Got mine from Best Buy!

[Xiphias]

I had a completely painless experience in Watertown, MA. The guy was new but did fine. Got the $50 gift card after a little confusion. They kept apologizing for hire long it took but it was pain free, about 20 minutes. II remember when the first evo came out and it took hours because the best buy system couldn't keep up with so many stores hitting the servers.

 

[ffejjj]

I had a completely painless experience in Watertown, MA. The guy was new but did fine. Got the $50 gift card after a little confusion. They kept apologizing for hire long it took but it was pain free, about 20 minutes. II remember when the first evo came out and it took hours because the best buy system couldn't keep up with so many stores hitting the servers.

LOL this post could have been written by me. From today's 20 min's to the original 4hrs it took for my og evo.

I remember that day, sitting in the TV area watching Alice in Wonderland waiting for my turn to activate lol

The og evo was great but today it was upstaged for sure

 

[evo4gMN]

anybody try getting BB to price match with walmart plus get the $150 off the phone making the phone free??

I thought about doing this, but best buy requires it to be an offer Walmart has in their stores, not just online. I think the 149 price is for online only. Plus, BB will only offer it if Walmart has the same phone in inventory. I was going to try this in a week or so when Walmart gets it in and go back to BB and have them match it. They will do this up to 30days after your purchase. I am crossing my fingers I get lucky. Is anyone else thinking about doing this?

 

[Xiphias]

The Pt case best buy is selling really does make the camera button impossible to use...you have to push so hard that there's no way you can get a steady shot.

 

[flyer8493]

I thought about doing this, but best buy requires it to be an offer Walmart has in their stores, not just online. I think the 149 price is for online only. Plus, BB will only offer it if Walmart has the same phone in inventory. I was going to try this in a week or so when Walmart gets it in and go back to BB and have them match it. They will do this up to 30days after your purchase. I am crossing my fingers I get lucky. Is anyone else thinking about doing this?

Im looking at it now at walmarts site. It is online only :-!. Maybe it won't be online only within that 30 days.

 

[irishgsxr]

I don't support BB as a business. Only from sprint will I buy a phone. Received mine via ups at 3pm today.... to my doorstep

 

[irishgsxr]

Go to ur nearest Cellairis or Cellairis.com for cases and screen protecors. Zagg and Ghost Armor screens discolor and Stain. Make phone look horrible. Should have cases in stock in alderwood mall by wed the latest.

 

[webhaus]

I picked up 2 Evo's from Best Buy in Orlando Florida today.. There were 31 preorders at that location. The computers were having a lot of trouble processing the phones, and it ended up taking about 1.5 hours. All worked out in the end and was able to apply the $50 GC toward the purchase. I was upgrading from a Palm Pre, so there was no buy back to save any more money. BB was unable to transfer my contacts from the Pre, so I went over to my local Spring store and the freaked out because they hadn't seen one yet. I let them play with it for a while, and they were able to tranfer my contacts.. It ended up being a successful day. 2 new Evo's that are working great!

 

[RG129]

I bet I win with the worst BB pickup story. Synopsis as follows:

- First one to show up at my BB to pickup my phone at about 11:45am
- Rude BB Mobile associate #1 questioned my EVO3D trade-in because the reboot took about 3+ minutes (which it always does)
- Rude associate accused me of rooting/hacking the phone which caused it to be slow and he wouldn't take it back (it was stock ROM!)
- Rude associate then then said the $50 gift card only applies if you trade in OG EVO
- Rude associate then tells me if I don't like it, that I can walk away without getting my pre-ordered phone.
- I pay full price anyway, figuring I would come back later and clear everything up with management (I was on my lunch break)
- I mention to all the people waiting after me that rude associate isn't honoring the $50 gift card deal....everybody gets riled up, and then I demand to speak to the manager.
- Manager came with another FRIENDLY BB Mobile associate and she explained how the $50 gift card should work and how it should have been applied to the price of the phone.
- Manager offered to give me my $50 gift card since I already closed the transaction, but I said I would never be shopping in this store again, so she gave me $50 cash.

