bearpaw
Member
Registered: Sep 1999
Location:
Posts: 81 |
Handspring, acting through their call center, has mislead many people on this board. Start reading the posts and see how many different conflicting answers people have received.
"Mislead", to me, heavily implies intent. I doubt very much that Handspring is trying to mislead anyone. The "conflicting answers" are very likely all natural misunderstandings of (a) the mostly non-tech CSRs and (b) over-excited customers.
Amazon.com is only an online business that does not develop products? You might want to check again. They are in drugs - drugstore.com, pets, movie databases - imdb.com, shopping comparsions - junglee.com, purchase circles, etc, etc, etc... Amazon is developing products.
No. Amazon.Com is *selling* products that others have developed. Big difference. Not even the software on which it runs is a product, 'cause they're not selling that software. Amazon.Com is a retailer, not a developer.
My point with Amazon is they deliver their product with excellent customer service. That is important for ANY company.
Their customer service is not excellent, it's adequate. Sometimes barely adequate. They've had lots of problems, especially when they were starting up, like Handspring is now.
How can the online portion be a distraction to Handspring? If they don't use the Internet, ...
You are confusing "using the internet" with having online sales. Of course they need to use the internet these days, but the *direct* online sales part of that will in the long run be a very small part of their sales. For a brief period, it's the only way to order Visors, but that's just an introductory thing -- a way of artificially limiting sales during the manufacturing (and marketing) ramp-up period.
I don't know Palm's sales numbers, but I'd be very surprised if *total* online sales account for a majority of their product sales. And I'd be astonished if *direct* online sales -- sales from the Palm website itself -- are more than a few percent of their overall sales.
Handspring will probably have the same experience, in the long run. The only difference is this introductory period, which yes, is almost certainly a distraction -- albeit a tactically reasonable one -- from all the other things they're doing.
Perspective -- use it or lose it. It's nice to think we're somehow really important to Handspring, but ultimately we're just another couple of credit card numbers. As long as their ordering system performs reasonably well for most people through this initial phase, it's just not going to be all that important to them if a few people get all confused and bent out of shape about misunderstandings and mixed signals.
[This message has been edited by bearpaw (edited 09-27-1999).]
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