16GB HP TouchPads Selling for Up to $325 on eBay

It would be great marketing if it was, and HP jumped back into the fray.

its just a bunch of losers buying them cheap and then selling them for a high price on these websites trying to take advantage of people who know nothing about what happened

I am all for WebOS.
It looks and works relay good and I am afraid that android might be killed by (apple/microsoft/some other dumb patent)* pick correct.
But having 3 good systems would be great especially if they would make it easy for cross compiling.
Plus I would like to see it open sourced :-) but this is just a dream.

Well, you may need to change your name to Jeff Moron!

The news indicated that HP would take a $1B one-time charge for product discounting. If the TouchPad costs mosre to build than the iPad, then it'd be about $300. If they sell it at $100, then that's a $200 per unit discount. It would take 5 million units to hit the $1B mark. HP is up to something. As it stands, there are just under half a million of these things out there, way ahead of any non-iOS tablet.

I bought 3 but for my family.. My mom for her birthday, my brother in law cause he wanted a tablet, and my self so I can experiment with WebOS and maybe program on it..

not sure why anyone would want to buy one on eBay when no attention was given for the month it was on the shelf.

i cant find one anywhere local places and online sold out and ebay is the only place thats why price is so high, its all about supply and demand, if anyone know somewhere i can find it cheaper i would appreciate it

I was close to buying a small laptop with rotating display (tablet format) when the Fire Sale was announced.

At $150, I'm a buyer for a 32GB HP TouchPad. In fact, I'd take a pair at that price (one for my wife, one for me). Any more than that (plus tax), and I'll go back to Plan A.

I give credit to the ebay entrepeneurs for their initiative, but have a feeling they'll ultimately wind up selling off at cost or hanging onto the inventory that Best Buy was previously stuck with.

This does effectively reveal at what price the HP TouchPad is desirable. In the process, HP has alienated their Retail Channel. But, hey, they're exiting the hardware business anyway. What do they care?

A lot of these buyers are just making a buck reselling the tablets online.
A few of them are enthusiasts who are hoping for some functioning Android port to that. I was thinking about getting one as well, for that reason, but then I realized that most independent Android devs are enthusiastic about a new piece of hardware for as long as it is something new and comparable to what is already out there. Given the fact that official support for this one can be counted out, I doubt that a whole lot of these developers will still be interested in making a fully functional, stable OS port for this hardware. Not when other tablets are coming out, that will have much better specs and have some drivers already written for them.
Making a fully functional port is not easy, and I presume most of the devs will jump ship in a few months. Case in point, there are attempts to port Android to ipads, and the results are still in a beta stage, after so long. And that is a tablet that is still very popular and is still being manufactured.
I am not saying it is impossible, but this effort would require constant "resuscitation", and that is only achieved by constant demand. Somehow I believe demand will fade in this case.
Just my 2 cents.

For $100-200 I would have bought one, too bad I missed. More than that, I pass.

Not everyone can afford to sell their touchpads off cheap.

Hence ebay sellers don't drop the price much.

A few days ago they were around $600 on ebay.

The hardware is a fantastic price for 99 bucks - however, great hardware but with crappy software/OS does not make a great tablet (might as well buy an ol' cheaper Shanzai tablet - at least the OS is currently open and I can/make modifications to the OS to properly operate the unit).

WebOS is currently "closed" and it's fate is currently unknown, even though HP stated that it would support/develop the OS, due to it's "business model' (my brain is too small to comprehend what HP upper management is doing), I don't have any faith with HP. However, it could be sold, etc., but it will probably still be considered "closed" (actually, loosely "closed", HP has provided the source code for the various modules, etc. since it is a derivative of Linux).

Even though the current updates correct some of the deficiencies (as noted by various experts, reviewers, etc.), once these have been installed, that's it - you still have a crappy tablet (only good for e-mails, web serfing and rudimentary software packages).

But wait, people say "Developers are in the process of developing Android...", this is a problem, if the manufacturer stops support a device and you have to rely on others to support your device, it is a crap shoot (re: developers loose interest - the next great toy is thrown to the population).

