Rogers Playbook Employee Pricing turns Playbook into a hotcake!!

As we all read last week, Rogers initiated the first heavily discounted program with respect to the Playbook. The deal was basically %50 off all the models and was available to all Rogers Wireless employees.  The kicker was that if you bought them before September 22, you were also eligible for the $100 MasterCard from RIM.  Thus making a 16 GB Playbook a dirt cheap $149.99!!

Several friends of mine work at Rogers and yes I have been hounding them to get me in on the party, but, it seems this this program has resulted in way more sales than Rogers expected and Playbooks are going to be hard to come by at Rogers.

Apparently the stock is flying out fast, Rogers is almost out of the 16 GB model alone.  I have been told there is no official limit to purchases, but, each Rogers employee is only eligible to claim 3 rebates from RIM.  In addition as of today, if you try to buy over 5 units, your order will get transferred to the fraud department to have the order investigated, which will result in the order not being completed ,because by the time the fraud department clears your order, the stock will likely be out and you get no Playbooks.  This is the unofficial way Rogers is trying to control the orders so everyone gets a decent shot.

Some staff are even calling friends or acquaintances in other Provinces to see if they are using their 3 orders.

Given the 1000′s of employees in Rogers Wireless, and at least 3 Playbooks sold per employee, one could extrapolate huge movement of Playbook stock in the last 5 days and coming weeks.

I personally think this is the best play for RIM and they need to start doing this all over the place.  I have said before, while it would great if the Playbook made money for RIM, it doesn’t need to in order for it to be a success.  The Playbook could very well serve one purpose, be a loss leader, and be successful.  RIM needs to flood the market with devices.  Based on my own experience and those of others in the forums, once people have the Playbook in their hands, they generally love it.  It is getting them into peoples hands that clearly is the trouble for RIM and this is a surefire way to get Playbooks in peoples hands.

It will be interesting to see what else RIM has in store before Christmas!

 

 

More on BerryReview