Are you a druggie? A hipster? A white-collar suburbanite? Good news: the
Pre might be for you. If you're an "IT Centric business user," though, steer clear -- the
Treo Pro might be a better fit. That's the takeaway (sort of, we've admittedly taken some liberties) of one of the pages out of
Sprint's business playbook for the phone that reminds sales reps in big magenta text that they "can't afford to sell the Pre to the wrong customers." There aren't any big surprises in here, but the takeaway seems to be that Windows Mobile is more manageable as a fleet device (as is BlackBerry, coincidentally) than webOS -- a complaint frequently leveled against another buzzworthy, up-and-coming mobile platform,
Android. That said, if we walked into a Sprint store expecting to buy a Pre and somehow ended up getting talked into a Treo Pro instead, we'd be feeling more than a little short-changed.
posted May 25th 2009 4:33AM
wow... this is a load of crap. if i want a palm pre i better get it, and sprint has no freaking right to tell me any different. that is so... strange...
but what you WANT might not be the best thing for your needs. As a former Sprint employee, I can't tell you how many times people returned phones b/c they didn't realize the limitations or complexities of the phone they bought b/c either they or the sales rep didn't take the time to ask the right questions.
If you, after playing with it and talking to a sales rep about the device and making you aware of any shortfalls that you may come across, still want to get a pre, then they will sell you a pre (or put one on order for you if it's not in stock). They are not told "refuse to sell someone a pre if this is what they need". They are simply making sure that this is a device that will work well for you.
In my retail job, I sell cameras. Yeah, I could push Canon 50D and Nikon D300 DSLR bodies to every customer who walked into the store, but how stupid would that be when all but maybe two people on a daily basis would return those cameras and ask for something smaller and less complex? It's a retail practice, if a customer would be better served by another product that you sell, you recommend that to them, but you can still sell 'em what they ask for if you've got it available. Actually, if I remember right, it's along the lines of being "straight up" with your customers.
Un.Fucking.Believable.
If ever a wireless company needed to do the honorable thing and commit hari kari, it is Sprint.
*some* liberties?
All this internal slide is saying is that business users who need to integrate their device into a restricted corporate system may be unhappy with the Pre, and their needs would be better suited for the Pro.
That's ALL it says.
There's not even an implication of hipsters, suburbanites or druggies. WTF engadget? And the print on the slide you show is so small it's difficult to even decipher, so people are just going to take your BS interpretation as what the slide is actually saying.
And it's true, they NEED this device to sell well. They don't want to *storm* the launch, and they're making their sales staff (the intended audience of this slide) aware of that.
There's nothing sensationalist about this. Qualifying the customer for a product or service is something that happens in all types of sales positions. It would be like asking a customer if internet browsing and email were important to them in order to determine if they were right for a smartphone. In this case, Sprint's extra cautious because they need to minimize returns on the Pre given its limited availability.
Unbelievable that after blasting this phone for months as be being not for all users, I fault Sprint for being smart enough to educate those that this may not be the device for them. I should just kill myself for being so arrogant, judgemental and a plain asshole for not recognizing that no phone/carrier is perfect for everyone
not a big deal really. anyone who has ever worked in retail should be used to seeing stuff like this. i work at Home Depot and i hear "qualify the customer" so many times it makes my head spin. it makes sense to me. you don't want to waste (limited) supply on people that aren't going to be able to use the device anyway. just like i'm not going to sell someone a Zero Turn tractor with a 60" Deck if they could cut the whole lawn with a couple swipes of a push mower. it's simple business sense. if people return the Pre then Sprint has to get it recertified AND sell it at a loss (if they even sell preowned devices?) and that carrier, as we all know, can't afford to let that happen.