Palm Pre: $199 After a $100 Rebate We Hope You Lose

I think you would complain about any price Sprint\Palm put on the Pre. Its not a big deal to mail in a rebate offer. Yes I wish I didnt have to, but its not a big deal.

Gift cards are the real rip off!

Being disengenuous is when you are Short on a stock but try to imply objectivity. The fact is you and many others just can’t except the fact that you were wrong and continue to be wrong. With the limited number of Pre’s to come to the market on its launch Sprint will have no problem selling the phone for even $500. It is a better phone than the iPhone in most circumstances Sprint’s $99 Simply everything plans is much better than ATT’s or VZ’s. I suppose you expected the folks at Sprint to prostrate to ATT because they have the iPhone. You have the audacity to insinuate that $200 for the Pre is a rip off when inferior devices are being sold for that price or more. You also fail to mention that Sprint offers Smart phone users, which includes the Pre, a $99 Simply Everything plan at least $40 less than what ATT does for the equivalent use on there iPhones, which is $500 more per year. Anyone with any sense can see that you are patently partial against the Pre regardless of its merits.

I can’t think of any reason for anyone to be down on Palm. After all I purchased at least 5 sequential models of the device back when it didn’t even have phone capabilities, paying up to $600 each for them. And bought most of the accessories to boot.

In fact with the windfall the company had back when they were the only game in town you have to wonder how they got caught naping by the iPhone in the first place. Oh, you say they didn’t spend any of that money on R&D? Changed their minds three times about the future of the OS while leaving app developers to hang out to dry? Tsk Tsk.

To Palm fans: The device will benefit from lowered expectations. If it is as super-duper as you say it is then it will take off and catch Apple by surprise. We’ll all get a chuckle out of that too.

Otherwise the fewer people holding their breath for one of these the better. This may be the last chance we get to make fun of Palm. Please allow us to enjoy it.

I’m sure the original idea was based on the assumption that redemption rates would be near 100%. I can imagine this being the initial pitch: think about the millions of dollars that a company could sit on for 6-8 weeks before having to return it to the customer. A competent investor could do a lot with that amount of money in that period of time. Also, as long as the company keeps selling the product in sufficient numbers, they have massive cash flow to do with what they want. This was how they initially intended to benefit from the deal.

I doubt it ever occurred to anyone that a large percentage of their customers would not even bother to ask for their money back, cumbersome rebate procedures not withstanding. That’s just gravy on top of gravy! So this ends up being a total disincentive for companies to sell the product for a reasonable introductory price – just offer a rebate and see how much of that money you can end up keeping.

I agree with you that rebates are a scam, and I think the Pre is unlikely to be a huge success.

However, when I read your claim that your own headlines and ledes are being taken out of context, ie that the actual articles don’t represent the position taken in the headlines or ledes, then I have to arrive at the conclusion that you’ve a strong sensationalist bent.

Rebates are a form of hurdle — customers who are price sensitive get the benefit, and customers who are not won’t care. The point being that Palm has a choice between offering a rebate for $100 that only half the people will send in and selling a phone for $50 less.

This way, they get a lot of customers that are really price-sensitive and will send in the rebate (who would not have bought the phone for $50 more), while losing a comparatively small percentage that don’t like rebates for the reasons you allude to.

For a great article on the subject, search for hurdle discount (1st result).

Rebates are S.O.P. for the industry, just a little bit more ethical than bait-and-switch.

Still, Best Buy is bypassing the annoyance by offering the rebate up front. So buyers can walk out of the store having paid $199.

OTOH, any Palm fans who think this is a challenge to the iPhone are fooling themselves. They keep saying Pres are superior to the iPhone when they haven’t even held the devices in their hands.

I’ve owned two Palm devices. The software was grossly overpriced, so I never bought many apps for them, and what I did use was a major pain to deal with compared to what it should have been.

Mark my words, the only way there is going to be a shortage of these devices a month after launch is if Palm restricts manufacturing.

There’s marketing and there’s manufactured shortages, but I repeat myself.