In a related matter to Paul’s last post, I’ve just gotten off the phone again with my three local Kmart stores inquiring after the Augen devices. At the one where I used to work, it seems that they’ve gotten so many calls about it that as soon as I said nothing more than, “Electronics, please,” the customer service rep who first answered my call said, “If this is about that computer thing in the circular, we’re out of stock…”
When I spoke to the electronics department anyway, the electronics associate said they had gotten maybe two of them in the first day, then sold out of them. (The person I spoke to this time knew more about it than the last person I spoke to there.) However, they did have the $99 Augen e-book reader listed on Kmart.com (and pictured above).
And so did the second of the two Kmarts, though as far as that rep knew they had never gotten any of the $149 tablet in (but were issuing rain checks). He didn’t think they’d sold many of the e-book readers—as the rep said, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing people in that part of town are interested in. The rep at the third store seemed the least knowledgeable of any of them, and reported not finding any Augen devices at all.
As Paul’s post suggests, none of these devices is likely to be anything to write home about. Still, it is interesting indeed that cheap Android devices have penetrated as far as Kmart, and that there is evidently such a huge interest in them that at least one customer service rep has started responding preemptively to electronics department requests. (Though I suppose she might just remember my voice from last time I called, but I didn’t think it was the same person.)
