Best Buy wants HP to take back 200,000 unsold TouchPads

Things are not looking too hot for the HP TouchPad right now as apparently not even the recent price cuts are helping retailers move more units off store shelves. According…

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I was thinking, maybe HP should take the hit and drop the price of the Touchpad another $100 to get them off the shelves and get people interested in the next version of the Touchpad BUT then again people look at things like that and might think that the Touchpad is a subpar player. Still, it MIGHT be a good way to get it into people's hands. I don't know.

Sad really. Everyone is stuck on the Android bus.

I'd like to add, I also think that HP should continue optimizing the HELL out of WebOS, as I still don't think it's the hardware but the software at play here.

I just dont know about WebOS. I've had the pleasure of playing around with andriod on the PC in a virtual machine.. can you do this with WebOS?

I'm sure you could with the developers SDK. You can get it here. https://developer.palm.com/

And you blame people liking android for Web OS not catching on? HP is crap. For years people have been screwed by poor quality of HP products. But HP discounts and they sell hardware much cheaper then their competitors and people tell themselves such a large brand as HP can't have bad quality. I was lucky enough to have the one HP I bought years ago to fail twice within a month allowing me to take that crap back to the store for first a replacement and then a refund.

So they suck *** and now they want to introduce their own OS? It doesn't make sense. They have no rep to the techie crowd that would've been their early adopters. I guess they save in software licensing but android has already shown itself as the favorable OS. Even iOS has the bleakest outlook since its first introduction. People like the openness of android. Beyond that, app developers aren't looking to develop yet another platform. There just simply isn't enough room in the market for another platform. Web OS was damned to fail.

Best Buy bought them... was it within their 30 day return window?

You're talking about something completely different. You're talking about HP's quality which has nothing to do with WebOS because PALM was bought out by HP a very short while ago. 2nd, iOS has a bleak look? Really? That's why people bought it in waves? 3rd, App developers are looking to develop on any platform that they can make money on. Doesn't matter what it is and at the moment, that would be either iOS or Android because they're the two most popular but not necessarily the best, whatever "best" may constitute. Their is PLENTY of room for competition. Palm never caught on for a number of reasons. When I mention Android, I don't do it because it is currently on a high speed train that can't be stopped, whether it's great or not. It's what you have to compare everything too now.

I guess everyone's experience is different, but my experience with HP has been positive.

I currently have one HP desktop--4 years old, 2 laptops, and 3 printers.

I had a problem with scanning on my all-in-one. HP replaced the AIO, no questions.

My son-in-law and two grandkids all have HP laptops. The only problem was my grandson inadvertently throwing his backpack on the couch with the laptop open--cracked screen.
Luckily when it was bought they bought the accidental damage protection, and HP fixed it.
I also have a 10 year old Dell desktop that is still working ( I had to replace the hard drive after 5 years).
I guess what I'm saying is that I haven't had any quality problems with the many HP devices I have purchased.
I also have an 27-inch IMac. After 3 months it died. Apple replaced it.

There was a similar report on Fudzilla for sales in Europe. It appears that everyone except for Apple is having a hard time moving tablets.

Android tablet sales in Europe still disappointing

it seems everything that HP has touched all have the tendency to turn into shyt. ie. compaq, palm.

it's no wonder that their customers don't come back for another round. they've made a pretty poor reputation for themselves.

I used WebOS for a long time, prior to the HP buyout, and I loved it. I can imagine that designing a tablet around it was difficult, but I am disappointed that HP felt the need to rush things and put out an inferior product. This is one helluva SNAFU for HP.

i partially agree with you. i used to have a LOT of HP products too, that included desktop and laptops. it definitely used to be a good company that made good products back in the good ol days. but recent years, their products have turned into turd, things fail easily, poor quality, and worst of all their customer service has gone down the drain. and if you ever have a chance to deal with their sales people on the phone, they'll do everything they can to suck you dry. things don't get better even when you attempt to bring up the issues to their corporate headquarters, they have the tendency to tell you to piss off. i have a friend who also works at the HP hardware division, he wouldn't buy anything that's HP made, and poor customer treatment is a well known unspoken fact within their company.

I wonder what the restocking fee is on returning 200,000 tablets.

Ba Doom TISH

Man that sucks for HP, whether you like them or not, more competition in the tablet market is good for the consumer.

I wonder what Best Buy/HP contract states. From my view, they invested in a product, it didn't pay off like they thought it would and now want a refund???? That ain't right!

Thats cause tablets Are overpriced an should be selling around the $200 mark

I don't buy HP because it is uncanny how the computers always die a few months after the warranty expires.

Hey! Don't know about Palm but Compaq they made better! Before HP took them over I bought a Compaq PC, broke 4 times in 6 months! just motherboard failures and a Hard Drive Failure, I then went to a different shop and got another Compaq PC and it failed on me 3 times in 4 months so I simply gave up and bought a Mesh computer

But a few guys at work have bought cheap Compaq Laptops recently and they haven't failed yet!

I hope Best Buy is an HP Rewards Silver member!

If not, they're going to be looking at a 25% re-stocking fee.

Best Buy wanting HP to take back the tablets seems to me that they feel they'll get more money from HP than from a drastically reduced price, just to get it sold.

Which tells me that HP is either trying to make a lot of profit per device (unlikely), or margins are low enough on both HP's and Best Buy's end that it's impossible to get them sold at those prices. Either way, Best Buy as a retailer isn't in a particularly good situation or economy, and if they're going to take a loss, they might as well have it shared with the ****** who sold them something unsalable.

As for HP, well... they're definitely feeling the effects of Apple dominating the tablet supply chain, if costs to manufacture a tablet are high enough to prevent a lower sale price. And I don't think they could afford to burn cash like Microsoft did for the Xbox just to buy into the market.

I think most of the tablet manufacturers forgot that they still need to make a good product, rather than jump on the tablet bandwagon. You either need to compete on price, fluid functionality/ease of use, and ecosystem: pick two. HP TouchPads with webOS could only compete on price, and even then, if you're already willing to spend a several hundred dollars on something, what's another hundred more for something you know lots of people already use and enjoy (despite its caveats)? You know you get a tested, solid device and a mature ecosystem.

It's a very tough time in the industry.