AT&T ‘Rumoured To Sell Smartphones’

On September 24th 2014 John Chen announced the official launch of the BlackBerry Passport. As part of that launch at was announced that AT&T would exclusively carry the Passport for sale in the US.

On September 25th the Passport sold out across all outlets worldwide. Shop BlackBerry then asked people to register their interest and, here in the UK, Carphone Warehouse, who exclusively carry the device, replaced the Buy button with a Pre-Order button on their website so people could give them money in advance of more stock.

The last point is quite important. Any commercial operation, when faced with a product in high demand, would be slightly off their rocker if they weren’t prepared to take customer’s money prior to new stock landing. They get the money in the bank and can much more accurately predict how much new stock they will need.

In such a way it was 2 days ago that Carphone Warehouse received over £1000 from me in advance of the Passport being restocked.

Easy money.

Meanwhile, across the pond in the land where the customer is king, what have AT&T been doing to take advantage of their period of exclusivity?

Well, other than merrily comfirming that they WILL carry the Passport, nothing.

Actually, it’s much worse than nothing. AT&T seem to be actively going out of their way to antagonise prospective customers. There is no way at all to order, pre-order or even register an interest with AT&T. Tweets are either ignored or answered with a stock ‘coming soon’ answer. Queries on the official AT&T forum are locked so as to prevent discussion of the product.

There is no way to give them any money.

So, what’s going on?

Well, N4BB tried to answer that one with a blog entitled ‘AT&T BlackBerry Passport Release Date Rumored For Early Next Year’.

Which was about as much help as a soggy flannel since there were no facts in their at all, just whispers and conjecture.

Others have speculated too. But the truth is that those that wish to buy a Passport from AT&T DO NOT CARE about ‘why’ all they want to know is WHEN which is the least thye deserve, frankly.

So, AT&T, let’s spell it out for you.

We do not care if you have unsold iPhone and Samsung inventory to get rid of. We do not care if you haven’t trained your staff yet. We do not care if you didn’t iron something out with BlackBerry beforehand. We do not care if some iPhone user within your organization can’t see opportunity when it slaps them in the face with a wet fish.

Heck, we do not care if your problem is something as stupid as you don’t like the fact the corners aren’t rounded.

Listen up and listen good. It’s not your job to tell us what we want.

It’s your job to take our money and provide us with the product!

And if you aren’t capable of that give up your exclusive deal to someone who is.

In the meantime, we can only assume that the future AT&T business model is not to sell smartphones.

We’d heard a rumour you did, but.like most rumours it appears to be false.

#WeWantThePassport