BlackBerry Tour high return claims ruffle a few feathers…
Having a piece of art, geeky art that you and your company have spent so many hours and sacrificed blood and tears for experience a quality problem is a sad sad thing to go through. Understandably, I’m sure RIM is feeling the heat as both Verizon and Sprint BlackBerry Tour’s (9630) are getting flack from users because of faulty trackballs. Return rates have been estimated as high as the 50% mark according to both Barron’s and a CrunchGear poll — not a small problem or claim to say the least. It really isn’t hard to find information confirming said problem. A few minutes sifting through such sites as Howard Forums, as well as many other BlackBerry specific sites have turned up quite alarming rates of incidences. Such issues will eventually cost someone copious amounts of money. One side-effect for carriers is that some of those lost dollars often get passed to them.
Even though they aren’t responsible per say for the hardware issues, (even though field testing is supposed to catch problems like this), feathers from both Verizon and Sprint are getting ruffled. So much so that a PR firm even sent Mobile Crunch a statement “clarifying” the issue, rebuking it, and more or less calling them out on a “false” claim. The statement goes on:
I thought you would be interested to see that both Sprint and Verizon Wireless have refuted the unsubstantiated comments made by TownHall Investment Research. We would appreciate it if you would also consider updating your story as soon as possible given that both Sprint and Verizon Wireless have strongly refuted TownHall’s claims about the carriers’ return rates.
Some one is a bit pissed to say the least. Oh well, when you build crap, do a crap job testing it, and then release it to millions of people, bad PR is sure to result. You know the drill. RT away.
Source: MobileCrunch, Image Source
