Wandered into a BB Mobile (that I didn't even know existed before today) in a crappy little local strip mall...
Two guys in it...one in a BB uniform busy accepting a delivery from UPS (no, not DXs), and another sitting at the counter.
"Do you work here?"
"Not really. I work for Verizon. Can I help you?"
Hmm.
So I play dumb, tell a sob story about waiting *forever* for my backordered Inc, and isn't there some new Moto phone about to come out?
"You mean this one?"
He hands me a live X.
"Uh...maybe. What is it?"
Anyway, turns out he's the regional VZW rep for my state, in the store to show off the candy. I continue to play (mostly) dumb and pick his brain for what he's heard about availability.
Off the record, he confirmed that VZW is "locked down" on the X until the 15th. He's seen corp memos saying no exceptions, no order conversions, nothing until 12:01am 7/15. More interesting, he was talking with the BB guy who was bitching about previous allocation problems he's had with high-demand phones...
Mr. VZW said the initial wave of DXs will be ~100k units, nationwide. VZW corp stores will get roughly 30k, BB 60k, and small independents the rest. That's right, a VZW rep told me today that BB will have double the allocation of native VZW. They are using the BB preorders to gauge interest regionally, and those numbers will certainly affect how many units a given BB store gets, and may also influence how the corp stores get theirs.
So I preordered another. Just #3 on this store's list as of 7/8, and I am in a tech hotbed! I figure I can use the gift cards at whichever store can hook me up first on the 15th. Think I'm probably #1 on the other store's list, as I preordered at lunch on 6/25 and had to prod them to read the BB corp email before they even knew about it!
Two guys in it...one in a BB uniform busy accepting a delivery from UPS (no, not DXs), and another sitting at the counter.
"Do you work here?"
"Not really. I work for Verizon. Can I help you?"
Hmm.
So I play dumb, tell a sob story about waiting *forever* for my backordered Inc, and isn't there some new Moto phone about to come out?
"You mean this one?"
He hands me a live X.
"Uh...maybe. What is it?"
Anyway, turns out he's the regional VZW rep for my state, in the store to show off the candy. I continue to play (mostly) dumb and pick his brain for what he's heard about availability.
Off the record, he confirmed that VZW is "locked down" on the X until the 15th. He's seen corp memos saying no exceptions, no order conversions, nothing until 12:01am 7/15. More interesting, he was talking with the BB guy who was bitching about previous allocation problems he's had with high-demand phones...
Mr. VZW said the initial wave of DXs will be ~100k units, nationwide. VZW corp stores will get roughly 30k, BB 60k, and small independents the rest. That's right, a VZW rep told me today that BB will have double the allocation of native VZW. They are using the BB preorders to gauge interest regionally, and those numbers will certainly affect how many units a given BB store gets, and may also influence how the corp stores get theirs.
So I preordered another. Just #3 on this store's list as of 7/8, and I am in a tech hotbed! I figure I can use the gift cards at whichever store can hook me up first on the 15th. Think I'm probably #1 on the other store's list, as I preordered at lunch on 6/25 and had to prod them to read the BB corp email before they even knew about it!