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
The feeling is mutual, Sprint, as I am constantly telling people what deplorable service you offer and recommend they go to any carrier other than you!
i'm a druggie...whew...what a relief. for a second there i thought i wasn't going to be able to get a pre but after reading this i know i'll be able to enjoy my new phone and a dime bag at the same time...
Not just service but pricing. I was going to buy a Pre, but I can't just add a line for $10 like other carriers for my family. Nope, adding a crappy nokia to a plan with a smartphone at sprint and you're suddenly starting at $130 a month instead of $95-100 base like the other carriers... and then every line after that gets even worse since they now cost $20/mo for no reason.
I was so looking forward to getting back with palm though after owning a IIIc, V, 2 clie's, and the tungsten but the monthlies would kill me.
Can I trust a guy whose icon is an AT&T Death Star?
@Ghen: actually, they have plans that you can add lines on for $9.99. The $20 add a lines are for voice + unlimited text, data, gps, etc. Try doing that one of the other big carriers and see how much it costs ya. You only need that $129 plan if you have the Instinct or the Pre when it comes out.
You gotta be sh!tting me. They are going to have a total of four Pres on sale in Manhattan, come June 6th and they're concerned about who they're going to sell it to. I'd say they sell the Pre to the first four people on line, no matter who they are.
They're not going to try to convince you that you don't need a Pre merely because Palm is almost bankrupt and could go out of business any day or that the Sprint network is on it's last legs. They could tell you that customer service is non-existent and that if you break your Pre, it'll be weeks before they can get you a replacement. I'm sure that if a chimp walked into the Sprint store with a credit card in hand, they'd try to sell him a Pre. Except that a chimp would have enough sense to wait until the iPhone 3 was announced before buying any handset.
If someone buys a Palm Treo Pro rather than a Palm Pre, it's not like Palm nor Sprint has lost the sale.
seriously WTF is with the AT&T icon? I didn't know there were mobile carrier fanboys now.. What is the world coming to?
I'm just glad Sprint is trying to HELP people into buying the right phone for them. Obviously when it releases, business's aren't going to want to invest in it right away. They'll wait for Apps that pertain to them. That's why the Pro would probably be a better choice.
no they just want to sell a few treo pros.
I agree (with Alex C).
Imagine buying this and finding out it's not compatible with your corporate accounts. I think it makes sense to tell people that the Pre might not work in their environment.
Of course, the term "wrong people" doesn't quite sound right.
It isn't because they need to plug the Pro. IT departments at Enterprise level are not supporting teh device and wont be until early to mide 20101. That is just a reality.
Sprint doesn't want thousands of returns for Pre when buyers find their IT department will not allow it for security and stability reasons. It has nothing to do with flaws inherent or permanent on Pre's WebOS, but the simple fact it isn't tested and lacks full development certain security featuress at the present time. Give the new OS a year, maybe less.
They don;t need help per se with selling the Pro. It is a highly regarded and well selling handset. Is the Pro the most novel bling on the block? No. Is the Pro the perfection, maturation and feature packed example of very successful tested existing line with a successful form factor and known OS? Yes.
Why haven't T-Mobile sued them for their magenta yet?
wrong magenta.
Well, i guess thats the best way since every store will only get about 4 units each. Talk about stupid. Well, so long Palm and Sprint...
Why are we saying so long to Palm and Sprint? Because they have a limited supply that they're going to sell out of?
Pffft, what company ever profits from selling out of a product!? They might as well give it up like Nintendo did with the Wii. They can't even give those things away now...
Four units is plenty. There's no guarantee that any large of number of people will be buying the Pre except a few Engadget geeks and the few remaining Palm loyalists. This entire over-hyped Pre vs iPhone competition is a sick joke or a twisted David vs Goliath fable.
I'm just gonna laugh when they do sell out those four Pre devices and the news media says that the Palm Pre has sold out due to OVERWHELMING demand. Can you imagine? Manhattan has, like, almost two million people living there and Palm has a total count of four Pres for sale. Do you think any potential buyers are going to be pleased with that sort of crap? The fifth guy in line will have to go home Pre-less. Palm should be ashamed of itself for just being a nuisance.
When the iPhone 3 goes on sale in Manhattan there will probably be 100,000 iPhones available in all the stores, they'll sell out in a day and there will still be people standing on line hoping the next batch of 100,000 arrives the following day. That's what overwhelming demand is in Manhattan.
Well thats a smart move, then we wont have people bitching about how it doesnt do (insert item here) even though their Nokia from 10 years ago does.
