Last night HP marked down the price of an HP TouchPad tablet to $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. In Canada, Best Buy, FutureShop, and The Source all followed suit and many bricks and mortar stores sold out nearly instantly. It turns out in the US it’s even tougher to find a cheap HP TouchPad this morning.
If you placed an order from Amazon, Target, or HP.com in the middle of the night, you might have managed to snag a $99 TouchPad. OfficeDepot.com and Walmart.com were also offering the tablets for $149 or less, but quickly sold out.
So I woke up early this morning to see if I could find any bargains at the Staples, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target, or Walmart stores closest to where I live. The short answer is no.
Staples and Best Buy in the US are both in the process of returning all unsold inventory to HP. That means you can no longer by the TouchPad at those stores for full price, let alone for $99.
Walmart had a few units this morning for full price, but inventory is limited. I’ve heard that some folks who placed orders on the web and arranged for in-store pickup managed to get their tablets for $99, but your results may vary. By the time I tried this, in-store pickup at my nearest Walmart location wasn’t an option.
Target didn’t have any units in the store when I went, and the TouchPad is listed as out of stock on the Target website.
I did manage to find one store with HP TouchPad units in stock: Radio Shack. Unfortunately they were selling for full price. The manager told me to come back if I heard that they were being marked down, because she expected to still have some in stock – but I don’t think she realized what a rush the new $99 price has caused. If Radio Shack does drop the price instead of sending back units to HP, I suspect they won’t be on the shelves for long.
I ran across a number of other people hunting for TouchPads this morning while waiting for Staples and Best Buy to open. If HP had priced the tablet at $99 from the get-go, the company probably wouldn’t have had any trouble selling this tablet. Of course, HP also probably would have lost money on each tablet sold. I’m pretty sure they cost considerably more than $99 to manufacture.
The good news is that with Best Buy and other retailers sending inventory back to HP, we may see more $99 and $149 TouchPads in stock at HP.com soon.
Update:
Best Buy reversed its decision on 8/21 and promptly sold out. Staples is also offering discounted TouchPads… but good luck finding one.
On Monday, 8/22 Barnes & Noble had the TouchPad in stock for about $102 for a few hours, but that deal seems to be gone now too.
It looks like your best bet for getting a cheap TouchPad at this point is either to sign up at HP.com to receive a notification when they’re back in stock or head to eBay where people that picked up $99 TouchPads will probably be selling them for closer to $200 — which is still a pretty good deal.
I wait for these 3 days long, but could not open my order page @HP.com. i wish i can buy 1 today.
hoho u can buy from barnes and noble for full price then when they cut the price on monday u might get the lower price too…or just return it if it doesnt work out
I bought 10 of these (32GB) early Saturday morning from the HP website. I’ve already got orders for 4 ($300 each) from my mates at work.
I work 3rd shift at Walmart and got mine there. $150 for 32gb + 10% off employee discount. We were allowed 1 each. They never went on sale until around 8am(8/20). Glad I got one though. I really like it. Now we wait for their notebook liquidation!
lol. I work part time @ bestbuy. My store sold out of touchpads even before the store opened at 9am this morning. All the employees including myself bought them.lol. Customers rushed in first thing, just to find out that we had none left. I wouldnt be surprised if that was the case around the country. Managers/employees buying them up, wayyy before customers even get to see them.lol. Im trying to figure out how to get Android on my 16gb right now 🙂
where i work the emplyees are not allowed the deals . customers come first.
and customers come first at best buy as well. but since we have to deal with pricks every sunday and dont have the option to go out and seek such great deals, the company was nice enough to let us have first dibs. We didnt receive a further discount, so essentially, we were customers 🙂
They should fire every employee and managers who allowed this to happen. Customers come first and you can buy this deals if you are off the clock and are out of uniform.
A friend of mine found some on HP’s small business site. We thought he had them and after dealing with them for darn near 4hrs (their servers were having issues) on the phone…no dice.Â
Nobody wants to keep them. They’re selling for double and even triple the price on eBay. Some hoarders are making money this week.
Started looking as soon as I read the news tbhis morning. No luck local or on line yet. I may be out of luck on this one.
Remember that at Google I/O that attendees (thousands of attendees) all got FREE Andriod stuff…Â Well, maybe with these free devices out there now, in the hands of geeks who will hack this to run other OS, that HP could take the hacks, and sell these again as choice of WebOS or Android devices (dual boot even)?
Of course maybe even tri-boot with your favorite other Linux flavor thrown in to the mix.
Now that would sell…
And if you could run a VM on top of it, then Windows folks could run *that* too (in a VM of course)!
i have had the TOUGHEST TIME trying to find touchpads! I’m watching RadioShack like a hawk…..
I’m going to be there before they open today.