Cut price Touchpads fly off UK shelves

THE TABLET PC that is so exciting that HP has dropped it has proven to be a success, once HP cut its price to around a quarter of what it was initially.

The HP Touchpad clunked into the tablet arena so recently that we expect some of the first ones sold will still be sitting in jolly paper waiting to be given as presents to people, and even we were surprised when retailers announced fire sale prices over the weekend in the US and yesterday in the UK.

"Currys & PC World stores: HP Touchpad SALE CONFIRMED FROM TUESDAY AM, Limited Stock £89 for the 16gb and £115 for the 32gb," tweeted Mark Webb of Dixons, which is part of the same DSG Group.

Online sales for the tablet kicked off at 6pm last night and, for the good of its readers The INQUIRER had a look around the shopping arena.

We found that the web sites at Currys, PC World and Dixons all cut prices at 6pm and at the same time also seemed to slow down in performance and on each one we had varying degrees of success.

At Dixons we managed to get two tablets into a shopping cart before being forced to register to use the web site.

Having, in our opinion, totally unnecessarily given the firm our name, address, email address and phone number, we were bounced back to the Dixons home page with an empty shopping basket. Something that caused The INQUIRER waste bin to go flying across a room.

The experience at Currys and PC World was similar, but here we found that we could not arrange for home delivery and could only request to pick the tablet up in store. Having failed to secure a local unit within our own postcode we took to using family ones instead before guessing others at random. We repeatedly failed to find any in stock.

We ceased giving the DSG web sites hits at around 7pm and recovered the waste bin shortly after.

This morning, flushed with hope and expectation we called the Currys and PC World helpline to find out whether it was worth braving the local industrial estate and retail park to buy a Touchpad in a store.

Immediately on answering a recorded message told us that all Currys and PC World stores had sold out of Touchpads, both online and for collection and pre-order in-store.

The Carphone Warehouse had its own little sale of Touchpads and also ran its prices through a chainsaw. This morning the mobile firm's web site is displaying a message that says it has sold out and requests that people stop ringing it about it.

One lucky buyer, who secured a Touchpad last night, has told The INQUIRER that his order is apparently not a guarantee, adding that in an email the firm told him that he would have to wait to see if it would be fulfilled. "We've received your order - as soon as it's been approved we'll email you to say it's coming," said the firm in its message."

"All orders placed through our website are subject to acceptance. Occasionally we have to reject an order for reasons outside our control - if this is the case we'll email you as soon as possible to let you know why."

So there you have it. The Touchpad is a popular, cut price tablet and the radical changes at HP, which include the decision to drop it, are working. Or something like that, anyway. µ