Im reminded of the iPhone and people complaining it doesnt do video. You want to know why video isnt enabled? Its because video on most phones suck, who honestly uses video recorded on a phone, which is usually recorded in some horrible resolution like 352x288 (yes im aware most phones do it in vga now, but we are using the logic that this feature was available x number of years ago)
If it doesnt do something well, Palm or Apple are unlikely to include it, why? Because it it does is bring down the brand name and the phone.
Im glad Sprint are trying to market this phone at the correct market instead of giving one to anyone who walks in the door.
If it lessens the brand name then why the hell did Apple even bother with a camera on their phone? My 2 year old, cheap LG Shine takes better pictures even without the flash.
You are putting two things through eachother. One Spring advises people due platform limitations/choides that its wise to advise the costumer what to expect from it. Ie apparently webOS isnt so suitable for managing it properly while as an individual wont have this hassle. On the other hand Palm doesnt choose sub-par hardware on purpose, in the overall line sofar it seems everything it has onboard is new hardware. On the contrary of Apple who willingly chooses an old mobile chipset together with a shitty camera and with an upgrade they call it a significant improvement from 2 to 3 MP. I utterly fail to understand why Apple refuses to upgrade their hardware like it used to do, to the latest avaible. Get me an iPhone with Oled, proper mobile chipset and camera. Sure you could say that the technique isnt there yet, yet during the 1MP photo camera´s there were still people willing to give it a try. Nowadays most mobiles have camera´s which are rather good for some quick snapshots.
That said I feel its a bit of a shame Palm didnt spend time on the OS to make it sutiable for admins like they did with the Treo serie. I think a lot of business like people like the Treo for this and could like the Pre.. if it was manageble by an IT department
You live in the USA and you reckon it is OK for a company to tell their sales NOT TO sale this particular device to some particular customer even if they want it ?
OK, so much for the freedom of choice...
Felix: what you don't get is that sometimes the customer is unaware that their phone has certain requirements that the Pre won't meet. It would be stupid to sell the phone to somebody who can't use it for work, because that person is somewhat ignorant of how the company's back end server works.
It has nothing to do with freedom of choice, just helping the customer make the right one.
Its not like these "rules" are set in stone. If an IT guy wants a Pre they will sell it to him.
They just want to make sure that people know what they are buying, instead of the sales people just trying to get people to buy the most expensive device in the store despite if its not what they need etc.
They should just sell them a combo or a pre & treo, more profit
Or smash 'em together and call it the Palm Tree.
Wow Andrew, Nice!
Lol
Haha :)
I think they mean sell it to people who would otherwise buy an iPhone, but nice to know they have a target demographic to sell the phone to and alienate their other potential Pre customers. So what, your a business IT guy and you WANT a Pre, are they gonna say no?
WE CAN"T AFFORD TO SELL PRE TO THE WRONG CUSTOMERS.
ACTUALLY WE CANT AFFORD TO BE PUTTING OUT THESE DAMN MEMOS.
WE COULD ONLY AFFORD TO MAKE ABOUT 50,000 PRE'S.
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS JUNE 8TH. EVERYTHING MUST GO!
WinMo is such a pain in the ass to use that even IT guys don't want to waste their time.
That's a lie and you, sir, are a liar.
WiMo used a lot in professional businesses, still more than blackberries in fact.
What are you talking about? You can deploy packages and upgrades over the air with WinMo. You can do remote wipes of the phone if it is lost, stolen or the user was terminated. You're supporting 1 platform which activesync settings have pretty much stayed the same since WinMo 5.
Also they try to push blackberry to businesses so they buy a bunch and realize they have to drop another $3000+ on Blackberry Enterprise Server to bloat their exchange server to just get push email and contacts. WinMo works right out of the box with Exchange.
I agree, OSX is way more robust and superior than anything else out there.
That's weird.
However, the Pre does seem to be offering the best "out of the box" experience so far. But I do think it's very suitable for the business IT-centric user as well.... at least a LOT MORE THAN the very, very old gen Treo Pro.
The Pre is not suitable at this time for IT centric. These are very conservative departments within any corporate structure and the Pre represents less utility in certain key areas becasue it is a new OS.
Do you think IT departments at enterprise level are reading engadet and thinking: I want to spend my days writing new manuals, new procedures, testing all security issues on each new device that comes out? No.
Palm is not exactly swimming with the needed funds to deploy the teams Apple deployed to attain enterprise level uptake, which took a year anyway with a heavily fund effort. Palm is near broke and won't even generate much profit on the Pre for a year after release.
I am very optimistic about WebOS's long term prospects, but over the short and mid term it isn't going to get much traction in the enterprise level.
