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Friday November 6, 2009
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 Officially, the Friday launch of the Droid and the Droid Eris went swimmingly, backed up by anecdotal reports from the stores themselves.
While it may take a day or two to truly assess how the launch went, a small poll of stores in Northern California, a tech haven, proved that Verizon had a hit on its hands.
"It's going great," Heidi Flato, a Verizon spokeswoman representing Northern California, reported. "It's going really great. Everyone's very happy."
"We do have lots of inventory," she added. "My understanding is that we were prepared for the launch." Flato declined to say how many phones had been allocated to each store, or if supplies were running low at by midday Pacific time.
However, store employees seemed to indicate the best of all possible worlds: a happy customer base, lines, but enough phones for everyone. One employee in a Sacramento Verizon store reported that they had been given 100 phones per store, at least in his region. Another manager, in the East Bay, said that figure "sounded about right". Two stores in the San Jose region referred questions to Verizon public relations representatives.
I was totally unable to reach employees at two stores in midtown Manhattan, where lines of 100 people or so were reported.
In California, those lines were estimated to be at about 40 people at
the Sacramento store. Another Bay Area store's employee indicated that
about 30 people had lined up in front of her South Bay store, before
she asked to end the call to serve her customers.
Anecdotally, the Droid launch appears to have taken the first Storm, well, by storm.
"We learned a lot from that launch, in terms of what to do with
promoting in advance," Flato said. "We were well prepared for this one."
"It's gone terrific," the Sacramento employee said. "We have plenty of
stock, we had a big line outside, and we're selling it; the vibes from
the customers have been awesome."
The Droid's launch was backed by Verizon corporate, Motorola, and the
Verizon employee base, the Sacramento employee said, who described the
phone and its support as "quality".
In Times Square, customers were offered the chance to control the
Reuters ticker via voice, and New Yorkers were also offered at least
the chance at concert tickets.
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November 6, 2009 5:44 PM
I love how the California sales person was all talking about "vibes" of the customers. We're big on vibes out here....
November 6, 2009 5:55 PM
The experience at the Huntington Beach store in southern California was excellent. Lots of smiling staff (who cheered the first handful of customers - then they got busy) and the store experience was perfect. They handled the transaction quickly and professionally and there as a short "gauntlet" they sent you through where a series of minute long presentations by different staff introduced the basic features of the phone (how to get an app, how to get to the web, etc.) and made sure you got your gmail account setup properly and then took your old phone and new phone and transferred your contacts for you. They even provided free coffee and snacks. I can't imagine how it could have gone smoother or been handled better. Kudos to VZW on this one, from every angle.
November 8, 2009 2:24 PM
don't really care. $350 termination fee. Hell no. A pity too since I really was eyeballing the 'droid.
November 8, 2009 5:50 PM
Verizon Wireless service has been great!