as of 4:45PM, we are able to report:
- 'Pick and Pack' has now been completed on ALL pre-orders, therefore cancellation of orders is no longer possible.
- HTC has a judicial hearing scheduled this week, and we should have clearance to ship shortly thereafter.
- Unofficially, we should be shipping no later than the first of next week, likely sooner.
This is a very fluid situation, and we'll be updating throughout the evening as more is learned. Obviously a date can't be confirmed until the judicial review, however, internally the anticipation is a very quick resolution.
Previously:
Why you can't cancel your order / Full Launch Delay HTC EVO 4G LTE
Here's the official responses you'll get from care:
- Q: Can I cancel my pre-order?
- A: We can‘t cancel the pre-order at this time. Please wait for your shipment to be delivered. At that time you can either refuse deliver or call us for a return kit.
- Q: What do I do if the customer still insists on canceling their pre-order?
- A: Tell the customer we will try to have the shipment returned at the warehouse when shipping starts.
- We are asking our Back-Office Escalations team to keep a track cancelation requests so that Return-to-Sender requests can be processed when ASNs begin processing.
- If the RTS is unsuccessful we will have to arrange a call back to revert to an RMA with the customer.
- Q: When will HTC EVO 4G LTE be available to consumers?
- A: We can’t provide specific timing for product availability at this time and we appreciate your patience as HTC works to get products on store shelves as soon as possible. Educate the customer to chek the HTC EVO LTE microsite (http://www.sprint.com/evo4glte) for the availability date.
[...] Inside Sprint Now (http://insidesprintnow.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/update-htc-evo-4g-lte-delayed-launch-status/): As you know, over the past 24 hours we’ve been posting on the delayed launch of the HTC [...]
ReplyDeleteWhat does "Pick and Pack" mean?
ReplyDeleteSounds like that means the pre-order units have already been packed into shipping boxes and specific labels with addresses have already been affixed onto them. In other words, they're ready for pickup by UPS.
ReplyDelete[...] [...]
ReplyDelete[...] [...]
ReplyDelete"Unofficially, we should be shipping no later than the first of next week, likely sooner." Do you mean June 1st or Monday?
ReplyDeleteSweeeeeeeeet. Love this site. Always can expect to find out what I need here.
ReplyDelete[...] [...]
ReplyDeleteEff you Apple
ReplyDeleteSounds like Apple is finally afraid they actually have competition and this is their last effort to stay on top.
ReplyDelete[...] Source: Inside Sprint Now [...]
ReplyDeleteHow can "pick and pack" be completed on goods that are being held at customs? If they're past customs, that means they were cleared, and if they were cleared, then they should be shipable now.
ReplyDeleteOr, gosh, could it be that Apple is pressuring any carrier who ships the phones by threatening to cut off iPhone distribution? Not sure if that is actually a viable possibility because that kind of thing is highly regulated by contractual obligations on both sides.
Hey thanks for all you do for us. i really need to get to this site a bit more. I do have a qustion though not related to this. Do you think when Sprint fires up the LTE network it will be larger than what people are expecting or what Sprint told the public. For example if they are predicting 5 markets at launch, could it actually be like 50? I really believe this may be the case...
ReplyDeleteI don't have any faith in this. 4G was supposed to be available in Colorado shortly after the EVO 4G went on sale. I still don't have access to 4G in downtown Denver - it is available in such a limited area. And in Boulder? Not available at all.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the internal updates. This has really helped keep me and I'm assuming a lot of others who are highly anticipating their Evos calm and level headed. A few day delay isn't the end of the world. Will be checking back here every few hours for an update. Again, thanks for the scoop.
ReplyDeleteI would assume for legal reasons they are not allowed to ship the phones. But it seems odd that Apple is willing to piss off Sprint who just signed some huge deal with them a few months back and AT&T who was the only place to get the Iphone for the longest time as well as has the most Iphones on it's network at this time. It will be interesting to see if there is any fall out on Apple for this after this situation is resolved.
ReplyDeleteOkay, call me naive, but I just don't have any beef with Apple on this. If this is a patent infringement, and courts have seemed to rule that it is, then why wouldn't Apple do what they feel they need to do to protect their Intellectual Propert? An R&D company's IP is it's real liquid asset that drives all other asset value.
ReplyDeleteOZ-
ReplyDeleteI'm in Denver. I get great 4G downtown, and a decent signal where I work near Stapleton. Nothing where I live up in Commerce City, though.
Kevin, that's really strange. I have tried downtown, 16th street mall, coors field, and nothing. I'll try updating the PRL and see if that helps. Thanks for this. I stand corrected!! :)
ReplyDeleteMy assumption is that the goods are in a warehouse in what's called a "foreign trade zone"; technically even though they're on US soil they're still considered not to be imported yet, so the importer doesn't have to pay import duty until they are actually shipped to a retailer or consumer.