IT guy: Yes, I would like to buy a Pre.
Sprint: Yeah, no, sorry, our policy is that we don't sell it to the wrong people like you.
We think that you will buy the Treo Pro. Yeah.
TOO EARLY IN THE MORN FOR ME
A BIT LATE IN THE PRON FOR ME
I really doubt if you are there to get Pre Sprint is going to stop you. But the questions make sense if you are trying to qualify a phone for someone that doesn't really know what they want.
I don't know, the big magenta print at the bottom says "We Can't Afford to Sell the Pre to the Wrong Customers". Thats sounds pretty threatening to me.
The "wrong customer", huh? That's some statement when a company believes they have the luxury of picking who they'll sell a product to. Just be careful on defining the criteria there, it might be bordering on unlawful...
OUCH..... I am an IT person.
racism
classism
jobism
creditcardratingism
buy something else and let them rot in hell ism ?
Hey, they could just forget about all this and end up with another Storm scenario that Verizon went through...
Unbelievable!!!!
by worng customers sprint just means people with wrong expectations, dont we still see horders of people deploring the iphone because it doesnt multitask like a wimno can?
if you dont tell people what a device cant do they simply expect it to do it, thats the moral of the story...
sprint might be just trying to avoid any setting any wrong expectations and in turn, avoid getting negative publicity from people who didnt do enough homework check what they are getting into!
The replies in this thread are astounding. Was it really that dificult to understand that only 3 of the respondents actually deciphered the coded message? I mean, it's not like it's in plain english to make it easier to understand. People, as much as you like to mentally distort the truth to your own agenda, the point is clear.
Palm did not make the phone enterprise compatible mostly by not providing remote manageability. Think stolen phone, trade secrets, documents about upcoming products or military operations, no one is supposed to know, remotely disable phone. I wonder why they didn't spend the money on the manageability rather than the page in the sales pamphlet.
Sprint tells you why they don't want to sell you the phone:
May not support remote management
May not ever support exotic software (not popular / consumer oriented)
May not expand on available features anytime soon or ever
Not bright enough to understand the memo
Why Sprint would rather not sell you the wrong phone? Because they don't need people pissed off at them needlessly about the phone doesn't do this or that, what a piece of crap, bad press, returns, etc. They're not foisting the Treo Pro on anyone, but it may be an acceptable alternative if you want Palm, Sprint, and an enterprise oriented phone.
Buy whatever you like, but don't complain later. Note, document viewing is provided by Dataviz, but document editing is an aftermarket purchase also by Dataviz.
If someone sold me something that didn't work properly for what I need I'd feel MORE than a little short changed.
I'd like a good salesperson to KNOW if the device I want will be a bad fit and not simply let me buy whatever.
If you go around trusting on sales people then you must have some very sad stories, and not a lot of money left.
@Wwhat
Not all salespeople are bad. It is in their best interests to make you happy. Think about a car dealership, if you have a great experience there, you are many times more likely to go back their again and again. Good for you because you get treated well, good for them because they make money.
And most car salespeople actually expect to be working with the same agency by the time you replace your car, right?! It reminds me of another thing. Forget about today's bonus, I'd give you a mortgage only if you can afford paying it back.
Looks like most people commenting don't get some of the reasoning behind the suggestion. Yes, it's a plug for the pro, as they should be suggesting the touch pro at the same time if they really are trying to match people with the right phone.
It would seem like a no-brainer that you'd check with your IT department to make sure you could get corporate mail on your device. I know from experience that your typical non-engadget reader is clueless, and likely to snap one of these up, only to have to return it the next week after their IT dept makes them return it. We don't buy the phones for our people, but we subsidize the phone bills for them to use the corporate email.
Maybe in a few weeks/months how good it's exchange security features are (remote wipe, certs, etc) but until then, it's a no go area for most shops, just like the iPhone (bad at certs, and can't get separate email signatures).
Gee, and here I thought that salesmen were supposed to know about the phones and how to decide these type of things on their own using judgement and communication with the customer.
Maybe thats why so many salesmen suck nowadays, cause they hire idiots and tell em here just follow the arrows.
Un.Fucking.Believable.
If any wireless company needed to do the honorable thing and commit hari kari, it is Sprint.
Holy crap, people. Get a grip! Many of you are taking this completely out of context. All this memo says is that they want their salespeople to properly qualify the customer and make sure the Pre is the correct device for the consumer before they walk out with it. With a limited number of handsets, they want as low a return rate as possible. The last thing they want to see is a bunch of people returning their Pres because it wasn't what they expected, especially while they have a ton of people waiting on them. They would lose Pre sales that way because they cannot just resell that phone to the next guy.
