Pre-Mature Elaboration: Sprint Cancels Palm Pre Offer

If there’s a Guinness World Record for shortest-lived promotional offer by a wireless carrier, Sprint’s (S) surely a front-runner for it.

Just six or so hours after offering a $100 service credit to new subscribers who purchase a Palm (PALM) Pre and port their numbers over from another carrier, Sprint canceled it. Here’s the company’s official statement on the matter:

“After further internal review today, the offer of a port-in service credit of $100 to new customers who buy the Palm Pre has been pulled, because it was put into the system in error.”

 
The company tells me it will honor its obligation to anyone who purchased a Pre during the brief window in which this offer was open.

Remarkably, the offer page is still live on Sprint’s site as I write this. Unbelievable. What a Keystone Kops-style marketing blunder.