palm knows full well that statistics show only about 40% of mail-in rebates are every actually mailed in. They are counting on this! So would you give Best Buy lots of phones? When YOU know that all of those will have the rebate turned in or would you try and get everybody to go to Sprint where you have a chance, and that chance statistically is nearly 60%, at making an extra $100?