Like many people, I decided to buy an HP TouchPad last weekend. In my case it was mostly nostalgia: my first mobile wireless data device was an HP-200LX with a RAM Data Modem. But I digress. So last Sunday I went to Best Buy, and struck out. Fry’s ditto. So I came home and decided to try the HP online store. To my amazement, I was able to buy a 32GB TouchPad for $149.
Or so I thought.
That was August 21. On August 22, I returned to the HP site, and the entire online store had vanished. There was no record of my order, my login at a different storefront wasn’t accepted….
On August 24, after receiving a cryptic transactional email from HP I went back to the HP site. Now there was a link to a special page for customers who had bought over the weekend. I logged in, and saw a line item for my order, which was shown as having been placed on August 22. Clicking on the line item brought up detailed order page, which showed that the item had been ordered on August 24, was due to ship on August 24, with an estimated delivery date of… August 24:

Of course the shipping information was blank. But it gets better. At the bottom of the page there was a link to Line item detail. This brought up the following gem, showing the estimated delivery date as August 26!

It is now August 28. None of the information concerning my order has changed since August 24. And (obviously) I haven’t received my TouchPad.
Anyone care to guess when it might arrive? I’m not holding my breath….
UPDATE: This just gets better and better. I tried to ask HP about the status of the order using their email tool, and got the following error:

UPDATE #2: Sunday on Labor Day weekend seems like the perfect time to update the order status – and someone at HP did exactly that! Apparently it’s being delivered today! (I’m not holding my breath.) Here’s the status: