D'oh! Sprint pulls $99 Palm Pre promo after error

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Earlier on Tuesday, Sprint published an enticing deal to customers of competing carriers by offering a $100 service credit to anyone who bought a Palm Pre and ported his or her old number to Sprint. Sounds like a great deal, right? Well, it would have been had it lasted.

Sprint has since pulled the offer, saying the promotion was posted in error and issuing this statement:

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.

I'd hate to be the person who pressed the Go button on that, but Sprint told John Paczkowski at All Things Digital that it will honor the service to anyone who purchased the deal while the offer was live. Obviously, this doesn't look good on Sprint's part but it seems the carrier has been making strides as of late. Do you agree or disagree?

[wordflyer]

Well, it's a grand phone. They could probably get themselves a user-base boost if they actually followed through. I love my Pre..

[myDrpC]

Woot, (Oops, I meant shoot!). I was just about to convince my friend to purchase a PRE
since she was just wanting to play Bubbles on my PRE.

Agreed, Sprint lately is the Bomb! HTC Hero, HTC Touch PRO 2 and the PRE ? ? get out of here ?.
Although, must say ? Verizon sure has learned allot as of late (From Sprint no less) on how to release a Smartphone. Case in point ? BlackBerry Tour & HTC Touch PRO 2 release. It?s an all out war now!
With the latest PRE Rom update 1.2 about to be launched tonight or at least this week - again, there isn't any Smartphone on the market that can match its abilities! And this is just the beginning ? video plus FLASH still yet to come ?

Oh well, I will still chat with her about moving over to Sprint. Thank Bonnie.

On a side note, Hey Bonnie - Are you going to do a review on Sprint's HTC Touch PRO 2 or wait until Verizon?s on the 11th? Thinkin? AT&T?s isn?t coming until Oct.
Thanks again!

[Viper83181]

Unmatched only if you don't consider the iPhone a smartphone. Otherwise my 3GS will smoke your pre! Muahaha!

[myDrpC]

@ Viper83181

Nice Try, my friend. But, of course - the PRE has already beaten the my 3GS.
Check out the link for the results from CNET's PrizeFight:
http://cnettv.cnet.com/9742-1_53-50076696.html

Although, we love the challenge - the only thing current that can even come close is the iPhone 3gs. But with all the latest updates (including PRE?s Rom 1.2) and you must also include the monthly savings for a 2yr contract on both Carriers - even the iPhone 3gs can't be the PRE. No other phone can sync to multiple exchange servers @ once not even Windows Phone!

Otay, I know I'm going to hear some things from that statement - but hey... it's all good! :)

[abcd9009]

@myDrpC

Not sure which world are you living in but on Planet Earth, especially in US (a capitalistic country), nobody cares about how good Pre is in terms of features. The bottom line is iPhone sold 1 million+ phones on Day 1 vs Pre ahh just a few thousand.
#2 iPhone has over 65000 apps vs Pre... who cares!!!

You do the math now who's the winner. I would have to go with @Viper83181. Financially iPhone is killing everyone, including the Blackberry.
Granted feature wise Pre is far superior but at the end of the day both Sprint and AT&T SUCK! so there is no winner unless you are considering to use them in EU where you can actually use ALL features available on the phone. But if you consider EU, Nokia will crush both iPhone and the Pre combined, again goes back to Sales figures. So either way you look at it, Pre loses!

[ballmerisanape]

Too bad you can't talk on the phone and access the internet at the same time. Now that's multitasking!

[jaguar717]

I'll never understand people who latch on to a company and then praise things about the cult they don't benefit from.

You use the features, you don't get any value out of the seller's bottom line. Sure, products people value tend to do well but I'm not about to brag about my cheeseburger based on how many McDonald's has sold. What exactly do those 1 million units do for you when you want an app Apple doesn't approve of? As long as Sprint or Palm aren't bankrupt, I don't particularly care how profitable the Pre; I care how useful and enjoyable it is to me.

I'm not saying the iphone isn't a great phone, just that its sales don't benefit you in the slightest so that's not an argument. This is just like Toyota fanboys on car forums. "Hey have you guys seen the new G8/GTO/Corvette?" "GM sucks, Toyota had huge profits last year!" Well what exactly does that do for you when you're driving around some bland appliance?

