talkingDigital

It has now been 24 hours since I became 12th in line for a Palm Pre at the local Sprint store. Here’s what I know…

The Sprint store will likely have at least 12 phones in stock. By now, everyone at the Sprint store agrees that I am on the waiting list.

I was told by the unofficial store spokesperson that the employees themselves were not allowed to put anyone on the list unless the customer came into the store in person. Putting someone on the list by proxy could be grounds for dismissal.

In other words, I don’t blame the employees for keeping company policy.

I have gained a small army of bloggers, tweeps, and podcasters who are trying to help. At this point I have a note for those trying to help…

Please be careful. I am not out to attack Sprint or their employees. If you will notice, I have not called Sprint names, threatened to leave their service or encouraged a boycott. I just wanted the place in line that I thought I had reserved.

I don’t want anyone making a bigger deal out of this than it is. I want my Palm Pre. I have promised several blogs, podcasts and news sites a thorough review on release day. I am upset that I may have to break those promises – I guess I can imagine how the Sprint employees feel at having to break their promises… If they even realized before today that I interpreted their promise to put me on the waiting list as a promise.

The saga continues in my six month quest to acquire a Palm Pre on release day. After my very public and targeted complaints, a few of the employees mentioned in my posts, tweets and Facebook updates have apologized and requested that I remove the posts.

I will not remove them completely, because the account is accurate and getting me a lot of traffic on my site.

Here is what I have found out. The local Sprint store or perhaps Sprint corporate, announced the waiting list policy that employees could be dismissed if they put names on the waiting list who were not present in the store.

I am guessing that the people who I have been pestering at the Sprint store for the past six months had no way of contacting me to let me know that the waiting list had started or that I had to come in to get on it.

I asked if they could move me up in the waiting list (many on the list are getting more than one phone) and they explained that there are no exceptions to the policy. I will believe that on June 7 if there are no Sprint employee/SERO folks who own a Palm Pre. I am betting that is a policy that they will find a loophole in.

I will remove the names of the employees from my posts as they have explained to me that Sprint will possibly fire them if they make any exceptions for me.

Also, even after all this mess, I have no intentions of leaving Sprint and I am not afraid to show my face in the Sprint store. I realize that policy comes before service in today’s business world and I no longer blame the employees for the problems I have had.

I will still acquire a Pre at some point – perhaps August when they are slated to be available to the masses and I will stick with Sprint as my cell provider.

Perhaps I will sponsor at meetup on June 6 at noon where we can either celebrate the fact that I was able to acquire a Pre or help those who were able to acquire one to celebrate.

After providing a brief timeline of how I got to be 12th on the waiting list for the Palm Pre at the Grand Junction, CO Sprint store, I thought I would post one of my favorite threads from Facebook. You can also follow the drama on Twitter.

The user "Rachel" is my wife. That will explain her comments a little more. She is tired of hearing about the Pre as are most of my other Facebook and Twitter friends.