Well, despite the e-mail from WIND recently, they have put the Galaxy S III up for sale on their site. Thanks for NOT telling those of us who pre-registered, WIND! Good on ya.
Confusingly, one part of the site says that the phone is ONLY available on WINDtab, which is their pseudo-financing plan. Still, it seems like you can go to the phone detail page and add the phone to your cart anyway.
Price is $649 at time of writing, blue and white both available. Haven't tried to purchase yet, so no idea if you can go ahead and compete the process yet or not. WIND claimed supply shortages, like all the other North American manufacturers, so I wouldn't be shocked to find the delivery time is a bit out there right now.
[Edit]: Tried to purchase and got the strange error "The consumer is not eligible for authentication". What little I can find indicates that the payment processor for WIND (Centurion) can't identify my PC Financial Mastercard properly for redirect to MasterCard SecureCode verification. I guess PC Fin isn't enrolled in Centurion's system?
Anyway, it sucks, since I really want a GS III.
[Edit 2]: Called a store. They said their stock was all reserved only for new customers. Existing customers "have to wait a couple of days".
The store employee was apologetic, saying it was WIND policy and not theirs.
Nice going WIND. It had better not be more than the couple of days.
I kind of fail to see the point of this anyway. You sell the hardware for full price, and keep a customer. How is that different from losing an old customer (for not selling the handset) and gaining a new one?
Sounds like WIND is prioritizing expanding their customer base. Which makes sense - except that so many loyal WIND fanbois are likely to be lusting after a GSIII. You can bet your ass that Apple never turned anyone away from getting the latest iPhone, existing customer or no.
Of course, nobody ever complained of large supply shortages. Samsung might be a bit of a victim of it's own success - in theory - but in practice, everyone who wants a GSIII now will get one, sooner or later. If you were going to switch, you would have done so already. (Any new devices coming after the GSIII excepted, of course - like the latest iPhone, for example.)
No comments:
Post a Comment