We have seen the Palm Pre from Sprint to go really low on price on different online vendors before. Now is time for the Pre Plus from Verizon to hit a lower price tag, Best Buy is selling the webOS handset for only $99.99 after instant rebates and a 2 year agreement.

But that’s not all, if you don’t need the Pre Plus or don’t want to spend $100 bucks on a phone than you can get the Pixi Plus at Best Buy for only zero dollars (after instant rebates and a 2 year contract with Verizon of course). In case you prefer Sprint’s service you’ll have to spend $79.99 on the Palm Pixi.

If you’ve watched any TV in the last week you’ve probably seen an ad for the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon, and maybe even one for the Pixi Plus. But TV land isn’t the only place you’ll see Palm gear advertised - as we saw earlier in the week with the Pixi Plus Verizon BOGO ad destined for a weekly newspaper. Newspapers are old media, baby. Signs on the street are where it’s at these days, with people walking around their cities and stuff. As such, we’ve received shots from around the country of reader running into Palm and Verizon advertising for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. It’s in office towers, its at bus stops, and its in art festivals... in Miami!

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The Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus may not be launching on Verizon until Monday, but don’t let that lead you to believe that they’re not already out there. Engadget has noted that the two refreshed webOS handsets are landing in stores across the United States in preparation for the release, including purveyor of all things electronic: Best Buy.

Of course, they’re not for sale at Best Buy just yet, but they are showing up in stock rooms (which should be little surprise, considering that weekend shipping costs more than weekday). Anybody feel like moseying on down to their local big blue box and convincing a hapless Best Buy employee that they need to sell you the phone now?

Thanks to Complex Pants for the tip!

We guess you could call it a Black Friday sale, and it’s awesome. Shoppers at Best Buy on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving will be able to grab a Sprint Palm Pre for the low low price of $79.99. This matches the lowest price we’ve seen for the Pre anywhere in the United States. However, unlike every other deal we’ve seen, this applies to both new Sprint customers and contract renewal upgrades! Online shoppers will also be able to take advantage of this sale a day early on Thanksgiving. Not that you shouldn’t be spending the day gorging on turkey with friends and family.

If the above pricing story isn't wild and crazy enough for you, here's a rumor on the subject of Best Buy and Black Friday.  Several tipsters have claimed that some stores may be having an unadvertised deal at opening. Take this with a grain of salt, but the first people through the door may be able to get a Palm Pre for the rock bottom price of free. We haven’t been able to confirm this yet, but we’ve heard it enough times that we thought it worth putting out there.

Thanks to Alex (and Anonymous folks) for the tip!

And we thought that $99.99 at Sprint was a deal! Wal-Mart’s online wireless store has the Palm Pixi up for pre-order at a frightening low price: $29.99 for new contract customers. What would set you back $200 out-the-door (less a $100 mail-in-rebate) at a Sprint store is only $30 at Wal-Mart. As we said, this is for new contract customers only, with a contract renewal Pixi costing a hefty $249.99, and off-contract weighing in at $499.99. Wal-Mart Wireless lists the Pixi for pre-order and as having an estimated in-stock date of November 24th, while Sprint stores and affiliates like Best Buy and The Shack can expect to have it on the 15th, this coming Sunday.

Thanks to Shadow-360 for the tip!

Cathy Stauffer of Gerson Lehrman Group (a consulting firm) brought up the issue, making the interesting argument that a smartphones like the Pre or iPhone are “highly experiential devices,” i.e. you have to truly play with one to understand why you’d want one. I'm thinking back, and I seem to remember an awful lot of Palm phones being dummy phones when on display outside of Sprint stores. If the only place you can do that is at a Sprint store, then Best Buy and The Shack customers are going to be left out in the cold. And standing right next to them just begging to help keep them warm? A full live working iPhone.

Stauffer is right: Palm needs for customers to be able to experience the Pre and understand what makes it unique and not “just another iPhone killer wannabe.” That means getting their hands on the phone in person wherever possible, and better advertising that (as the iPhone ads do) shows what makes the phone special.

If you’ll think back to Palm’s last quarterly conference call, they revealed that around 810,000 Pre phones had been sold. Now today despite the pleasant surprise in sales numbers that beat most estimations, one of those unruly analysts has reared his head and claimed that Palm is indeed not doing as well as we all thought. David Eller of Town Hall Research (whom we have heard from before) said in a recent note that Palm’s sales figures were inflated by reporting the number of units sold by Sprint plus those that Sprint shipped to third party resellers (e.g. Best Buy) instead of the actual number of activated units. Eller went on to say that “channel inventory is currently about 11 weeks, which we believe will pressure reorder rates and make it more difficult to sell high [average selling price] products going forward.”

Palm would have nothing of it, and in a response to John Paczkowski of Digital Daily said, “The sell-through data we post reflects carriers’ sales to their customers. For example, Sprint customers include consumers who buy in a Sprint store, and Sprint retail partners such as Best Buy and RadioShack. We rely on our wireless carriers to provide us with sell-through data, and we note this fact in our 10Q.”

[via: Gizmodo]

Our Canadian friends can now get their Palm Pre for the same price as us Yanks, albeit for a short time. Best Buy Mobile has discounted the Pre by 25%, dropping the price down to $150. How short of a time? You have until September 24th (i.e. Tomorrow) to take advantage of the sale. So if you Canucks been waiting for a chance to buy a Pre for a good price, now is your chance.

[via: Everything Pre]

Plenty of people go to Best Buy to purchase their new phones, and it would seem that many of them have been heading to the big blue box to buy a Palm Pre. If you were to head over to the Best Buy mobile phone website and drop down to the Best Selling section, you’d see this odd little phone called the “Sprint Palm Pre” sitting atop the heap.  Thanks to David for the tip!

Of course, it probably helps that the Pre very recently saw a considerable price cut and that Best Buy Mobile customers don’t have to deal with the silly mail-in-rebate you get when buying direct from Sprint. Oh, and that big Palm Pre header you get in the mobile phones section likely doesn’t hurt. Still, it’s nice to see the Pre sitting atop at least one retailer’s sales chart, especially one that sells pretty much every phone on the market.

Meanwhile, mtesm lets us know that Best Buy's listing for the Palm Pre on Canada's Bell Network currently pegs the Pre at $150 Canadian, a full $50 less than Bell's official price. Best Buy says that the "sale" ends on Sept 24th, but we're wondering just how long Bell can continue to charge $50 more than what Sprint is charging.

This is the week, my friends. The Palm Pre launches on Bell Mobility this Thursday, August 27th, and unlike Sprint's launch, Bell is actually going to do something crazy: advertising. We've already seen the television ads and online series that Bell is running, but in case you happen to miss those, the Friday ad circulars came with two spots touting the Pre, one for Future Shop and the other for Best Buy Mobile (after the break).

Thanks to our man Rene of The iPhone Blog for sending these in!

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