ReplyDeleteThe 4G LTE deployment is quite different than the original 4G (WiMAX/Clear) network. 4G LTE will be deployed on the same cell sites that Sprint currently has Voice/3G service. Network Vision will result in a new 4G LTE network as well as improved voice/3G coverage and performance.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for myself, I'm glad to have a resource such as this to provide a little "transparency" to this situation. I've still heard absolutely nothing directly from Sprint about this. The only reason I figured out something was wrong was when checking my order status it changed from "do our best...by the 18th" to "do our best...by the launch date"
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the "party line" down at my local Sprint store is "We don't know, they're not telling us anything" which I understand could be the truth, but still, even a short little broadcast e-mail to the advance order customers would have been nice.
They did finally make an official announcement. Nothing to amazing though.
ReplyDeletehttp://community.sprint.com/baw/community/sprintblogs/announcements/blog/2012/05/16/htc-evo-4g-lte-update
Any new info? There was never an update to this article throughout the evening. :(
ReplyDeleteI would like a confirmation on this as well if it is possible, please.
ReplyDeleteno real news yet, put posted a 6AM update, but won't know anything until later today or early Friday as far as the status of the hold.
ReplyDeleteyea, you would not believe the hoops and checks and balances and reviews and departments that a single message from corporate communications has to go through just to notify customers of something. And legal is almost always the final naysayer, or message changer. Since I'm not blogging 'for' them, i'm not bound by those same terms.. so I try to provide some insight that you may not see elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteand you would be correct. ours happens to be our outsourced warehouse in Louisville, which is ran by... you guess it, UPS!
ReplyDeleteI can see both sides. I think that patent law goes a bit far in this case... as some things should just not be able to be patented. There are 1,000 devices that use this feature, and this is a strategy move made by Apple in this case. I think it'll come out eventually that Apple had a larger role in this delay than some think.
ReplyDeletethanks for reading! Hopefully I'll be able to get some more info later today.
ReplyDeleteas long as items remain in the 'foreign trade zone' they can be manipulated in any way needed. packaged, labeled, etc... they just can't leave the zone until cleared.
ReplyDeleteUPS actually does all our packaging, and manages our warehouse. we outsource the entire operation to them :)
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDeleteI was frustrated so I sent an email to the ITC to get their position:
ReplyDeleteI was nice enough to get a response from Margaret.OLaughlin@usitc.gov. (Press Room)
Her response:
There are a number of cases involving HTC pending.
Also, the ITC does not issue news releases on these matters; rather, the information is usually provided in a Federal Register notice or an order from the Administrative Law Judge. Once I have the case identified, I will be happy to let you know what public information is available and where to find it.
I believe if we flood them with enough inquires, they just might get this issue resolved instead of working at the regular "government pace"
do you mean the coming Monday or June 1st as the shipping dates?
ReplyDeletecurrent thinking is first couple days of next week... but i still don't have any more info that i did yesterday... yet. the day is young.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insights and updates on what is really happening. The Sprint forum is going bananas over this, and I had my own private freak out as well. I've decided two things: 1) I will never purchase an Apple product and 2) I went the in-store $50 gift card pre-order route, so I'll wait for some more news before I make my next move, either to sit tight and wait for the unit or put my $50 toward a different handset.
ReplyDeleteI was like you I had my freak out, but last night i went and bought another toy instead to hold me over. A new pistol. now I can obsess on that until I get my phone.
ReplyDeleteOZ: Just something to think about... I've been part of a four man software development team at a company for about 10 years. The software that we write is strictly for internal use, we don't distribute or sell any of it, and due to it's nature, none of it will ever see the light of day.
ReplyDeleteAbout 6 years ago, one of the people I work with read a story in the tech news about a software patent being litigated and realized that he's written software that violates that patent. At the time, we all kind of laughed about it, but a few months later there was case being litigated about another patent, and we realized that our code also violated that patent.
Since then, it has become something of a game for us to see which developer has violated the most patents. We're now up to 70 total. And this is just 4 guys developing software for the company we work for.
Now there are two ways of looking at this: 1) Either I work with a truly ingenious group of guys, or 2) these patents are obvious and not novel at all. As much as I would like to say that our technical prowess is unmatched, the truth is, we're just a bunch of guys trying to improve the efficiency of our company, and we're doing the best we can to do that in the software we write.
Yes, Apple has been granted a lot of patents for their work, and by virtue of those patents, they are legally entitled to enforce those patents, but let me tell you: None of the software patents that I've seen Apple sue people for over the last 5 years should have been granted. These patents are not novel at all, indeed they are quite obvious, and it isn't anything that any other software developer wouldn't come up with when presented with the same problems to solve.
So, on the one hand, I don't really blame Apple for defending a patent that they were legally granted. However, the US Patent Office, should never have granted these patents in the first place. To make matters worse, *all* the big tech companies have spent copious amounts of money to lobby the government to allow these shenanigans to go on. So this whole business has become a huge racket that tech companies use against each other to restrain trade. And we consumers almost always wind up being the losers in this game.
Sprint is just now sending out emails about the delay.
ReplyDelete