Sprint doc implores reps not to sell Pre to the wrong people

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.

[Todd @ May 25th 2009 4:40AM]

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!

[EI8HT @ May 25th 2009 5:10AM]

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...

[Ghen @ May 25th 2009 7:19AM]

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.

[CH3BURASHKA @ May 25th 2009 9:17AM]

Can I trust a guy whose icon is an AT&T Death Star?

[DarthVegas @ May 25th 2009 9:54AM]

@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.

[iphonerulez @ May 25th 2009 10:07AM]

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.

[Epsilon-Not @ May 25th 2009 11:14AM]

If someone buys a Palm Treo Pro rather than a Palm Pre, it's not like Palm nor Sprint has lost the sale.

[loosely_coupled @ May 25th 2009 4:11PM]

seriously WTF is with the AT&T icon? I didn't know there were mobile carrier fanboys now.. What is the world coming to?

[Alex C @ May 25th 2009 4:40AM]

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.

[Sam hitch @ May 25th 2009 5:39AM]

no they just want to sell a few treo pros.

[Alan Strangis @ May 25th 2009 9:15AM]

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.

[Dutch @ May 25th 2009 9:17AM]

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.

[Derry Quinn @ May 25th 2009 4:41AM]

Why haven't T-Mobile sued them for their magenta yet?

[pfromg @ May 25th 2009 6:02AM]

wrong magenta.

[Syliss @ May 25th 2009 4:42AM]

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...

[EGOvoruhk @ May 25th 2009 5:44AM]

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...

[iphonerulez @ May 25th 2009 10:39AM]

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.

[Adderz @ May 25th 2009 4:46AM]

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.

[Gnormie @ May 25th 2009 5:11AM]

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.

[JZ @ May 25th 2009 5:18AM]

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

[Félix @ May 25th 2009 5:59AM]

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...

[Alan Strangis @ May 25th 2009 9:19AM]

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.

[Adderz @ May 25th 2009 12:13PM]

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.

[Wwhat @ May 25th 2009 4:58AM]

They should just sell them a combo or a pre & treo, more profit

[Andrew88 @ May 25th 2009 5:05AM]

Or smash 'em together and call it the Palm Tree.

[Derry Quinn @ May 25th 2009 5:20AM]

Wow Andrew, Nice!

[Boards of Canada @ May 25th 2009 6:18AM]

Lol

[Wwhat @ May 25th 2009 10:47AM]

Haha :)

[Andrew88 @ May 25th 2009 5:05AM]

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?

[mike @ May 25th 2009 6:16AM]

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!

[Pastry Chef @ May 25th 2009 5:07AM]

WinMo is such a pain in the ass to use that even IT guys don't want to waste their time.

[▀█▀ █ ▀█▀ ▄█▀ @ May 25th 2009 8:04AM]

That's a lie and you, sir, are a liar.
WiMo used a lot in professional businesses, still more than blackberries in fact.

[Jughead @ May 25th 2009 8:22AM]

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.

[iKurt 5D @ May 25th 2009 1:10PM]

I agree, OSX is way more robust and superior than anything else out there.

[TareX @ May 25th 2009 5:07AM]

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.

[Dutch @ May 25th 2009 9:25AM]

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.

[Jordan Biffle @ May 25th 2009 5:10AM]

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.

[Abraham @ May 25th 2009 5:21AM]

TOO EARLY IN THE MORN FOR ME

[Félix @ May 25th 2009 6:12AM]

A BIT LATE IN THE PRON FOR ME

[Joe @ May 25th 2009 5:31AM]

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.

[Jordan Biffle @ May 25th 2009 5:35AM]

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.

[Bones3D @ May 25th 2009 5:56AM]

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...

[Ahmed Alzayani @ May 25th 2009 6:03AM]

OUCH..... I am an IT person.

[pfromg @ May 25th 2009 6:07AM]

racism
classism
jobism
creditcardratingism

buy something else and let them rot in hell ism ?

[Aaron @ May 25th 2009 6:45AM]

Hey, they could just forget about all this and end up with another Storm scenario that Verizon went through...

[The_WB @ May 25th 2009 7:22AM]

Unbelievable!!!!

[Amon @ May 25th 2009 7:44AM]

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!

[tikiwk @ May 25th 2009 8:06AM]

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.

[strider_mt2k @ May 25th 2009 8:15AM]

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.

[Wwhat @ May 25th 2009 10:53AM]

If you go around trusting on sales people then you must have some very sad stories, and not a lot of money left.