I'll stick with my Acer unit - at least the manufacturer has not abandoned it (yet - expecting a 2 year life cycle - I expect Honeycomb 3.2 as well as "Ice Cream Sandwich" to be developed/deployed for the unit).

well said, captaincharisma. That's exactly what is happening. Thew fire sale gave the touchpad a lot of publicity and now everyone wants it because it is cheap. If people are unable to find it anywhere, the last resort is ebay. Ebayers know that the tablet is no longer available and there is demand for it so they rip people off.

There seems to be a lot of misconception about sellers on ebay i.e. `trying to rip people' or `taking advantage', etc. To begin with, let me clarify that I do not sell touch pads on ebay. But sell precision tools. It is really not easy to sell on ebay specially when you have so much competition. You have to pay listing fees even if your rproduct is not sold and some times it may take several months just to sell 1 pc. After you manage to sell it, ebay and paypal fees amount to the tune of almost 15~20%. And don't forge the free shipping offered by sellers, is not really fee...they have to pay for shipping. Residential shipping with insurance and signature confirmation can cost about $15~20 alone. So in reality if someone is selling a 32gb touch pad for $300 with free shipping, he may in fact be getting only about $225.00. He has to face the risk of returns (even if he doesn't accept it, ebay policies will force him to), fraud buyers, negative feedback from unsatisfied users, etc. All this assuming the seller bought the touchpad at the firesale price of 150 + tax (32gb). But has anyone thought about many sellers have inventories at higher cost and may be actually losing money also. Finally they are doing plain business. They do not force people into paying such prices. Anybody who shops online or ebay is smart enough to search for low prices. So how can this be considered ripping people off?
I am not trying to side with ebay sellers, but just trying to offer a different perspective. It is not always as one thinks.

These ebay sellers probably bought them at a discount hoping to make some profit and now they're screwed.

Thats why I *DON'T DO EBAY*!

It pisses me off that I can't find a device, but some idiots bought 1K worth of them and are reselling them on ebay for twice the purchased price. I wouldn't look twice at the touchpad, but at 99$ it becomes a spectacular tablet. HP is supposedly restocking their inventories for one last go around... Maybe I can get one then

I see a lot of people calling the people who are selling them at double the price or more, Idiots.

If they are actually succeeding in selling them at those rates, and I am sure they are, how are they idiots? It's a basic principle of economics. Supply and Demand. At $100 a pop, the demand was far to overwhelming, and those who bought many, knew this would happen and have capitalized off of it. People who buy them for $200 are still getting a tablet at a great price, they are happy, mean while he who "ripped them off" is getting a good profit and he is happy.

The guy who bought it for $200 likely knows that they were $100, but he can't find anymore of them anywhere else, so he is still much happier to pay $200 for one, than the poor smug who paid $400-500 prior to last week.

I could just be biased and not give nearly as much a damn as I managed to order 2 of them. One for myself, and one for my dad who has been obsessing the last 3 months over wanting to save up to buy a tablet.



Anyways, I am going to go bitch at my local pizzeria for selling me a pizza for $15 when it only costs them about $3 to make it. Capitalist pigs!!

I've been checking HP's shopping cart since this began. Today's status on the 32GB TouchPad shows as:

Coming soon
Please check back soon

Could have sworn it used to say:

Out of Stock
Please check back soon

If so, perhaps a major retailer is returning unsold stock to HP and there may be a small window of opportunity to snag one of these at the original fire sale price???

I noticed the devices disappeared completely from most Retailers' web sites yesterday.

Stay tuned.

I hope they started a trend to lower tablet prices. I haven't realized I wanted one until I saw the $99 price tag!

Anyone who pays more than $150 for one of these, EVEN off of eBay... is an idiot.

Soulfringe, if these ebayers bought the $99 tablet to resell it later for $200+ they are idiots. There are people like me who wanted to get one at $99 for my wife but now I can't because all these schmucks bought out the entire stock.

Call me evil but those that purchased a few thinking they will sell it for quick profit, should burn in Hell!!!!! Its these ppl that genuine buyer cannot get hold of even 1 touchpads. Hope they get into trouble paying the credit card bill. I would never buy it on CL or ebay from these unscrupulous sob.

2011-08-25

Back to simply:

Out of Stock (without the "Please check back soon")

...on HP's shopping site now. Oh well, time to move on...