This memo doesn't mean they won't let you purchase it if you're not the correct customer. It means the salesman won't SELL it to you. Big difference. At the end of the day, the buying decision is ultimately up to the customer (stock permitting).
This is good! I don't want try and teach me parent how to use this phone. I can just see tech savy people around the country trying to teach there parents how to use a smart phone!
Having worked for o2 for the last 2 1/2 years, I can safely say documents such as these are nothing out of the ordinary.
Simply put, this sort of stuff is to ensure that the device gets sold to the correct consumer, minimizing returns. Any carrier _hates_ to see returns of any nature, assumingly a return on this device is slightly more costly, possibly due to minimal stock, thereby hampering the actual income of the device.
Again, this is nothing new. This has been done for years in o2, and I can't imagine any other carrier's motives are different.
Exactly. Having worked for 2 major carriers over the years, this kind of stuff is routine. I don't know what everyone is getting all up in arms about, especially since the general public usually never gets to see these memos. I assure you, every major phone for every major carrier has had a similar page in a similar document.
Begs the question... why didn't palm build in any kind of enterprise management?
iPhone: 1 model, always perfect for everyone, for work and play, business and personal.
Particularly people who wants the device to be able to handle "VOICE & DATA" concurrently. Unfortunately the Palm Pre/Sprint is unable to handle both at the same time. Yes you will miss your calls when your are using data. Pathetic.
Actually I have that backwards. You can receive and make calls, you just can't use any of the data driven environment whilst on the phone. Forget checking an email your caller just sent, or retrieve a location via maps to send to a user. Forget browsing for information during calls.
Isn't money from a "hipster" or an "I.T. centric" consumer the same though?
the money is same, but if you get it from a wrong person for a wrong reason, chances are you will have to give it back or that person will give you so much negative publicity that 10 people might decide against giving you a dime!
The money is the same but Sprint has a no questions asked return policy for 30 days. The carriers take a bath on returned smartphones since once the first call is made they can't be sold as new, and if they are out there for ten days they have to go through an entire checkup as well as not be able to be sold as new.
Pre lists at $550 and sells subsidized for $550. Odds are that means the costs to Sprint per unit is in the range of $250 to $275. They probably sell many of the used models them to their third party insurance agency for about $75. They can even be returned with no retail packaging.
Sprint could also stand to lose a a fair amount more on account start costs (about $100 in account processing, number assignment) for business buyers who not only return for another model but also cancel service altogether
The leaked document, incorrectly reported as for Sprint sales staff or "internal", is not internal but for third party business sellers (which is why it leaked). Returned sales by those sellers are returned to Sprint and Sprint takes whole loss.
You would not get WebOS past almost any serious IT department for up to a year from now.
Palm should target the campaign as "Target the Pre to the customer" , not to sell the Pre to the wrong customer. If security is an issue with Pre, would you trust this unit for your personal use? That really begs the question from me.
So when Palm does this it's okay, but Apple is a bunch of pretentious cocks, right?
Way to be, Engadget commenters.
Yeah engadget, you've missed this when you posted the guide earlier. Of course I read it all the way through and when I came on that comment, I was like ....WTF? I'll get a Pre if I damn well want to, who are you to tell me I'm not the right person. I'd be pissed if I was asked that question, knowing that the question was meant to make me buy the centro. I'm an IT person, and even though I have no intention of deploying this in the workplace, it might be mistaken not to sell to IT people. That is ridiculous, anyone walking into the store and wanting to buy a Pre...you can bet damn well they've done their homework, no need to let us know it's not appropriate.
I think sprint figures that an IT person would know a whole damn more about the Pre than aN average consumer and would use it much more for data. They might try to find a way to tether to a laptop and so forth using up way more data than sprint can handle. Regular users probably want it for the cool phone but have no intention of using it intensely as an IT person.
As someone who slings wireless phones for a major national retailer - this isnt out of the ordinary, nor is it wrong or unjust. The bottom line is people acquire some wireless phones when they shouldn't just based on their preception of that phone, or any other product for that fact - IE 'The best'
Take the Curve, or Touch Pro... Many people on this site might sport such phones and rightfully so as they can adjust to the functionallity of a high end feature rich handset. But that being said I have litterally lost count of how many people wanted a phone just because of it being 'cool' IE - 50 year old man that doesn't even own a computer wanting a Curve - returning the product promptly. Many of these phones are built for a certain type of mindset - which a lot of people don't qualify for.
Retail responsibility? Maybe..