Ugh...that took about 2 hours of my work day! I took the manager's business card and got the BB Mobile's contact info. I'm contemplating sending e-mails out to voice my displeasure with the rude associate's incompetence. He didn't even apologize for screwing up my transaction!! He just stood there while the managers had to fix everything!

 

[abdnach]

So, I posted earlier that Best Buy had said that phones shouldn't be coming in for another week or two. Well, the good news is that around 3:30, I get an email saying my phone is available for pickup. About 30 seconds after I get the email, I get a call from Best Buy (I got worried after reading about people who got emails and then a call that the phones weren't actually there). The lady remembers talking to me earlier in the day and apologizes about the misinformation from the morning. She said that their shipment info was never updated and that's why they didn't know when the phones would come in. She was nice about it.

I went there later on and after a few minor system hiccups and the associate messing up on some things, I was united with my Evo 4G LTE and fell in love!!

For those wondering about the Walmart price match, I tried that and they said that they couldn't give me the price match and the gift cards because that would be "double-dipping" and they don't allow it. Manager that came to tell me that was really rude... so I really didn't want to argue with him. Other than that, I'm loving my Evo!

Data speeds and ability to talk n surf on 3g confirmed?

So far, my data speeds are faster by quite a bit than they Evo 3D. I have even done side by side comparison tests and the speeds are pretty amazing on the Evo 4G LTE (compared to previous 3G speeds).

As for the ability to talk and surf on 3g, I can also confirm this. I have tested it a few times and it seems to work great (except once where 3G disconnected for a moment and then reconnected, probably due to bad reception).

The more I play with this phone, the more I love it. HTC and Sprint really did a great job on this phone!

 

[akodoreign]

Was a Nice experience here in Fairview Heights IL store.

Got there about 4:30pm (straight from work)
Brought in my EVO 4g OG, HTC arrive, HTC EVO Shift, 2nd EVO 4g OG (I did some phone dose doe).

1st evo was traded in no charger so only 95 not 100 (charger worth more than 5 so no big deal for me).
2nd evo was kept but taken off the network
Arrive went to wife, Shift to oldest son
Got the full 200 off one of the evo 4g lte and 100 off the other one (Phone freedom rocks)
all before 5:30
So 4 phone swap out (think musical chairs) all in about 1 hour.

BestBuy did well in my area at least.

 

[ceff7711]

I got the same BS from Best Buy, they had 3 extra EVO's on top of the pre-orders and they made me pre-order the phone, saying they couldnt sell it because the release date had not been announced yet?????

Best Buy are you STUPID??? The release day came and went without a phone, now it's here, what do you mean you cant sell the stock you have? Accoring to them I have to wait for the next shipment to arrive. WTF are they going to do with those extra 3 EVO's??? I swear dealing with Best Buy is so frustrating.

That sounds like my experience. I read the leaked BB memo. It is not difficult to comprehend.
I had no pre-order. They told me that they expected the shipment anytime but they could only give out phones to those that pre-ordered prior to 5/21. I asked what they would do if they had extras above and beyond those pre-orders. He said that they could not sell them. I pointed out to him that the memo clearly states that the initial shipment MAY not contain enough units to fulfill pre-orders beyond those of 5/21 and earlier.
I pre-ordered right there. He said it still wouldn't matter because even if he had extras I would have to wait until the National Launch. I asked him to explain the difference between a pre-order and a walk-in purchase. He correctly explained it (kudos) by stating that pre-orders receive their phones prior to the Launch date. ??? I paused a moment to see if what he just told me would sink in to his own skull. It did. He then stated that he didn't care anymore and if he had any extra I would get one.

Still waiting.......

