Dummy units

[bstmstrxellos]

My only Android phone that I ever owned was a Droid and my wife has the Droid X, so I've never experienced Sense. I figured that I wanted to try it out before I got the Thunderbolt. Now, the only other phone in the US that has Sense 2.0 installed on it the Inspire. My mall doesn't have an official AT&T store, just an authorized retailer, so I figured that I would go there to try it out. When I got there all I could find was dummy units. Then I noticed something, my mall has a best buy, a t-mobile authorized retailer, a Verizon authorized retailer, a corporate Sprint store and a corporate Verizon store; best buy and all the authorized retailers only have dummy units, while the corporate stores have the actual phones to play with.

My question is why do the authorized retailer only have dummy units? Is it part of their contract that they cannot have the actual phone on display or do they do it to save money? I would think that if people could play with the phone, they may be more willing to buy one on impluse.

 

[cdunn05#AC]

My only Android phone that I ever owned was a Droid and my wife has the Droid X, so I've never experienced Sense. I figured that I wanted to try it out before I got the Thunderbolt. Now, the only other phone in the US that has Sense 2.0 installed on it the Inspire. My mall doesn't have an official AT&T store, just an authorized retailer, so I figured that I would go there to try it out. When I got there all I could find was dummy units. Then I noticed something, my mall has a best buy, a t-mobile authorized retailer, a Verizon authorized retailer, a corporate Sprint store and a corporate Verizon store; best buy and all the authorized retailers only have dummy units, while the corporate stores have the actual phones to play with.

My question is why do the authorized retailer only have dummy units? Is it part of their contract that they cannot have the actual phone on display or do they do it to save money? I would think that if people could play with the phone, they may be more willing to buy one on impluse.

Generally, the store has to 'buy' the dummy unit. Likely the store doesn't want to pay for it so... they don't have one.

I used to work for Best Buy and we would keep a sim card for AT&T and rotate it from phone to phone. We would demo phones that we just haven't sold yet.

 

[ShaggyKids]

Sounds to me like a theft deterrant. I'm no phone wizard and not sure *exactly* what "dummy unit" means so what comes to mind is a phone "shell" w/o the guts which would do thieves no good at all.