HP TouchPad fire sale more smoke than fire

[Shawn Knight]

HP launched one final liquidation sale on their discontinued HP TouchPad Sunday night to try and meet the incredible demand that the tablet generated from the original sale in August. But despite the bargain-basement pricing, many were still left unsatisfied.

HP announced late last week that they would be offering the TouchPad to US customers one last time. The sale took place on December 11 at 7pm Eastern time through HP’s eBay store. The WebOS-equipped tablets sold for $99 and $149 for 16GB and 32GB models, respectively.

There were, however, a few catches this time around. First, all of the units that HP put up for sale were refurbished models. Second, HP only offered 2,316 16GB units and 5,534 of the larger 32GB tablets during the sale, or less than 8,000 total. According to reports, these were all sold in less than 25 minutes. As a result, eBay and Paypal were sluggish and littered with error messages and failed transactions.

If that wasn’t enough to irritate buyers, HP charged a flat shipping fee of $19 per order – that’s 20 percent of the selling price of the 16GB model. It seems that trying to make a few extra bucks on shipping may have backfired as HP’s seller rating on eBay now sits at 93.5 percent with 60 negative and 13 neutral feedback ratings in the last month. Nearly every negative comment on the first several pages is in relation to shipping charges.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/46632-hp-touchpad-fire-sale-more-smoke-than-fire.html

 

[Guest]

wow, people complain about the shipping? They are already getting a deal w/ a very cheap Touchpad. The shipping was listed right from the start, if $20-40 extra for shipping is going to be too much, maybe they shouldn't be buying it.

 

[mattfrompa]

No one likes an unexpected price increase, whatever the reason. Enough to complain but not enough to merit returning IMO. Although I would not have been interested in a refurbished one.

 

[Jos]

In fairness, they did say in advance that the tablets were refurbished units.
https://www.techspot.com/news/46581-hps-99-touchpad-fire-sale-is-back-one-last-time.html

 

[mattfrompa]

Jos said:
In fairness, they did say in advance that the tablets were refurbished units.
https://www.techspot.com/news/46581-hps-99-touchpad-fire-sale-is-back-one-last-time.html

I incorrectly implied that I would have been upset about that being a kind of "surprise" although I meant to say that I saw that as well so I would not have even cared about the shipping since I was already turned away.

 

[Raswan]

The bigger deal was ebay's inability to handle the traffic. I was on at 5:55p, ready to rock. Once 6p hit, boom. Ebay went down. I spent 30 minutes watching it hang, periodically getting a 16GB into my cart only to watch the page time out when I tried to check out. Go back in, get it into my cart, still can't proceed to check out. Reminds me why I have never bought anything off of ebay. And why I will forego any future deal like this that utilizes ebay. Get your **** together, fools.

 

[truroxy]

that is kind of ridiculous. but then again, they are paying 100 dollars for a tablet that only cost a couple to ship from the hp website in august. They didn't have all the same frustration that people in august had. I was at my computer for 5 hours trying to buy one, these people just had to be around for a couple. don't bid if you don't like prices, its easy.

 

[Guest]

HP Touchpad + eBay equals abortion!!!

 

[Relic]

I'm with Raswan, was ready to go before 7 PM and as the clock turned everything went to s***. The few times I finally got through to process my payment information, the touchpad would disappear from my cart. Very frustrating, but at least I didn't waste my whole day banging my head against my desk like last time.

 

[SNGX1275]

The bigger deal was ebay's inability to handle the traffic. I was on at 5:55p, ready to rock. Once 6p hit, boom. Ebay went down. I spent 30 minutes watching it hang, periodically getting a 16GB into my cart only to watch the page time out when I tried to check out. Go back in, get it into my cart, still can't proceed to check out.

Yep, exact same thing happened to me. After having things begin to time out I tried another tab (tried buy now and add to cart in different tabs), and eventually a wired computer just incase my wireless router was being lame. On one tab I eventually got through to the payment screen only to be hit with them needing a phone number for my ebay account. Nothing I've ever bought on ebay has ever needed my phone number. Now with Paypal I've seen them want phone, and I had one set up for Paypal. HP required Paypal to purchase, which had my phone, so wtf? With the servers being so incredibly slow it took me 10 minutes to get the phone number fixed, once I finally got that taken care of and through the confirm payment, the item was gone.