[myDrpC]

@ abcd9009

I must say, I love a healthy discussion. However, point well taken. It depends on if you are lookin' for a device
that is feature rich or something else. For myself, I look more to the device capabilities and future growth in features.
A device that can handle business (with high exchange security features) as well as consumer. The PRE has it.

But, again - I appreicate your's & viper83181 comments as these are healthy and fun.

[myDrpC]

@ abcd9009

I must say, I love a healthy discussion. However, point well taken. It depends on if you are lookin' for a device
that is feature rich or something else. For myself, I look more to the device capabilities and future growth in features.
A device that can handle business (with high exchange security features) as well as consumer. The PRE has it.

But, again - I appreicate your's & viper83181 comments as these are healthy and fun.

[StrongBrad247]

This is similar to that Best Buy mess up where they were selling the Pre for $100 for a day because of an ad error. They seem to want to give it away for $100 so just do it! :-)

[jaguar717]

They probably will in a few months, but in the meantime they've just launched the "Pixi" and want it do be down market from the Pre, so it's $99 and the Pre is $149.

I think they should've given the Pixi the same screen as the Pre, kept the Eos name and wi-fi, added an SD slot, and sold it as a different form factor version of the Pre at the same price. But now they're marketing it as a cheap phone to teenage girls, which will keep the Pre price higher and completely waste the wonderful webOS platform on super-texters who don't care about other features besides Facebook updates...

[protagonistic]

At least they are prepared to honor the customers who signed up in good faith. It is rare that a company is prepared to do the right thing these days.

[EvanSei]

Mistakes happen and at least palm is saying they will honor the mistaken agreement, most phone companies would not.

[kcaudell]

Ooops. I was pondering a shift. Not anymore. How would you like to be the person that signed off on that idea. Kind of like the guy that signed off on the car name of the Gremlin. WHAT were they thinking???? In both cases they should be a career ending decision.

So. Oooops.

[externallain]

I was in a Sprint Retail store over the weekend and a clerk there mentioned that there is a retail employee all-hands meeting this Thursday supposedly with some big announcement that will make new customers want to come to Sprint.

I can't help but wonder if this is the big announcement. If I was a Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile customer a $99 Pre would make me switch to Sprint.

[bubbbaGump]

it wasnt for A $99 PRe retards IT WAS FOR $100 service sumthing or nother

It would have given the new customer who ported their old number to sprint and bought a PRe a $100 over the course of 3 mnths to help lighten the bill each month NOT A $100 PRe ***** SAKE!!

[myDrpC]

@ ballmerisanape

I must agree on this as well. However, this isn't a smartphone issue - it's a CDMA issue.
But, there's good news coming - supposedly in 2010 we will have both at the same time if the Carriers
allow it and don't charge us so much for it. Here's the link to the annoucement:

http://cdg.org/news/press/2009/Aug17_09.asp

Long live 3g, until 4g takes over :(

[Jourdy288]

Quite frankly, I hope to see the Pre overtake the iPhone. It's not likely, but it;s possible and long overdue. Honestly, the Palm Pre is superior. Better hardware, developing apps for free is a big bonus, and the fact that none of them have exploded, the Pre is definitely cooler.

[myDrpC]

Kudos to Bonnie!!! (Hope your still reading these post on this blog :)

Just wanted to thank you for the review of the HTC Touch PRO2 from Sprint.

Maybe you can leverage the 4 Carriers Touch PRO2s once AT&T release theirs next month.
I have a battle going on per the following link of the 4 (5, if US Cellular actually release one):

http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/htc-touch-pro-2/132716-winner-tmobile-pro-2-vs-t-pro-2-vs-sprint-pro-2-vs-verizon-pro-2-a.html

But, truly - your hands are allot nicer than most us males :) so... it would be nice to set them side by side (visually with you in the video of course) to see the physical differents. However, I'm not sure if
you are able to keep these phones for that long of a period (until Oct).

Whelp, thanks again (nice job) - I guess the HTC Hero is next on the agenda (Course not a android fan), but will watch the video if post.

Btw, how can we download all your video reviews in HD format from CNET ?
Thanks