February 9th. The day the Surface with Windows 8 Pro was released and made available to the online Microsoft Store, as well as BestBuy and Staples. But February 9th is also the day the Surface Pro went out of stock (mostly the 128GB model), resulting in an out of stock crisis and frustrated customers.
“Customer response to the launch of Surface Pro has been amazing. We’re working with our retail partners who are currently out of stock of the 128GB Surface Pro to replenish supplies as quickly as possible. Our priority is to ensure that every customer gets their new Surface Pro as soon as possible,” Microsoft explained in an official blog post, hours after it was revealed that the Surface Pro 128GB was out of stock almost everywhere.
But frustration for the lack of stock has frustrated many potential buyers of the Surface Pro. When reading pretty much every comment that is made on every news report about the Surface Pro being sold out, the common consensus is that there just wasn’t that much of a quantity of Surface Pro devices available to be sold in the first place. With BestBuy and Staples having little to just one 128GB Surface Pro in stock, it makes you think about exactly what Microsoft had in mind. Why wouldn’t there be a plethora of Surface Pro devices available for consumers to purchase? As one angry consumer adds, this doesn’t show a lot of confidence in Microsoft’s product.
“Not exactly sure what happened, but hope Microsoft has enough respect for it’s customers to explain why essentially EVERY store across the nation is without a Surface Pro,” one consumer stated on the official Surface Pro blog.
“Hey I here you guys are looking for a PR director. I would have to guess you don’t have one after this mess. Oh, and a marketing distribution team. Seriously, how could you let this happen? I’m really hoping nobody there in Redmond said, “wait, let’s have just a few units shipped so we can gloat that we sold out.” Cause you know you’d get called out on that. Or did the snowstorm that had a convoy of trucks carrying 1.5 million units get held up? SOMETHING needs to be addressed. And silence only makes it worse. Please don’t belittle consumers with a “we’re working closely with our retailers to back fill stock.” At this point, the egg is on the face and you need to sweeten the pot with a free keyboard cover, or something. Make good on this guys. This is really bad. I want a pro, but more important, I want answers,” another consumer added.
“Your distribution model is a joke. I pre-ordered 5 of the 128GB surface pros at my local Best Buy. They got 0 to start with and do not know “if or when” they will be getting any. I called around to staples…they thought they might see their first ones on their Wednesday delivery truck. You guys seriously blew it and I am more than a little pissed. I would have pre-paid last year if given the option! Way to launch a product. Stocking 2-3units per store doesn’t show a lot of confidence in your product. I’ll wait until Wednesday and then I am moving on and buying something else for my staff,” another angry consumer stated.
Now, according to a recent report from Digitimes, Microsoft was only planning on having an initial shipment volume of one million Surface Pro units. This is obviously less than what Microsoft had planned with the Surface RT, which had an initial shipment volume of four million units. Could this be a factor in why the Surface Pro is already being sold out?
Another question is, how long will we have to wait before these retail outlets are fully stocked again? Hey Microsoft, we need answers!