 

[elfuego]

I went to my area BB last night. The service rep had a mountain of EVOs' right in front of her (like 15 or so). I asked, "can I buy one?". She said NO, pre orders only. There were just so many right in between us and it hurt not been able to walk out with one of them. Tease...

 

[midmofan]

A lot of BB bashing around the net today so have to just say my experience was pretty darn good. Did take a while as they did the workaround because I got there before even the preorders could go normally since their computers were not even showing them in the store yet. But the staff had a great attitude about it trying to get me my phone as quick as possible.

This was a situation that clearly never has happened before with customs messing up the original plan for distribution and there were bound to be screw-ups (btw, do blame HTC for not foreseeing this one). Also I have seen a number of reports that customs was not releasing them all at once making things more difficult. Lastly, there is just the UPS factor, some places may take an extra day.

This is not to excuse rude behavior or people that don't know what they are doing when they should know, but these folks are trained to do things 1,2,3 and when it can't be done the way they were trained, they sometimes have a hard time of it.

BB could have just said that, given the customs situation, they are not going to release any phones until the "official" release date, then it would be preorders first while supplies last.

I know some had it rough, but I am very happy both with the fact that BB is obviously being given special treatment over other third parties (and our local sprint store btw that didn't have their preorders yesterday) and the service I got from or local BB.

 

[ceff7711]

I went to my area BB last night. The service rep had a mountain of EVOs' right in front of her (like 15 or so). I asked, "can I buy one?". She said NO, pre orders only. There were just so many right in between us and it hurt not been able to walk out with one of them. Tease...

Why didn't you pre-order it right then and there? They are still accepting pre-orders. Although it's possible that the 15 you saw were spoken for by pre-orders ahead of you but I'd give it a shot.

 

[triangle8]

For anyone who traded in your old Evo at Best Buy, any tips on making sure all your data is off your phone? I'm buddies with Brett Favre and if certain things were not erased from my phone it would be...unfortunate

But seriously, I need to use it right up to the bitter end but I want to be ready to wipe it once I get to Best Buy. Just factory reset?

If you go into settings, then SD and phone storage, you should see a factory data reset option on the bottom. That should do the trick.

 

[firemanjay74]

Had a very nice experience with my Best Buy in Gainesville VA, called mobile dept around 1:30 and they told me phones just arrived, so I traveled the 5 miles to the store and saw the associate that took my pre order for 2 phones, she even remembered my first name, she grabbed both boxes from the cabinet and as we were talking my OG EVO mail notification goes off and its Best Buy informing me that my pre order is in. She proceed to take care of all the paper work, only one hiccup in the system with one of the $50 discounts (I used 3 per phone) so the mobile manager had to come over and help with the computer, while he was doing his work around he received a group text about how the system was having an issue with one of the discounts, but he fixed it and I only paid $50 per phone. The associate was really impressed with the phone and I let her check it out, downside to the whole process was I let them transfer contacts to phone from old phone, and spent the evening removing all the double and triple contacts.
It is a beautiful phone.
Cheers

 

[devgrp]

I just came back with mine. I spent about 45mins in there because their system was acting up. The had to call Sprint to get everything setup. Its a good thing I didnt go yesterday when everyone went to pick theirs up because they said they had major problems with the system.

The phone is sweet and really thin. I dont normally use a case on my phones but I'm gonna get one for the EVOLTE so it feels a little more solid.

 

[ceff7711]

I'm curious if any BB that received an order yesterday (5/24) is expecting another batch today or tomorrow (5/25 5/26). If anyone has an insight on this please post the info.

Thanks

 

[rasmithsr]

I had a good experience at Best Buy, Tallahassee, Florida, yesterday because I picked up my shiny, new EVO 4G LTE, but it took longer than it should have. The BB mobile representative had problems with the system, i.e. couldn't get the right screens to come up, gift card promo number not working. They eventually had to deduct the gift card amount from the price of the phone. Anyway, the new EVO 4G LTE rocks! Well worth the wait!