Best Buy Taking Pre-orders for BlackBerry Storm
Best Buy has begun taking pre-orders for the Verizon BlackBerry storm. It requires a $50 refundable deposit. The phone will be priced between $199.99 and $299.99 with a two-year contract, according to an internal Best Buy memo. Read the full article for the full memo
Start pre-selling the Storm!
Unique Opportunity to Pre-sell Blackberry Storm!
Effective immediately, customers may pay a portion of the purchase price to reserve a Blackberry Storm handset. This is a huge, exclusive opportunity for Best Buy Mobile — no one else is doing it — and something we haven’t done in this area of the business before. Many customers who may not have considered Best Buy as a Storm source will arrive in our stores to be guaranteed a handset!
As of Nov. 3, the sales price and official launch date for the Storm have not been set — despite blog rumors to the contrary. It is safe to assume the handset will be priced between $199.99 and $299.99 for a two-year new activation and will launch sometime in mid-November. Stay tuned to Employee News where we will announce the price once it is set.
Your store will receive inventory to cover the quantity of pre-sold Storms plus other sellable inventory for launch day. The pre-sell SKU must be rung up to ensure inventory arrives at store.
Please review the process below which is critical to execution of the customer experience for this new process:
Pre-selling the Blackberry Storm: The Process
* Customer pays $50 in store prior to launch date
* Employee scans the UPC on the Storm presell flyer and processes in POS
* Scanning this SKU is critical to ensure your store will receive adequate inventory to cover your presell quantities
* Click here to access the pre-sale form
* Click here for the “Coming Soon, Reserve Yours Today” flyer
* Employee makes a copy of the completed Storm pre-sell flyer
* Employee staples the original copy of the Storm pre-sell flyer to the customer’s receipt
* Employee files the copy of the Storm pre-sell flyer in a specially created Storm pre-sell folder in the 1–31 file
* Customer sets an appointment with the Best Buy Mobile employee to come in and pick up their reserved Storm
* Customers who purchase a pre-sell prior to the release date will not be able to set their appointment yet. Best Buy Mobile employees will need to contact customers at a later date with the information on the pre-sell form copy to set the appointment with these customers.
* Stores will need to maintain a master appointment form or file to keep track of all customer appointments.
* Employee attaches copy of pre-sell form to inventory when it arrives in store and sets it aside as reserved.
* Customer returns at their appointment time to pick up their handset
* Employee process an activation on the Storm
* Employee process an exchange transaction
* The presell SKU is returned on this transaction
* The Storm product and activation SKU are then added to the transaction
* The net of the transaction of the Storm less the pre-sale amount
* Customer leaves happy
* If the customer does not return for their appointment time, contact the customer to reschedule an appointment.
* Hold the product for 48 hours from the appointment time for your customer before putting it back into inventory
* The $50 deposit is 100% refundable if the customer chooses not to or cannot purchase the Storm.
